In 1984, the groundbreaking mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap lampooned heavy metal bands and rock documentaries — and introduced audiences to a new film genre.
"What we were doing was not only satirizing heavy metal, we were satirizing the documentary form and the way in which documentaries were presented," director Rob Reiner says.
Spinal Tap, the fictional band at the center of the film, was known for its excesses both on- and off-screen. The bass player stuffed his pants with a foil-wrapped zucchini, while the lead guitarists boasted of amps that "go to 11." Reiner both directed the film and played a documentary director in the movie.
Now, in the sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, the band returns for a reunion concert. As in the original film, the band is portrayed by Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer. Everyone's older in the sequel, but make no mistake: None of the characters has changed.
"The beauty of these guys, the members of Spinal Tap, is that in all those years, from their 20s, 30s up now until their 70s, they have grown neither emotionally or musically," Reiner says. "There's no growth. They basically are in a state of arrested development for, like, 50 years. And the only growth that there is, is maybe skin [tags] from getting older."
Reiner says revisiting the project came easily, especially since it meant working with the same collaborators: "We're still able to — as Chris Guest calls it — 'schnadle' with each other back and forth."
"After 15 years of not working together, we came back and started looking at this and seeing if we could come up with an idea, and we started schnadling right away," he says. "It was like falling right back in with friends that you hadn't talked to in a long time. It's like jazz musicians, you just fall in and do what you do."
This Is Spinal Tap helped pave the way for TV mockumentaries like The Office and Parks and Recreation, and for films like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. Reiner's other directing credits include Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men. He also starred in the 1970s sitcom, All in the Family.
Interview highlights
On "Goes to 11" entering the American lexicon because of Spinal Tap
What makes that funny is the long pause he gives, and the reason he gives that pause is because he doesn't know I'm going to say, "Why don't you make 10 a little louder?" I just came up with that then, and so it stops him for a second, and then he says, "Well, these go to 11." And what's interesting is that that phrase goes "to 11" is now in the Oxford English Dictionary as something that is commonly used for not just loud music, but anything that's done in excess, something that goes beyond what it normally does. So it's weird that something that we just threw off like that all of a sudden becomes part of the lexicon of our lives. It's very strange how these things have taken root.
On looking up to his dad, director Carl Reiner, and growing up surrounded by comedy legends
When I was a little boy, my parents said that I came up to them and I said, "I want to change my name." I was about 8 years old ... They were all, "My god, this poor kid. He's worried about being in the shadow of this famous guy and living up to all this." And they say, "Well, what do you want to change your name to?" And I said, "Carl." I loved him so much, I just wanted to be like him and I wanted to do what he did and I just looked up to him so much. ...
[When] I was 19 … I was sitting with him in the backyard and he said to me, "I'm not worried about you. You're gonna be great at whatever you do." He lives in my head all the time. I had two great guides in my life. I had my dad, and then Norman Lear was like a second father. They're both gone, but they're with me always. ...
There's a picture in my office of all the writers who wrote for Sid Caesar and [Your] Show of Shows over the nine years, I guess, that they were on. And, when you look at that picture, you're basically looking at everything you ever laughed at in the first half of the 20th century. I mean there's Mel Brooks, there's my dad, there is Neil Simon, there is Woody Allen, there is Larry Gelbart, Joe Stein who wrote Fiddler on the Roof, Aaron Ruben who created The Andy Griffith Show. Anything you ever laughed at is represented by those people. So these are the people I look up to, and these are people that were around me as a kid growing up.
On directing the famous diner scene in When Harry Met Sally
We knew we were gonna do a scene where Meg [Ryan] was gonna fake an orgasm in an incongruous place like a deli, and Billy [Crystal] came up with the line, "I'll have what she's having." ... I said, we need to find somebody, an older Jewish woman, who could deliver that line, which would seem incongruous. I thought of my mother because my mother had done a couple of little [movie] things ... So I asked her if she wanted to do it and she said sure. I said, "Now listen mom, hopefully that'll be the topper of the scene. It'll get the big laugh, and if it doesn't, I may have to cut it out." ... She said, "That's fine. I just want to spend the day with you. I'll go to Katz's. I'll get a hot dog." ...
When we did the scene the first couple of times through Meg was kind of tepid about it. She didn't give it her all. ... She was nervous. She's in front of the crew and there's extras and people. ... And at one point, I get in there and I said, "Meg, let me show you what I meant." And I sat opposite Billy, and I'm acting it out, and I'm pounding the table and I'm going, "Yes, yes, yes!" ... I turned to Billy and I say, "This is embarrassing ... I just had an orgasm in front of my mother." But then Meg came in and she did it obviously way better than I could do it.
On differentiating himself from his father with Stand By Me (1986)
I never said specifically I want to be a film director. I never said that. And I never really thought that way. I just knew I wanted to act, direct, and do things, be in the world that he was in. And it wasn't until I did Stand By Me that I really started to feel very separate and apart from my father. Because the first film I did was, This Is Spinal Tap, which is a satire. And my father had trafficked in satire with Sid Caesar for many years. And then the second film I did was a film called The Sure Thing, which was a romantic comedy for young people, and my father had done romantic comedy. The [Dick] Van Dyke Show is a romantic comedy, a series.
But when I did Stand By Me, it was the one that was closest to me because ... I felt that my father didn't love me or understand me, and it was the character of Gordie that expressed those things. And the film was a combination of nostalgia, emotion and a lot of humor. And it was a real reflection of my personality. It was an extension, really, of my sensibility. And when it became successful, I said, oh, OK. I can go in the direction that I want to go in and not feel like I have to mirror everything my father's done up till then.
On starting his own production company (Castle Rock) and how the business has changed
We started it so I could have some kind of autonomy because I knew that the kinds of films I wanted to make people didn't wanna make. I mean, I very famously went and talked to Dawn Steel, who was the head of Paramount at the time. ... And she says to me, "What do you wanna make? What's your next film?" And I said, "Well, you know, I got a film, but I don't think you're going to want to do it." … I'm going to make a movie out of The Princess Bride. And she said, "Anything but that." So I knew that I needed to have some way of financing my own films, which I did for the longest time. ...
It's tough now. And it's beyond corporate. I mean, it used to be there was "show" and "business." They were equal — the size of the word "show" and "business." Now, you can barely see the word "show," and it's all "business." And the only things that they look at [are] how many followers, how many likes, what the algorithms are. They're not thinking about telling a story. … I still wanna tell stories. And I'm sure there's a lot of young filmmakers — even Scorsese is still doing it, older ones too — that wanna tell a story. And I think people still wanna hear stories and they wanna see stories.
Heidi Saman and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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