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This Is Spinal Tap

This Is Spinal Tap (also known as This Is Spın̈al Tap: A Rockumentary by Martin Di Bergi[a]) is a 1984 American mockumentary film co-written and directed by Rob Reiner (in his feature directorial debut). The film stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer as members of the heavy metal band Spinal Tap, who are characterized as "one of England's loudest bands".[3][4] Reiner plays Martin "Marty" Di Bergi, a documentary filmmaker who follows them on their American tour. The film satirizes the behavior and musical pretensions of rock bands and the perceived hagiographic tendencies of rock documentaries such as The Song Remains the Same (1976) and The Last Waltz (1978), and follows the similar All You Need Is Cash (1978) by the Rutles.[5] Most of its dialogue was improvised and dozens of hours were filmed.

This article is about the film. For the soundtrack album, see This Is Spinal Tap (soundtrack).

This Is Spinal Tap

Peter Smokler

  • Christopher Guest
  • Michael McKean
  • Harry Shearer
  • Rob Reiner

  • March 2, 1984 (1984-03-02)

82 minutes

United States

English

$2 million[1]

$4.7 million (North America)[2]

This Is Spinal Tap was released to critical acclaim, but its initial release found only modest commercial success. Its later VHS release brought it greater success and a cult following. In 2002, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. It has been credited with "effectively" launching the mockumentary genre.[4]

Production[edit]

Background[edit]

Michael McKean and Christopher Guest met while in college in New York City in the late 1960s, and they played music together. They worked with Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner on a TV pilot in 1978 for a sketch comedy show called The TV Show, which featured a parody rock band called Spinal Tap. During production of that sketch (while being burned with oil from an on-stage effect) McKean and Guest began to improvise, inventing characters that became David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel.[6][7]


Guest had previously played guitar under the name "Nigel Tufnel" on Michael McKean and David Lander's album Lenny and the Squigtones.[8]

Development[edit]

The entire film was shot in Los Angeles over a period of about five weeks on handheld 16mm cameras. The visit to Elvis Presley's grave was filmed in a park in Altadena, with a mock-up of the grave site. The band sings "Heartbreak Hotel" because that was the only Elvis song for which producer Karen Murphy could obtain rights.[9]


Rob Reiner procured $60,000 from Marble Arch Productions to write a screenplay with McKean, Guest and Shearer, based on the Spinal Tap characters. They realized after a few days of writing that no script could capture the kind of movie they wanted to make, so they decided instead to shoot a short demo of the proposed film. They shopped the demo around to various studios but had no takers, until television writer-producer Norman Lear decided to back the project, providing them with a budget of 2 million dollars.[10][11]


Virtually all dialogue in the film is improvised. Actors were given outlines indicating where scenes would begin and end and character information necessary to avoid contradictions, but everything else came from the actors. As often as possible, the first take was used in the film, to capture natural reactions.[9] Reiner wanted to list the entire cast as writers on the film to acknowledge their contributions, but the Writers' Guild objected, and so only he, Guest, McKean, and Shearer received writing credit.[10]


Veteran documentary cameraman Peter Smokler worked as cinematographer on the film. Smokler had great instincts for camera placement on set, according to Reiner, and is responsible for the film's handheld cinéma vérité style[10]—although the cinematographer did not understand what was supposed to be funny about the movie.[9] With Smokler behind the camera, the film was shot not as a feature film, but as a documentary, without a script or traditional shooting schedule. So much footage was filmed (over 100 hours) that it eventually required three editors to complete the film.[9]


Inspirations for the film included the documentaries Dont Look Back (1967), which was made about Bob Dylan, and The Last Waltz (1978), which was about The Band.[10] The scene where Spinal Tap becomes lost backstage was inspired by a video of Tom Petty at a venue in Germany, walking through a series of doors trying to find the stage, but ending up on an indoor tennis court.[12] Rob Reiner also went to see the English heavy metal band Judas Priest in concert as part of his preparation for the film. He later said, "It physically hurt my chest. The reverberation in the hall was so strong that I couldn't stay there any longer."[13] According to Harry Shearer in the Criterion edition DVD commentary, keyboard player John Sinclair had just returned from touring with Uriah Heep when principal photography was about to begin, and told them how they had been booked to play an Air Force base. They subsequently used the story in the film.


In post-production, Christopher Guest was very concerned with the verisimilitude of the finger positions on the band's instruments during the concert scenes, and even re-shot some footage after the movie was edited to ensure their hands appeared in sync with the music.[9]


The character of Jeanine, David's disruptive girlfriend, was added during the production to provide a storyline to the material—in part to mollify studio executives who worried the movie would be plotless. Actress Victoria Tennant was briefly considered for the role, but June Chadwick won the part, thanks to her chemistry with the cast and her improvisation skills.[9][10]


Robert Bauer played the same character, Moke, in another Rob Reiner movie, The Sure Thing (1985).

Reception and legacy[edit]

Critical reception[edit]

This Is Spinal Tap is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1984.[14][15][16] The film holds a 96% rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 8.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Smartly directed, brilliantly acted, and packed with endlessly quotable moments, This Is Spinal Tap is an all-time comedy classic."[17] On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 92 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[18]


Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four and wrote "This Is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest, most intelligent, most original films of the year. The satire has a deft, wicked touch. Spinal Tap is not that much worse than, not that much different from, some successful rock bands."[19] Ebert later placed the film on his ten best list of 1984 and would later include it in his Great Movies list in 2001 where he called it "one of the funniest movies ever made".[20][21] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also awarded four out of four, writing, "It is so well done, in fact, that unless you are clued in beforehand, it might take you a while to realize that the rock group under dissection in This Is Spinal Tap does not really exist."[22] Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised it as "a witty, mischievous satire, and it's obviously a labor of love."[23] In 2002, This Is Spinal Tap was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.[24]


Critics praised the film not only for its satire of the rollercoaster lifestyles of rock stars but also for its take on the non-fiction film genre. David Ansen from Newsweek called the film "a satire of the documentary form itself, complete with perfectly faded clips from old TV shows of the band in its mod and flower-child incarnations".[25]


Even with cameos from Anjelica Huston, Billy Crystal and Patrick Macnee, Spinal Tap still managed to trick many of its moviegoers into believing the band existed. Reiner observed that "when Spinal Tap initially came out, everybody thought it was a real band... the reason it did go over everybody's head was that it was very close to home".[26]

Lawsuit[edit]

On October 17, 2016, actor Harry Shearer filed a $125 million fraud and breach of contract lawsuit against both StudioCanal, who owns the film's rights, and Vivendi, which owns the studio. Shearer claimed that he and the other co-stars of the film received only $179 for sales of merchandise and music over the prior three decades. Shearer's lawsuit was specifically directed at StudioCanal by ordering the studio to terminate the copyright to This Is Spinal Tap.[47] In February 2017, Shearer's co-stars Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, as well as the film's director Rob Reiner, joined the lawsuit against StudioCanal and Vivendi, seeking $400 million in damages.[48] In the same month, Vivendi made an attempt to move the court to dismiss the case.[49] In September 2017, a judge dismissed Shearer, Reiner and McKean from the case.[50] In October 2017, Spinal Tap revised their case by adding Universal Music Group (UMG, another division of Vivendi, whose Polydor label released the film's soundtrack) as a defendant, as well as the right to reclaim their copyrights to the film, its songs and characters.[51]


In August 2018, another judge ruled that Guest, Reiner, McKean and Shearer could pursue the fraud claim against Vivendi.[52]


The case related to sales of the soundtrack was settled out of court by November 2019, with UMG retaining the distribution rights but with the music rights eventually returning to Shearer, Guest, and McKean in the future.[53] A settlement between Vivendi, StudioCanal, and the cast on the merchandising aspect was reached in September 2020 with final details to be resolved in the following months.[54]

Home media[edit]

This Is Spinal Tap was first released on VHS in 1984 by Embassy Home Entertainment, and in 1994 as part of the Criterion Collection on LaserDisc under the title This Is Spinal Tap: Special Edition. It has also been released twice on DVD.


The first DVD release was a 1998 Criterion edition in letterbox format which used supplemental material from the 1994 Criterion LaserDisc release. It is the only double sided DVD in their catalogue, and it is now out of print.[55] It included an audio commentary track with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer; a second audio commentary track with Rob Reiner, Karen Murphy, Robert Leighton and Kent Beyda; 79 minutes of deleted scenes; Spinal Tap: The Final Tour, the original twenty-minute short they shot to pitch the film; two trailers that feature Rob Reiner showing a film about cheese rolling (because "Spinal Tap" itself was still in the editing room); a TV promo, Heavy Metal Memories; and a music video for "Hell Hole". Sales of this edition were discontinued after only two years and the DVD has become a valuable collector's item. Much of this material had appeared on a 1994 CD-ROM by The Voyager Company that included the entire film in QuickTime format.


In 2000, MGM Home Entertainment released a special edition with more or less the same extras from the Criterion edition, plus a new audio commentary track with Guest, McKean and Shearer performing in character throughout, commenting on the film entirely in their fictional alter-egos, and often disapproving of how the film presents them; 70 minutes of deleted scenes (some of which were not on the Criterion DVD); a new short, Catching Up with Marty Di Bergi (where it is revealed that the members of Spinal Tap were very disappointed in Di Bergi for making a "hatchet job" of their film); the Heavy Metal Memories promo and six additional TV promos; music videos for "Gimme Some Money", "Listen to the Flower People" and "Big Bottom"; and segments of Spinal Tap appearing on The Joe Franklin Show. The special features were produced by Automat Pictures. However, this version of the film was missing the subtitles that appear throughout the film (for example, introducing band members, other personnel, and location names) and did not include the commentaries from the Criterion edition. The MGM DVD is missing the subtitles burned into the film; they have been replaced with player generated subtitles.


A 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray Disc release was released on July 28, 2009. It includes all bonus features from the MGM DVD, plus an interview with Nigel about Stonehenge, as well as the performance of "Stonehenge" from the band's Live Earth performance. It does not include the commentaries from the Criterion Collection DVD, even though MGM had stated that they would be included in the earliest press release for the Blu-ray version (most likely due to legal issues), and does not feature a "create your own avatars" element teased in publicity. However, this version does restore the subtitles that introduce band members/locales/events/etc. that were missing from MGM's DVD. The alternative, Region B, UK edition of this version additionally features a new hour-long documentary featuring famous fans, the "Bitch School" promo, the EPK for the "Back From The Dead" album, an interview with the late Reg Presley discussing the influence of the Troggs tapes on the film, and the first hour (ending with an abrupt edit) of The Return Of Spinal Tap. It does however lose the Di Bergi short and the Joe Franklin clip.


Sometime in the 2000s a workprint version of the film was uploaded online. This version is 270 minutes long. It includes many scenes never released in any home media release.

"Christmas with the Devil", 1984 follow-up single.

Inside Spinal Tap (1985), a rare companion book by Peter Occhiogrosso. In 1992 this was revised and expanded exclusively for the UK market.

Both Michael McKean and Harry Shearer appeared in character as David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls as part of the all-star charity group . The group issued the single "Stars" in early 1986 which charted in the UK, hitting #26. St. Hubbins and Smalls were two of the dozens of well-known heavy metal artists who participated and were credited on the record, and can be seen in the video.

Hear 'n Aid

(1992), album.

Break Like the Wind

"", a 1992 episode of The Simpsons which features Spinal Tap.

The Otto Show

This Is Spinal Tap: The Official Companion0-7475-4218-X) was published in 2000. It featured a "Tapistory", full transcript of the film (including outtakes), a discography, lyrics and an A–Z of the band. This book largely recycles material from the Peter Occhiogrosso book and Criterion DVD commentaries.

ISBN

, 2009 album and DVD.

Back from the Dead

Unplugged and Unwigged, 2009 live DVD of Guest, McKean, and Shearer performing songs from their various works.

Smalls Change (Meditations on Ageing), 2018 solo album by Shearer as Derek Smalls.

[68]

at IMDb

This Is Spinal Tap

at the TCM Movie Database

This Is Spinal Tap

at AllMovie

This Is Spinal Tap

at the American Film Institute Catalog

This Is Spinal Tap

an essay by Peter Occhiogrosso at the Criterion Collection

This Is Spinal Tap