Thank cinéma vérité for the rockumentary. D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 “Dont Look Back” came first. And thank those for spawning the faux vérité mockumentary that arrived in the form of Rob Reiner’s 1984 “This Is Spinal Tap” — a parody which, legend has it, was taken by a credulous few for a vérité portrait of an actual rock band.
First a critical favorite, then a VHS cult film (for rock bands in particular), and finally a Library of Congress certified classic, Reiner’s film returns for the holiday weekend in a new 4K restoration.
Introducing himself as the filmmaker Marty DiBergi (and fatuously taking credit for the term “rockumentary,” already in circulation), Reiner expresses his longtime admiration for Spinal Tap, “one of England’s loudest bands,” a group of amiable dimwits touring the United States to promote their new LP, “Smell the Glove.”
As documented by DiBergi and punctuated with bombastic, bare-chested performances of casually ludicrous (but catchy) numbers, their Tap Into America tour is rife with quarrels, snafus, canceled bookings, hissy fits and spectacular onstage malfunctions.
The fictional band was created by boyhood pals David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and so in a sense was the film: McKean and Guest met at New York University and developed a riff that was picked up on by Reiner and Harry Shearer (who plays Derek Smalls, another band member) for an abortive TV comedy show and thereafter evolved into the movie.
As such, “Spinal Tap” is a rich feast of clichés ranging from kinescopes of the band’s early incarnations to backstage shenanigans and ham-handed intrigue. The glibly incompetent manager (Tony Hendra) quits, leaving David’s pushy, astrology-minded girlfriend (June Chadwick) in charge as engagements drastically decline. Nigel departs in the wake of a U.S. Air Force base mixer, leaving the band without a lead guitarist for a gig at an amusement park second billed to a kiddie puppet show.
Throughout, the industry gets a drubbing. Failed promotions include a kickoff party hosted by the aggressive publicist Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher in a role she would reprise some 15 years later on “The Nanny”) as well as a record store LP signing for which no one shows up. Verité conventions are more subtly satirized. Pointless interviews aside, the hand-held camera stumbles, the overlapping sound gets jumbled and the stray reaction shot (used to express incredulity) is frequently deployed. Filmed without a script and largely improvised by the actors, the movie really is at least a semi-documentary, reportedly hewed from a hundred hours of raw footage.
Back in 1984, “This Is Spinal Tap” received two appreciative reviews in The New York Times. While the film “does embody rock ’n’ roll at its most horrible,” Janet Maslin (a former rock critic) wrote, it “isn’t meanspirited at all.” Vincent Canby thought it succeeded because it was “essentially so fond, if not consistently admiring, of its subject.”
Indeed, “This Is Spinal Tap” is less a travesty than a homage. It’s also very much a product of the MTV era, when image drove audience demand even as the solo superstars like Madonna and Michael Jackson rendered the shaggy supergroups of the ’70s passé. “Spinal Tap” was not quite nostalgic then, but it has become so now.
This Is Spinal Tap
From July 5-7 at theaters in New York and New Jersey.
The post ‘This Is Spinal Tap’: So Bad, They’re Great appeared first on New York Times.
