'This Is Spinal Tap' Director Rob Reiner Reveals How Netflix's Hit Dark Fantasy Show Inspired ‘Spinal Tap 2’ [Exclusive]

Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with director Rob Reiner about This Is Spinal Tap in 4K for the 41st anniversary theatrical rerelease.

In this interview, Reiner discusses the long journey to getting this groundbreaking 1984 mockumentary from script to screen.

Reiner also talks about the crucial role Norman Lear played in getting the film made, deleted scenes, and what fans can expect from the upcoming sequel, Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues.

Spinal Tap, the fictional British heavy metal band, continues to resonate with audiences today after debuting in This Is Spinal Tap, the 1984 mockumentary directed by Rob Reiner. Presented as a rock documentary gone wrong, the film follows the band’s U.S. tour and provides hilarious scenes etched with their stage antics, the internal tensions rife in rock bands of the era, and a string of absurd misfortunes. This Is Spinal Tap stars Christopher Guest as lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, Michael McKean as lead singer and rhythm guitarist David St. Hubbins, and Harry Shearer as bassist Derek Smalls — who not only performed as actors, but also wrote songs and performed as a band for the film. Reiner rounds out the leading cast in the film as Marty DiBergi, the filmmaker documenting Spinal Tap’s tour. This Is Spinal Tap maintains its currency four decades after its release due to its satirical approach to skewering rock clichés, and the excesses of fame, ego, and relevancy in a constantly shifting industry. This Is Spinal Tap’s timeless humor upholds the film as one of the most quotable comedies in the film landscape to date, and it is still heralded as defining the mockumentary genre, paving the way for generations of humor and fiction-laced documentary-style filmmaking in films such as Borat, Brüno, What We Do in the Shadows, and more. Now, the film will continue to be a centerpiece in the genre as its long-awaited sequel comes to fruition with Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues. For This Is Spinal Tap’s 41st anniversary, Collider’s Steve Weintraub interviewed Reiner to revisit the monolith mockumentary, while getting into what fans can expect from the upcoming sequel. Reiner reflects on This Is Spinal Tap’s slow burn to cult status, how Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things influenced the sequel, and reflects on a cut scene from the original movie.
‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Was a Slow Burn to Cult Status

“Satire closes on a Saturday night.”

COLLIDER: I’ve been a fan of Spinal Tap as long as I can remember, and it’s honestly thrilling to talk to you about it. One of the things that I think people don’t realize is that when the film came out in 1984, this was a genre that had not been done before. When audiences went to see it, many people thought that the band was real and that this was a documentary. Can you talk a little bit about that? People forget now what it was like when it first came out. ROB REINER: Well, it was bizarre. Just to back it up a little bit, while we were making the film, Peter Smokler, who was the director of photography — and I picked him because he had shot tons of rock and roll documentaries, including being at Altamont for the Stones concert where that terrible tragedy happened with the Hells Angels — we started shooting and he said to me, “What is this?” He said, “This isn’t funny. This is exactly what they do.” And I said, “No, it’s a little bent. It’s not exactly. I mean, we’re close to the bone, but we’re not exactly.” Then we screened it. The first screening was in Dallas, and people came up to me and they said, “What is this?” They said the same thing. They said, “Why would you make a movie about a band that nobody ever heard of and one that’s this bad? Why wouldn’t you make a movie about the Stones or the Beatles or something?” I tried to say, “No, it’s a satire.” They didn’t get it right away. It took a while for people to catch up to it. There’s a very famous saying that says satire closes on a Saturday night, it’s a Broadway expression, and that’s what we thought. We thought, “It’ll go.” We knew what we were doing. We satisfied ourselves, but we didn’t think anybody was going to… And then slowly, over the years, rock bands picked it up. People came up to us quoting, “This goes to 11,” “fine line between stupid and clever.” People said, “On tour, it’s a staple on the bus. We watch it over and over again.” Sting came up to me and told me the first time I met him, “I’ve seen this thing over and over. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” So, we got a lot of people saying that. And then eventually it gets into the Library of Congress and the National Film Registry. It’s in the Oxford English Dictionary. So, it took many, many years for people to really appreciate it. You also launched a genre, because so many films came after Spinal Tap that maybe wouldn’t have been made.
‘All in the Family’s Screenwriter Saved ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ From the Can

“Norman took a leap of faith.”

Until I was researching to talk to you, I didn’t realize how instrumental Norman Lear was in getting this off the ground. Can you touch on that? REINER: If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t get it made. We had made a 20-minute demo reel. We were originally going to do a screenplay for this company, Marble Arch, owned by Sir Lew Grade, but we sat down to write a screenplay and we figured there’s no way we can communicate in screenplay form exactly what this documentary feel is going to be. So I asked the guy, I said, “Give me the $60,000. We’re going to pay for the screenplay. I’ll make a little bit of the film.” I added $25. The guys pooled another $5, and for $90, 90,000 we made backstage stuff, concert stuff, interviews. We put it together in a 20-minute thing. We went, and the guy said, “Nah, we don’t want this.” We said, “Oh my god, this is terrible. Now we have this can of film on 60mm.” I said to Karen Murphy as we were walking around from studio to studio, “If we ever get this made, we’re going to be able to tell people that we actually went from studio to studio with a can of film under our arm. Nobody wanted it. Nobody.” Finally, what happened was this woman named Lindsay Durand, who was an executive at AVCO Embassy, they were looking for a director for some other film that they were making, and this guy, Peter Turner, who was an agent of William Morris — he wasn’t my agent, I wasn’t even with William Morris — he had seen this 20-minute reel, and he says to Lindsay Durand, “You should think about Rob Reiner.” She said, “Rob Reiner? What has he done?” He said, “Take a look at this 20-minute thing.” She looked at it and she said, “Forget the movie we’re looking at. What are you doing with this thing?” I said, “We can’t get anybody to finance it, to put it out.” She said, “I think I can convince the head of the studio, AVCO Embassy,” who was Frank Capra [Jr.], Frank Capra’s son. He said, “If you can find some financing, I’ll distribute it.” I went to a company, a guy named Bill Immerman, and he gave me $1 million. I went back and I said, “Look, I got some money. Will you do it?” And then the company was sold. AVCO Embassy was sold to Jerry Perenchio and Norman Lear. Many times when a studio gets sold, they scrap everything that was in development, including this. That was gone. So, I said, “Oh no, man, we got so close!” So I go to Alan Horn, who was the head of business affairs. Alan I know very well, he’s like a brother to me now. He was working at All in the Family, and I knew Norman, certainly. I said, “Alan, just let me talk to Norman and Jerry about this. Let me just tell them what I want to do.” So they gave me a meeting, and all these executives were around, and I went to this crazy pitch, screaming, “It’s going to be brilliant! It’s going to be funny. Kids are going to love it! It’s rock n roll!” I’m going on and on, and apparently after I leave the room, this is what I’m told happened: Norman turns to everybody in the room and says, “Well, who’s going to tell him he can’t do this?” Basically, Norman took a leap of faith. If it wasn’t for him, there’s no way I could get this made.

Why The Original ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Is Still the Apex Of Mockumentaries

As far as mockumentaries go, ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ turns it up to 11.

I’m so excited that this is coming back out in theaters for a limited run, but I’m also excited that it’s getting a 4K Criterion release in September. If you don’t mind me asking, there have been so many extras released over the years, from the original DVD to Laserdisc — what is on the Criterion 4K release? Does it have all the 90 minutes of deleted scenes? Does it have all the previous stuff? REINER: It’s got a lot more stuff. Listen, we had just tons of footage of all kinds of things, and they put a lot more of that in there. Also, we watched it now, as 70-year-old guys, and we made comments, and those comments are now in there. But you could call the Criterion people. They’ll tell you exactly what they put in because I haven’t seen the final thing either.
This ‘Stranger Things’ Phenomenon Inspired ‘Spinal Tap II: The End Continues’

The writer-director reveals what fans can expect when the band gets back together.

Image via Netflix

I am over the moon that I’m going to see a sequel to this movie later this year. Not much information is known about it, so what do you want to tell fans of Spinal Tap about the sequel? REINER: The main thing I want to tell them is we’ve had screenings with just a regular audience, and we purposely had half the audience who had seen the first film and half the audience who had not seen the first film. It just blew me away that the people who hadn’t seen it liked the second film as much as the people who had. It blew me away because I thought, “There are certain references that you won’t get unless you’ve seen the first one,” but they loved it. They just looked at it and said, “Oh, it’s about an old band. Old guys still on tour,” and they got the jokes from that. Even if you’ve seen the first one, this is a different thing. This is something different. There’s a lot of good laughs in it and a lot of surprises. Paul McCartney is in there, and Elton John. We got a whole bunch of people in there. Not much is known about the sequel. Do you want to tell people what it’s about? REINER: Just to give you the idea that we came up with, in reality, the band, the guys, hadn’t played together in 15 years, so we made that the hook to what the film was. We made it that they not only hadn’t played for 15 years, but they were not talking to each other. It was bad blood. So, you find out in the course of the film what was the cause of the bad blood. We also came up with, and this came out of a real place, too — Tony Hendra, who played Ian Faith, their manager, had passed away, and so we said, “Okay, the manager has passed away.” He bequeathed a contract to his daughter, Hope Faith, and Hope has this contract that calls for one more performance. She thinks, “Well, this is worthless because they haven’t played in 15 years. Who knows about these guys?” Then we thought of Kate Bush, who had a song of hers on that show, Stranger Things. All of a sudden, there was a resurgence of this song and her and everything. We said, “That’s it.” We get a famous rocker or somebody to be screwing around in a soundcheck, sings a song of Tap’s, somebody catches it on an iPhone, sticks it up on TikTok, it goes viral, and all of a sudden this last concert becomes valuable. That became the premise of the film. That’s as much as I can tell you, but that’s how we came up with the idea. I’m assuming there’s going to be jokes in this about them dealing with technology. REINER: Well, when you’re old, there are a lot of things that you have to deal with. [Laughs] More than just technology.

‘Spinal Tap II’ Goes to Eleven and Beyond in First Teaser Trailer

England’s loudest band is back.

Rob Reiner Reflects on the Cut Cherie Currie Scene

“There was some great stuff that we had to cut.”

Image via Studio Canal

So one of the things that I read and I did not know is that back in the 2000s, a work print of Spinal Tap ended up getting online, which was, like, 270 minutes or something crazy. It got pulled. REINER: I don’t know how that happened. Because the truth is, in the first cut, we had three hours of interview footage, which we hadn’t yet integrated into the first cut, which was four hours, so we had seven hours of stuff. It took a long time for us to winnow it down to the film that we came up with. You’re telling me this — I didn’t even know this. I didn’t see it. I wish I had. When something like that happens, are you angry, or are you like, “Well, it’s keeping people talking about Spinal Tap?” REINER: At that point, we’re already a cult hit and all that stuff. So, I guess it wouldn’t have bothered me. I guess it would because you don’t want every little flaw. But there was some great stuff that we had to cut because it was just too long. There was a band that opened for them for a while called The Dose. It was a punk band, and it was fronted by Cherie Currie from The Runaways — that was Joan Jett and Jackie Fox. Anyway, they were singing. They liked them, because she was kind of sexy. You see them on stage, and then the next scene, you see Nigel with Cherie, and they’re kind of canoodling, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next scene, he’s got a herpes sore on his lip. Then she’s with Mike, and then she’s with David. Then the next scene, he’s got the herpes sore. Then with Derek, and then with the keyboardist. Then there’s a meeting, and this took a long time [laughs]. The band members, all five of them, are sitting around, and there are four guys with the herpes sores, and they’re saying, “I think we should get rid of The Dose. Let’s get rid of The Dose.” The drummer, the only one who doesn’t have the herpes sores, “Nah, I think we should keep them. I like them.” The only thing remaining is there’s a scene where you see Nigel and David, and they both have a herpes sore in the hotel suite, and it gets a laugh for some reason when we pan from one to the other. But the genesis of it, it took, like, a half hour to tell that story! This Is Spinal Tap returns to theaters for a limited release from July 5–7. Get your tickets here.