Rob Reiner's 'Spinal Tap' Still Goes To 11

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This is Fresh Air.

I'm Terry Gross.

Finally, there's a sequel to the groundbreaking 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap.

And the director and co-star Rob Reiner is here to tell us about that that film and his life and career.

This is Spinal Tap was the most influential mockumentary that helped pave the way to movie and TV mockumentaries, including The Office and Parks and Recreation.

Spinal Tap satirized heavy metal bands and rock documentaries.

The band is known for its excesses, its loud volume, a bass player who stuffs his pants, incredibly sexist lyrics, as well as on and off-stage mishaps.

In the new sequel, Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues, the band members return for a reunion concert.

As in the original film, the band is portrayed by Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer.

Reiner reprises his role as the director of the documentary about the band.

This time around, Paul McCartney and Nelton John make appearances as themselves.

There's also a companion book.

Rob Reiner has had a remarkable life.

The films he directed include Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and Misery.

His father, Carl Reiner, created the 60s sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Rob Reiner was a star of the groundbreaking show in the 70s, All in the Family.

Let's start with a scene from Spinal Tap 2.

The end continues.

The premise of the film is that the band's former manager has died, and his daughter inherited the band's contract.

She discovers the contract calls for a final concert, which is why the band reunites.

She's also found a new road manager.

He's played by Chris Addison.

In this scene, he's giving advice to the band.

If this is the final gig that Spinal Tap do, then what we need to do is secure your legacy.

Now, the simplest, most effective way that we could do that is that if during the gig, at least one, but ideally no more than two of you, were to die,

that's what I call the Elvis effect.

It really allows for a sort of late flowering of the.

If you pretend die.

I think that would complicate matters.

It's easier if you just, if, you know, the

exertion expire.

Do you mean actually die?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, but I don't want to.

I don't want to arrange that.

Well, no, no, no, I appreciate that.

But I think, in terms of your legacy going forwards, how you'll be remembered, how you'll be talked about, what effect that will have on record sales, I'm thinking documentaries, I'm thinking a huge memorial concert.

You can do that without actually killing one of us, though, can't you?

It's very difficult to do a memorial concert when the person is still alive.

That's just a sort of rule of thumb.

Would you settle for a coma?

Oh, no, that's interesting.

Oh, no, now, David, that's interesting.

That's really expensive.

That's a great bit of thinking outside.

Well, the literal box, I suppose.

Yeah, actually.

Rob Reiner, welcome to Fresh Air.

Congratulations on the sequel.

I'm very glad that you made it, and I know everyone else will be too.

Thank you.

One of the things that's very interesting about the film, the first, and maybe particularly the sequel, is that you have a band that started off as, you know, kind of like young and rebellious and, you know, all that.

And now, like Spinal Tap, they're in their 70s.

And it just makes no sense for them to be singing some of the lyrics that they're singing.

And that happens to a lot of bands who end up performing their old material about teenage love, you know, when they're in their 70s.

But these are songs about like their sexual prowess and

and and they're they're incredibly some of them are just like incredibly like sexist so it sounds so inappropriate in so many ways yeah the beauty of of these guys the 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.

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 tabs from getting older.

They have to be biopsied.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Did you want the second movie to reflect how music documentaries have changed?

Because if I did my math right, like Spinal Tap, like this is Spinal Tap, precedes the MTV and VH1 music documentaries that became so famous and so parried.

there were a lot of music documentaries before we made the first film.

I mean, you know,

Led Zeppelin had the song remains the same.

The Who had The Kids Are All Right.

And of course, you know, The Last Waltz.

Yeah, The Last Waltz was Scorsese.

And the first one was the Bob Dylan documentary by Penny Baker.

You know, don't look back.

You know, yeah.

So there were these documentaries.

But so what we were doing was not only satirizing heavy metal, but we were satirizing the documentary form and the way in which documentaries were presented.

And I, you know, basically,

the reason my character, Marty DeBerge, who's the supposedly the documentarian of the film, is in the film is because in The Last Waltz, I saw, yeah, there's Marty Scorsese.

He's in the film.

He's documenting this last concert by the band, but he's also in the film.

The first film I shot with a 16 millimeter camera, you know, it's a film camera.

Now we have digital cameras, and I shot with two cameras.

And I try to, you know, Marty, let's say the character Marty who's making the film, I have to always filter it through how he would make it, not necessarily how I would make it.

And I try to say, will he be affected by the new modern type of techniques that they use in reality shows and, you know, what you see up on social media and all that.

And I think he's he's, you know, he may try a little bit, but but basically he's stuck in his own inabilities to make it any hipper or cooler than he was.

So he hasn't grown all that much either.

I want to play one of the most famous moments from the first Spinal Tap film.

And it's the scene where Christopher Guest, as Nigel Tufnell, is showing you, the director of this documentary, his guitar equipment.

And he's showing you his amp, which goes up so loud because this band prides itself on how loud it is.

It goes up so high, it goes past 10 to 11.

So, here's an excerpt of that scene.

What we do is if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Put it up to 11.

11, exactly.

One louder.

Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder?

These go to 11.

And he looks like totally baffled by what he's saying.

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.

You started making Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues, in 2024 on your 77th birthday.

And everyone in the movie is the same or approximately the same age as the characters they play.

Did making the film make you think more about how you've aged since the first one and all that's happened to you in between?

Oh, sure.

You can't ignore it.

I mean, you, you know,

hopefully our minds are still sharp and we're still able to, you know, as Chris Guest calls it, schnadle.

We can schnadle with each other back and forth.

But yeah, he's not.

Schnadle is his word for improv?

Yeah, yeah.

He says, you know, we schnadel with each other, which is true.

I mean, and what's interesting is that after 15 years of not, you know, 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.

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 know, you just fall in and do what you do.

You are part of so many.

comedy-related things, and so are your friends.

So I'm going to start with like your father was Karl Reiner.

Yes.

And he created the Dick Van Dyke show.

And before that, wrote for and acted in Sid Caesar shows back in the 1950s.

Albert Brooks, your good friend from high school, you made a movie about him.

You did an act with Joey Bishop's son before you made movies.

You co-founded an improv group and did a lot of improv.

In the 70s, you were on one of the most popular and groundbreaking sitcoms, All on the Family.

You wrote with Steve Martin for the Smothers Brothers Summer Replacement Show early in your career.

You were the third host of Saturday Night Live.

I mean, I could go on.

You have three movies in the National Film Registry, when Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, and This is Spinal Tap.

Yikes, that's like so much comedy history.

I'm tired, Terry.

I'm tired when you read that.

When you make a friend or meet somebody, is being funny one of the first traits you look for in someone?

Well, you know, it's interesting.

Yes, of course you want to, you know, connect with somebody that you can connect with on the same level.

When I was young,

you know, you mentioned, you know, my dad and Sid Caesar.

You know, he also

did, to me, the greatest comedy albums ever done with Mel Brooks called The 2,000-year-old man.

And to me, they're the hippest, funniest.

comedy albums ever.

And when I was a kid and teenager and I come home from school, school, I would put on one of the albums.

I did it almost every day for a long time.

And I listened to it because I thought, God, this is so brilliant.

And that was improvised, too.

I thought, you know, when I met somebody, if they dug the 2,000-year-old man and they could quote lines from it, I knew it was somebody I could connect with because they were on the same wavelength as I.

It was like a good test to see if this is somebody I could connect with.

Was the 2,000-year-old man album and subsequent versions of it one of the reasons why you wanted to do improv?

Well, no, not really.

I mean, that's something I always, you know, I was drawn to.

I mean,

I loved Second City.

I loved the committee.

I used to go visit the committee

when they were up in San Francisco.

And we got the idea when I was at UCLA, I guess I was about 18 or 19 at the time,

to start our our own improvisation group.

And I wanted to do what my dad did.

I, you know, when I was a little boy,

my parents said, I came up to them and I said, you know, I want to change my name.

I was about eight years old, I guess.

I said, I want to change my name.

And they said, they were, oh my God, this poor kid, he's worried about being in the shadow of a famous guy and living up to and all this.

And they said, well, what do you want to change your name to?

And I said, Carl.

And they said,

I said, I loved him so much.

I just wanted to be like him, you know, and I wanted to do what he did.

And I just looked up to him so much.

So,

yeah, I was surrounded by all of this.

And I look at,

there's a picture in my office of all the writers who wrote for Sid Caesar and the 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's Neil Simon, there's Woody Allen, there's Larry Gelbart.

I mean, Joe Stein, who wrote Fiddler on the Roof, Aaron Rubin, who created the Andy Griffith Show.

Everybody, anything you ever laughed at is represented by those people.

So these are the people

I look up to, and these are the people that were around me, you know, as a kid growing up.

Did you ever want to be in a band?

Because so many people in the entertainment world at some point wanted to be in a band.

Of course I did.

And did you ever play?

I can sing.

I can sing and I can sing on pitch, but that's about it.

And I, you know, I would have killed to be able to.

I love blues.

I'm a big fan of the blues.

I mean, I can, I listen to any blues guitarist.

I, you know, you got me hooked.

And when I saw Michael Bloomfield, who played with the Paul Butterfield blues band and then played with a band called Electric Flag,

I said, wow, God.

And he's Jewish, you know?

He's a white Jewish guy.

And he's playing the blues and

he's unbelievable.

And I thought, boy, I would just kill to be like Michael Bloomfield.

Just the playing of the music, not the other parts, which weren't so good for him.

So I want to play a scene from a few good men.

And this scene has that very famous line, you can't handle the truth.

But it's so like he and

Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise is prosecuting the colonel played by Nicholson, who's being court-martialed.

So this is like

the dramatic climax to that whole part of the story.

And so I want to play that scene, and I have a very specific question for you, which is in directing Jack Nicholson, how do you draw the line between giving

a lot and giving too much?

You know, like, where is the line between like chewing the scenery and a great dramatic performance?

So, let's listen to the scene.

You want answers?

I think I'm entitled.

You want answers!

I want the truth!

You can't handle the truth!

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.

Who's gonna do it?

You?

You, Lieutenant Weinberg?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.

You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines.

You have that luxury.

You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives.

And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall.

You need me on that wall.

We use words like honor, code, loyalty.

We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something.

You use them as a punchline.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way.

Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post.

Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

So, Rob Reiner, you directed A Few Good Men, which that scene is from.

So, with Nicholson, he's a great actor.

But, you know, some great actors can just give a little too much sometimes, and that's such a heightened scene.

Did you have to figure out, like, is that enough?

Is that too much?

I tell you, with Jack Nicholson, he's one of the greatest actors of all time.

He's in the pantheon of all-time great movie stars and actors, and his instincts are impeccable.

You don't have to tell Jack Nicholson to hold back or

give more or whatever.

He knows what he needs to do.

Interestingly enough,

like any really, to my opinion, really great actor, he doesn't mind if there's a humorous thing or something that needs a line reading.

He doesn't mind if you give, he'll say, How do you want me to say that?

Because he likes, it's like a great musician.

He wants to hear the notes.

How do you say it?

And since I'm, you know, that's one of the things I do, you know, he'll say, how do you want me to say that?

And he's happy to take a line reading.

Can you give us an example?

The first day of rehearsal, you do a table read.

You know, you sit around, you read the script.

The performance that you see on film is the same performance he gave in the read read around the table.

And normally actors will just kind of mark it just to hear, but he gave a full-out performance and it sent a message to all the other actors, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland, you know, Kevin Bacon and Kevin Pollard, all the actors that were there that we come to play here.

This is, you know, this is what we do.

And it put everybody in a place.

It's like being on a baseball team and watching Babe Ruth step into the batting cage before the game, and he's hitting one ball after the other out of the park.

And so they said, oh, we got to step up our games too.

And Jack is smart because he knows that the more he gives, the more he's going to get back, and it's going to make other people's performances better, and that ultimately is going to make his performance better.

More to react to.

Yeah.

And

when we did that scene, the famous, you know, you can't handle the truth scene, I asked him, I said, Jack, you know, you got this great speech, and, you know, I can either shoot the coverage, meaning the reaction shots, and have you off camera, or I can, if you're ready, I'll shoot you now, and then, you know, I get the reaction shots later.

He said, well, why don't you shoot the reaction shots?

You know, and that way it'll give me a chance to work into it.

I said, fine.

So he's off camera, and I'm shooting, you know, a shot for Tom Cruise, and one of to me, and one of

Kevin Bacon.

And, you know, I've got different angles.

And every time we go through the scene, he gives the exact same performance, the one you see on camera.

And at one point, I go back to Jack, I said, Jack, you, you know, maybe you want to wait and hold some of this back.

You know, you know, when I turn around the camera and you be on you, you'll have everything, you know, you don't want to waste it here.

He says, no, Rob, you don't understand.

I love to act.

He said, this is a great part, and I don't get a chance to play great parts that often.

So that was him.

What he did off camera, what he did at the reading, what you see on camera is what you get from Jack Nicholson.

My guest is Rob Reiner.

He directed, co-wrote, and co-stars in the new sequel to This is Spinal Tap, which is called Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues.

We'll be right back.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

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Hi, this is Molly Sevinesper, digital producer at Fresh Air.

And this is Terry Gross, host of the show.

One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter.

And I'm a newsletter fan.

I read it every Saturday after breakfast.

The newsletter includes all the week shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive.

It's a fun read.

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You decided to give your mother what turned out to be the most famous, most quoted line from when Harry Met Sally.

This takes place in the deli, a very famous deli in Manhattan, Katz's deli, when Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, their characters are having lunch together.

They're friends.

And Billy Crystal's kind of like going on about, you know, his dating life, how good it is, and how satisfied, you know, sexually satisfied the women he's dating

are.

And Meg Ryan is a little skeptical.

And she says, like, how do you know that it's real?

I mean,

how can you judge if what they're expressing is real or not?

And he goes, oh, I know.

And she goes, oh, really?

And then she starts faking the noises as if she's having an orgasm.

And everyone in the deli stops eating.

Everyone's staring at her.

Billy Crystal's watching people stare at him and Meg Ryan.

And she's going on and on.

And then your mother has this famous line that when Meg Ryan is done, that your mother says to the waiter.

So let's play a short excerpt of that.

Oh!

Oh!

Oh, God.

Oh.

I'll have what she's having.

I'll have what she's having.

How did you decide?

Oh, that's the line I'm giving my mother.

Well, first of all, Billy Crystal came up with that line.

We had the scene.

We knew we were going to do a scene where Meg was going to fake an orgasm in an incongruous place like a deli.

And

Billy came up with the line.

I'll have what she's having.

And when he did, and he came up with it, you know, before we went to New York, he came up with it in rehearsal.

I said, we need to find somebody, an older Jewish woman, who could deliver that line, which would seem incongruous.

And I thought of my mother because my mother had done a couple of little things.

She did a thing in a movie that

Anne Bancroft directed called Fatso,

and she did a couple of other little things.

And so I thought, oh, well, she'd be perfect for it.

And so I asked her if she wanted to do it, and she said, sure.

And I said, listen, mom, you know, we don't know.

Hopefully, that'll be the topper of the scene.

It'll get the big laugh.

And if it doesn't, you know, I may have to cut it out because I know the scene is funny with Meg doing that.

And she said, that's fine.

You know, I just want to spend the day with you.

I'll go to Katz's.

I'll get a hot dog.

You know, whatever it is.

She was fine with it.

You know, she was okay.

And then when we did the scene,

the first couple of times through, Meg

was kind of tepid about it.

She didn't, you know, give it her all.

She didn't go full out.

And so I said, let's try it again.

And she was nervous.

She's in front of, you know, the crew and there's extras and people.

She did it a few times.

And then it was never exactly what eventually wound up in the film.

And at one point, I get in there and I said, Meg, let me show you what I'm saying.

And I sat opposite Billy and I'm acting it out.

And I'm going pounding the table.

And I'm going, yes, yes, yes, I'm pounding the table.

And then I turned to Billy and I said, Billy, it's embarrassing here.

I see, what?

He says, 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.

So I interviewed your father back in 1988.

And I don't know if you ever heard that.

I haven't, but I think I'm sure it was great.

He's great to talk with.

So there was an excerpt where I asked him about you, and I want to play that excerpt.

Is that okay?

Yeah, you want to hear that?

Sure, sure.

Okay.

So this is Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner's father, in 1988.

Let me ask you about your son, Rob Reiner.

He first became an acting star in All in the Family as Meathead, and then he became a director, directing movies like Princess Bride, Spinal Tap, Stand By Me.

Did you ever expect him to go into show business?

Not when he was very young, although he had a tremendous ability to remember everything he'd ever seen.

I mean, he's one of these kids who absorbs, he was one of those kids who absorbed everything he saw on television and movies.

But he never stated it

loudly that he was going to do it.

But in his heart, he wanted to be a director always.

Isn't that amazing?

And he only told us about it later.

When he was about 19 years old, I saw him direct a Ricky Dreyfuss and he were friends when they were in high school, and he directed a version of...

No Exit by Sartre and it was brilliant.

He was only about 18 or 19 at the time.

At that point, his road was starting to be paved.

He wanted to be a director, and there's no question that he knew that.

And he wasn't telling it to everybody because, you know, when you're young and say, I want to be a director, let's say, I get out of here.

And he had it in his mind.

I'm sure all the time he was on All in the Family, he was planning it.

Do you show each other your work?

Oh, yes.

You're asking something very, very current.

You're the first one.

Fresh Air has got the first piece of information about this.

Last night I saw a preview.

Not a preview.

A rough cut of Rob's new movie, which he's not sure of the title yet, so far as Harry, this is Sally,

or Sally, this is Harry, I'm not sure of the title, with Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, and Bruno Kirby.

Well, I'm going to go on record as saying it is the most beautiful, successful,

glorious, romantic comedy that I have ever seen.

I called Rob today and I said, gee, whether I'm your father or not has nothing to do with this.

I mean, that is a masterwork of movie making.

Do you remember him telling you that, and was that an important affirmation for you?

You know,

first of all, just hearing his voice

has got to me a little bit there.

You know, I miss him, you know, and

I still hear him, you know, all the time in my head.

So to listen to that was

pretty amazing.

Do you want a moment?

No, it's all right.

It's all right.

I mean, you know, he talked about the,

you know, the time I directed

No Exit, and that was the first time

that he ever acknowledged that

he thought

I was good at what I was doing.

He came back stage after the performance, and he looked me in the eye, and he said, that was good.

No bullshit.

And that's the first time he ever said anything like that to me because I had acted in

summer theater.

And one of the things I did was I played the lead in Enter Laughing, which was a play based on the book that he wrote, which was semi-autobiographical.

And he came to see it.

And I don't think he thought at that time that I was

very good or anything.

I mean, I'd gotten good reviews.

People seemed to like it.

But he kind of, he said, oh, good job, good job.

You know, but I kind of sensed that he didn't think it was all that good.

And I did audition when he made the film of Enter Laughing.

I auditioned for a smaller part, you know, and he rejected me.

And so it doesn't get any bigger than getting rejected by your father for something that, you know, he's doing.

And so I guess it wasn't until I was 19 that he validated that to me.

And then I came to visit him at the house after

he said that.

I visited him.

You know, I was living away at the time, and I was sitting with him in the backyard, and he said to me, I'm not worried about you.

You're going to be great at whatever you do.

You know, he lives in my head all the time.

And, you know,

I had two great guides in my life.

I had my dad and then Norman Lear, who's like a second father.

So

they're both gone, but they're both with me always.

Your father said that he didn't find out until later that you wanted to direct.

Did you not tell him that you wanted to direct?

No, no.

But 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, you know, 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, you know, This is Spinal Tap, which was a satire.

And my father had trafficked in satire with Sid Caesar for many years.

So, 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.

You know, The 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 was one of four friends and I felt that my father didn't love me or understand me.

And it was the character of Gordy 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, okay, I can go in the direction that I want to go in and not feel like I have to, you know, mirror everything my father has done up till then.

You know, you just said you felt like your father didn't love or understand you when you were growing up, but you've also talked about how much you loved your father and wanted to be like him.

You even wanted to take on his name at some point, call yourself Karl Reiner.

Those two things seem contradictory.

Well, they're not because loving your father and looking up to your father doesn't necessarily mean you're feeling that back, that you're feeling that from him.

And the scene in Stand By Me where the boys finally find the dead body and they're sitting there and Gordy starts to cry.

And, you know, he's sitting there with River Phoenix, who's plays Chris Chambers, and he says, my father didn't love me.

And

Chris says,

no, he did love you.

He just didn't know you.

And that scene, I wrote that scene in a hotel room in Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon, when we were shooting up there.

And as I was writing that scene, I start crying because that's the way I felt.

Well, we have to take another break here.

So let me reintroduce you.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Rob Reiner.

He directed, co-wrote, and co-stars in the new sequel to Spinal Tap, which is called Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues.

We'll be right back.

This is Fresh Air.

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So, I have to ask you, I feel obligated to ask you about All in the Family, which was such a popular show in the 1970s and kind of controversial for its depiction of the generation gap between the parents and the daughter who is married to you.

You're the son-in-law in it.

And you're very liberal, and the father's really conservative, and that's a constant battle between the two of you.

That's one of the main themes throughout the series.

But, you know, Norman Lear was very liberal.

He founded, you know, People for the American Way.

What was that experience like for you?

Like, how old were you when you first started performing in that?

The series started in 71.

Right.

I was 23.

And

this is, to me, what's interesting about all this.

And it was groundbreaking at the time.

Nobody had done a show like this.

CBS, when they put it on, they had a big disclaimer at the beginning saying, you know, the views that are represented in the show don't represent the views of CBS.

It basically was a disclaimer saying, I don't know how this show got on here, but you want to watch it.

You watch it at your own risk.

You know, we don't.

Don't sue us.

Yeah, don't talk.

Yeah, I don't know.

Somebody put it on anyway.

But here's what was interesting about this.

We were a country at that time of about 200 million people.

And we were number one in America for five years straight, every single week.

And every week, 40 to 45 million people watched that show.

And they had to watch it when it was on because there was no TiVo, there was no DVR, no video cassettes, nothing.

Now, we're a country of, you know, upwards of 340 million people.

And if you can get 5 to 10 million people watching a show on a given night, that's a huge hit.

And they're not all watching it at the same time.

Well, there's politics itself that has become

like everybody talks about that.

But pop culture is no longer the glue that it once was because there are so many options that everybody is doing their own thing and not watching or listening at the same time.

So I know exactly what you're saying.

What was it like for you to be famous at that age?

You were already from a famous father and had that helped that helped you went to school with the children of very famous people and other people you went to school with were becoming famous too but what was it like personally to have people recognize you did that make you feel good was it feeling intrusive

i gotta tell you it was bizarre

you know to be on a show of that power and that reach.

It was like being in the Beatles.

I mean, you'd go into a restaurant or you'd go into, I remember one time that Gene Stapleton and myself, Sally Strarthy, walked into an airport restaurant and the entire restaurant stood up and cheered and started applauding.

It was that kind of response that you don't see so much now, you know, with people in television.

So it was,

that was strange, but you have to take it with a grain of salt because you want to entertain them and you hope that you do, but it doesn't matter what they think.

You have to do something you like to do and hopefully other people will like it too.

So

let's end with music from the new film, Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues.

There's a reprise of a song from the first Spinal Tap film, probably the most famous song, or at least one of them, Stonehenge.

And this is about like the beginning of the world and a very pretentious song.

But in this one, Elton John, who makes an appearance in this sequel, he's at the piano and sitting in with Spinal Tap.

So the introduction is done by Christopher Guest, you know, the spoken introduction.

And then the song is actually sung by Elton John, who again is at the piano.

So Rob Reiner, thank you so much.

It has really been a pleasure to talk with you.

And thank you for the Spinal Tap movies.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

In ancient times,

hundreds of years before the dawn of history,

if a strange race of people

druids,

no one knows who they were

or

what they were doing

But their legacy remains hewn

into the living rock

of Stone Age

Stonehenge Where the demons dwell Where the fancies live and that you live well

Stonehenge Stonehenge, where a man's a man and the children dance to the pipes of pan

Rob Reiner directed the new film Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues, the sequel to This is Spinal Tap

Stonehenge is a magic place where the most of the ride will the dragon face

Stonehenge, where the burdens lie and the brails of death.

This is fresh air.

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The Peacock Streaming Service recently unveiled all 10 episodes of its new comedy series called The Paper.

It's a sequel of sorts to NBC's long-running sitcom The Office with an almost completely new cast of characters, but with the same mockumentary workplace format.

Our TV critic David Biancouli has this review.

The paper arrives with an unusually long and impressive TV lineage.

It starts with the original British version of The Office, which premiered in 2001 on the BBC, starring Ricky Gervais as paper company executive David Brent.

That entire series consisted of a dozen episodes and a movie-length finale.

But after The Office closed up shop, its series concept was sold to NBC, where it was developed for American television by Greg Daniels.

Daniels had written for The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Parks and Recreation, and adapted the office with respect for its main structure and characters.

Like the British version, it was presented without a laugh track and framed as though a documentary crew was capturing the workplace dynamics and private comments of employees at a paper company.

The instantly identifiable character types were retained as well.

For America, the clueless, self-important boss, Michael Scott, was played by Steve Corell.

The Will They or Won't They love Struck co-workers, Jim and Pam, were played by John Krasinski and Jenna Fisher.

And playing the Office nemesis, Dwight, was Rain Wilson.

The NBC version of The Office premiered in 2005 to initially lukewarm reviews, including mine.

I loved the original British sitcom so much, I thought the Americanized adaptation arrived as a pale imitation.

But very quickly, the writers and actors found their own comic rhythms, and the stories became original by necessity.

NBC's The Office thrived and finally ended in 2011 after nine seasons, followed by an encore finale special two years later.

And now, The Office is back.

Sort of.

Peacock's The Paper is co-created by Greg Daniels, who has returned to steer this new ship, and Michael Komen, a writer on Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Nathan for You.

Their framework for the paper is so similar to what Daniels did for the office that it borders on reverential.

Even its opening theme has echoes of the original.

The paper is about a once-thriving, now-dying local newspaper and some new efforts to save it.

Even though some of its company managers have a very low opinion of journalism in general and the Toledo Truth Teller in particular, like so many businesses these days, the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company seen in the office has been absorbed by a larger corporation.

The new business is called Innervate, it's based in Toledo, Ohio, and the documentary crew from the office is back to check them out.

The crew is given a basic tour by company executive Ken Davies, who's played by Tim Key, and whose character is one of two antagonists in this show.

He has the same abrasive personality as David Brent from the original office, and a similar British accent as well.

The buzzing at the start is from an electric razor used by an office staffer shaving at his desk nearby.

And as you hear that, you also hear Ken's disdain for the company's local newspapers.

Enovate sells products made out of paper.

So that might be office supplies, that might be janitorial paper, which is toilet tissue, toilet seat protectors, and local newspapers.

And that is in order of quality.

The other office nemesis is Esmeralda Grand, whose accent is Italian.

She's a flamboyant attention hog played wildly and delightfully by Sabrina Impacatore, who was Valentina in season two of The White Lotus.

When the paper begins, she's basically in charge, and when she takes over the company tour, the filmmakers stumble on a very familiar face.

It's Oscar Martinez, played by Oscar Nunez.

He's the accountant from NBC's The Office, who finds himself once again stalked by a camera crew and not at all happy about it.

Anyway, here are two accountants and a head accountant.

Boring,

boring, and had boring.

God,

not again.

I'm not agreeing to any of this.

Don't you guys have enough after nine years?

Nobody wants this.

You know what?

You can't use my voice, my likeness, my face, nothing.

The paper also features Donald Gleason, who stars as incoming editor-in-chief Ned Sampson, and Chelsea Fry as eventual cub reporter Mare Pretty.

They're destined to become the Jim and Pam of this series.

And when Ned arrives in Toledo with optimistic dreams of restoring this nearly dead news operation, he's also a bit like Ted Lasso.

Gleason from the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises and from the movie Ex Machina is a perfect sitcom star.

Instantly likable.

My name is Ned Sampson.

I am signing the visitors log even though I am not a visitor.

This is my first day working at the Truth Teller.

I'm so excited to be saying that.

When I was a kid, I didn't didn't want to be Superman.

I wanted to be Clark Kent.

Because to me, Clark is the real superhero.

He's saving the world too by working at a newspaper.

And that to me is much more noble and much more achievable.

And I love that.

These characters and actors will win you over quickly and completely.

Partly because the performances are so smart.

and partly because the writing is too.

The issues facing journalism these days, from online clickbait to corporate interference and a real concern for the survival of the printed newspaper, run all through the paper.

But it's primarily a comedy, a very, very funny one.

And by the end of the 10th episode, you're likely to love both the characters and its emotional cliffhanger.

David Biancoule is a professor of television studies at Rowan University.

He reviewed the paper, which is now streaming on Peacock.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, with the 2026 midterms looming, President Trump is floating proposals to ban mail-in ballots and even voting machines.

We'll talk with election law expert Richard Hassen, who will reflect on what this says about the state of our democracy, the broader push to reshape it, and what's at stake for free and fair elections.

I hope you'll join us.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Our managing producer is Sam Brigher.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Herberto Shora, Anne-Marie Boldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman.

Our digital media producer is Molly C.

V.

Nesper.

Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.

Teresa Madden directed today's show.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

I'm Tariq Rose.

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