Omc! Dreyfus wd have been hilarious as Meathead. Do you recall that movie where there was a play w’in the film, & a young Dreyfus had to play Richard III as if he was ‘flamboyant’? It may have been Close Encounters. That scene was riotously funny. I can only imagine the spin Dreyfus wd have put on Meathead. I wonder why they turned him down?
That film you were talking about was The Goodbye Girl. Norman Lear wanted Rob Reiner and that was that. Reiner and Dreyfus were good friends at the time. Reiner cast Dreufus as the adult writer in Stand by Me.