Sad news: The legendary comedy writer director and performer Carl Reiner died yesterday at the age of 98. Below is an interview I did with him for The Hartford Courant in 1993.

By FRANK RIZZO

Which is the real Carl Reiner?

The great parodist in television's early classic "Your Show of Shows"? The sophisticated creator of "The Dick Van Dyke Show"? Or the cool straight-man to Mel Brooks' lunacy in the "2000-Year-Old-Man" comedy records?

Or how about the dirty-old-man author of the new book "All Kinds of Love?" (Birch Lane Press, $18.95). Or the comic sentimentalist of his previous novel, "Enter Laughing"?

And then there's the Hollywood Reiner, who pivots from the crude to the sublime: "Where's Poppa?" to "Oh, God!" to Steve Martin films such as "The Jerk" and "All of Me" to his latest, the film noir spoof "Fatal Instinct," which opens nationally today.

"They're all me," Reiner says during a recent interview of laughter on the 43rd floor in his New York hotel suite.

At 71, Reiner looks robust, an older but no less feisty and funny version of his Alan Brady character on "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Reiner wears a temporary cast on his leg and uses a cane, having recently torn leg muscles in an accidental fall from a stage.

"I missed the piano bench by an eighth of an inch," he says with flourish. "Someone said it was a quarter of an inch, but I'm making it more dramatic."

He stops the interview in mid-question. "You have something on your teeth," he says, searching his pockets to share his Stimudent.

Reiner often breaks the interview with bits of business, quirky little comedy riffs that act as irresistible diversions in a stream of comic consciousness.

"Have you seen these sewing packets they give you in the hotel," he asks. "They're great. I collect them. Do you need your pants sewn?"

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