This Is Spinal Tap

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Cut.

Cut.

Excuse me.

Can we cut, please?

No, this is ridiculous.

This is ridiculous.

Okay,

and action.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone one that goes to 11.

That's right.

I am Chris Winterbauer, joined today by my intrepid co-host, one of the loudest podcasters, Lizzie Bassett.

Lizzie, how are you doing this fine morning?

I'm doing great.

I could not be happier to talk about England's loudest band.

We are, of course, talking about the 1984 classic, This Is Spinal Tap.

And we are doing this in honor of a long-awaited sequel that is finally arriving in theaters, I believe, on September 12th.

And that is Spinal Tap 2.

The end continues.

But today, Chris, we're going to talk about the very beginning of Spinal Tap, which is actually a pretty fun story.

So had you, I'm sure you had, seen Spinal Tap before, but what was your feeling upon watching it and then upon re-watching it for the podcast?

I had seen Spinal Tap.

I went on a Christopher Guest spin in high school, more

Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, you know, that stuff.

But then Spinal Tap, This is Spinal Tap as a precursor to those was a part of it.

Did not appreciate the subtlety of the humor in This is Spinal Tap.

That was a common problem.

So funny.

It never winks and it just always plays the bit straight.

I have forgotten how funny Michael McKean is.

He and Chris Forgets Together are so good.

They are obviously musical.

And that just goes so far in selling this movie.

But so many great cameos.

Billy Crystal as the mime caterer.

Fran Drescher working for the record company.

Bruno Kirby, I love showing up as the limo driver who, when he gets spurned, is like, this, this is a fad.

He's great.

It's Ed Begley Jr.

No, where's Ed Begley Jr.?

He's the first drummer they show in the 1960s.

The first Stumpy, the Stumpy Peeps.

That's what he was.

And then Stumpy Joe, who died on someone else's vomit, but they can't fingerprint for that.

You can't dust for vomit, yes.

It's very good.

The songs are great.

It feels, this is the musical, this is the music movie I wanted when we watched Bohemian Rhapsody.

You know, like, give me one tour.

Give me one period of time.

And I love the conceit of just the shows are getting smaller and smaller as they're going on

throughout this movie.

This is the most

intense point of turmoil, Chris.

This is this is tap at its lowest point.

It is.

And, you know, like even how just things, you know, the Sabrina Carpenter album debacle, album cover debacle as like the smell the glove cover at the beginning.

Yeah, if you don't know what Chris is referring to, you know, recently there was the sort of conversation around Sabrina Carpenter's album cover being, you know, it's her, I think, on her hands and knees with a guy holding her hair and people saying like it's

very anti-feminist.

It's, it's all this.

And I don't know enough to comment on that, to be totally honest, but there is something in Spinal Tap that's exactly like it, which is that they have a woman, you know, tied up in a position on the album cover and they don't want to release it.

And the whole thing is they're like, well, that guy did it.

And, you know, he's tied up.

And they said it's fine.

They're like, yeah, but he's the victim.

Like, it's okay if you are the victim on your album cover and they like, they don't get it.

It's great.

Yeah.

And I, I, one other thing, I don't know if this came up or not, but in your research, is Rob Reiner doing a John Millius impression?

Because that's what it felt like to me, like with the beard and the military hat, I was just like,

which we were talking about.

Okay, got it.

Got it.

Okay.

That's what I was wondering.

But no, I mean, this movie's a blast.

I feel like it actually, even though it's a comedy, it gets at the heart of

what it is to be a rocker in this time in a really honest way.

And I'm excited to talk about it.

Well, I think, as we'll see, they were extremely focused on authenticity, and they also had some very real, very funny inspirations, which we're also going to get to see here and read during this episode, which I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

Talk about bum cakes.

My girls got them.

That's right.

All right.

So the basic info, as always, this is directed by Rob Reiner.

It's his feature directorial debut.

Of course, he also stars in it as Marty DeBerkey, documentarian extraordinaire.

It is written.

Totally straight.

The whole movie.

So funny.

I know.

I really, I love everyone in this.

I do really love Rob Reiner as Marty DeBerge.

So it is written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner.

Although, as we'll see, there's not, there is writing.

It is written by them.

All the music is written by them, but it does not have a script.

It stars Christopher Guest as No I Joe Tafno, Michael McKean as David Seight Hubbins.

Harry Shearer as Derek Smoles on the bass.

As we said, Rob Reiner as Marty DeBerge, Fran Drescher as Bobby Fleckman, and many, many more.

Lots of fun cameos in this before they were famous.

Also, shout out to Fred Willard as the Army Air Force Base lieutenant.

He's great.

Whoever plays Dennis Eaton Hogg, which is my favorite name, Mr.

Eaton Hogg.

Also wonderful, the British record exec.

Yeah.

The IMDb log line is, as always, Spinal Tap, one of England's loudest bands, is chronicled by film director Marty DeBergey on what proves to be a fateful tour.

IMDb, I believe they are England's loudest band, not one of.

May I have to take umbrage with that?

No, it's really?

really?

I think it's one of.

I wrote the quote down, one of English, England's loudest bands.

Yeah, it was one of the notes I took.

Fine, IMDb, you're right.

As always.

So the release date was March 2nd, 1984.

And let's get into it.

Now, Chris, the story of Spinal Tap begins with, you mentioned them.

David St.

Hubbins and Nigel Tufnell themselves, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest.

And they go almost as far back as their characters do in the movie.

They met at NYU.

They bonded over a shared love for guitarist Michael Bloomfield and then, as one does in college, immediately moved in together and started writing music.

Now, Guest describes the songs they wrote as incredibly indulgent, and I want to read you a couple of the titles.

Great.

Traveling Clowns.

Okay.

Molly's Day at Home.

Castle by the Sea.

And my personal favorite, These Are My Children.

Would love to hear them.

No, they did not obviously achieve success as musicians, but they did run into their fair share of shady music biz type characters.

Guests actually told Rolling Stone, quote, Michael and I were brought to an office on 8th Avenue by some gentleman of foreign descent who wanted to sign us to a record contract.

The guy, who was called Vito the Snake, had a stack of peel-off contracts, the kind you can buy at a stationery store, $300 to a pad.

He said, I want you guys to sign this thing, all right?

And we'll do a record.

We'll uh we thought we would be killed if we didn't sign it.

Unfortunately, though, I don't think they did sign it.

And Guest did go on to play in a band called Voltaire's Nose.

He also played Bluegrass in a band with Arlo Guthrie, which gets to your point, Chris.

They are actually extremely talented musicians.

And McKean was briefly part of a Baroque pop band called The Left Bank, who actually had some pretty big success with two hits, Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina.

But he's quick to point out he did not join the band until after they had the success, and then they fell apart after rehearsing for three three months and he never performed with them.

So around 1970, Michael McKean moved to LA where he met Harry Shearer, who of course would go on to play bassist Derek Smalls in a satirical comedy group called The Credibility Gap.

And Shearer, he'd been working for a long time.

I actually think he was a child and teenage actor on radio and TV.

Guests stayed on the East Coast, did a lot of theater work.

He broke out in a play called Moon Children that eventually made its way to Broadway in the early 70s.

And then a year later, he joined the National Lampoons Radio Hour.

And he also performed in an off-Broadway show called National Lampoons Lemmings alongside John Belushi, Chevy Chase, tons more.

And he's doing a lot of rock parodies even in that.

In 1976, McKean leaves the credibility gap and he landed the role of Lenny Koznowski on Laverne and Shirley, which was a huge break.

Guest was also writing at this point.

He won an Emmy for co-writing and starring in the Lily Tomlins special.

But it was in 1977 that Christopher Guest appeared in a small role on an episode of a very popular sitcom.

Chris, any guesses what this sitcom might be?

1977.

Is it like a Norman Leader show or something?

Yes.

Okay.

I don't know.

I'm not going to get it.

All in the Family.

He appeared in an episode called Mike and Gloria Meet, which featured a flashback where Guest played Meathead's friend.

And of course, Chris, you will get this one.

Who played Meathead on All in the Family?

Oh, God.

Oh, I'm blanking.

I'm blanking.

Christopher Winterbauer.

I don't remember.

It's Rob Reiner.

Well, I should announce that I'm officially starting a new band, Resident Idiot, and it's just a solo project.

It's just me.

Jesus Christ.

Okay, I apologize.

I thought certainly you would get those.

That's payback for all the times I've never been able to answer your questions.

Clearly.

Yes, of course.

It is Rob Reiner, What Went Wrong Hero.

So we're going to roll the clock back and track Rob Reiner's career up to this point.

He was born in 1947 to Estelle Reiner, who's an actress, and Karl Reiner.

Are you familiar with Karl Reiner's work?

Yes.

Okay.

Enormous actor, writer, director, created the Dick Van Dyke show, directed The Jerk, starred in so much stuff, more than we could possibly mention here.

He's a legend.

And if you're not familiar with Karl Reiner, you may know him as playing Saul Bloom in Oceans 11.

So Rob grew up really idolizing his father.

He spent a lot of time with his dad's famous comedy friends like Mel Brooks and Norman Lear.

Rob acted in a small role in his father's directorial debut, but Karl Reiner really didn't hand Rob Reiner a lot of parts.

Rob spent most of his early career playing very small parts on TV and in improv troops.

He also did some writing, but it was not his father.

It was his father's old friend, Norman Lear, who gave Rob his big break as Michael Civic, aka meathead in All in the Family in 1971.

The show is a huge, huge hit.

Rob Reiner won two Emmys for it.

But he realized that the show was going to go on way longer than he thought it was going to.

So he was like, all right, I'm going to treat this as my film school.

I'm going to pay as close attention as I possibly can because I think he always knew he wanted to be creating his own projects.

So he left the show in 1978.

And at this point, he had written quite a bit, including a few episodes of All in the Family, but he knew that he really wanted to become a director.

But that dream would have to wait a few years, Chris.

So back to Michael McCain and Christopher Guest.

In 1978, they spun off Michael McCain's Laverne and and Shirley character into a band alongside another castmate, and the guitarist for this band, Chris, was Nigel Tufnell.

Hmm.

Of course, that is Christopher Guest.

No word on whether he had an accent at that point, and more on that momentarily.

Now, this band, Lenny and the Squig Tones, recorded a live album at The Roxy and appeared on an episode of American Bandstand.

That same year, Rod Reiner put together a TV comedy review called The TV Show, the idea being that it would feel like flipping flipping through the channels.

It included a bunch of different sketches, and one of the ideas was for a parody of Midnight Special, which I think was like a rock variety show.

Christopher Guest is the one who suggested that it be filled by a, quote, pea-brained British rock band.

So Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer, who at that point I think was the show's producer, wrote Rock and Roll Nightmare, and this is where Spinal Tap is born.

Reiner introduced the band as Wolfman Jack.

And actually, a fun fact, it's Loudon Wainwright III on the keyboard in this performance.

Rufus's father.

Rufus and Martha Wainwright's father.

And I want to play you at least Rob Reiner's introduction as Wolfman Jack here on this production of the TV show.

And now from England, Hap Mike says you're going to love him to death.

Spinal Tap.

So he's doing kind of like a, it's like a.

Well, Wolfman Jack was a real DJ.

Okay, so it sounds like if Harvey Fire's seen it mixed with Elvis,

that is definitely what he's doing.

And I think you can tell from this, like, it's a pretty, it looks like Spinal Tap.

Like, this is a pretty fully formed idea at this point.

But it's actually during this production that they started improvising in character because they were just performing the music.

But it was clear to everyone, particularly Rob Reiner, this was something really, really funny.

And it deserved more than just a few minutes on the TV show.

So the idea to make a feature film starts to snowball.

And actually Rob Reiner and Harry Shearer toyed with the idea of doing a more scripted movie about the life on the road, and it would have been told from the perspective of a Roadie,

but

that went away because Roadie, starring Meatloaf, came out in 1980, and it was exactly that movie.

Maybe a good thing.

Probably a good thing, yes, because we got Spinal Tap and I don't remember Roadie.

Eventually, though, they all realized that the band itself needed to be the focus of the film and that a documentary or Chris, a rockumentary would be the best way to tell the story of tap

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So they began building their characters.

Now, Guest pulled inspiration for Nigel from a real interaction that he witnessed at the Chateau Marmont in LA between the bass player for a British heavy metal band and their tour manager.

Now, Chris, how do you feel about your British accent?

And could I ask you to play a part?

You may ask me.

It will be bad.

That's great.

So I'd like you to please read Rockstar.

All right.

Well, we'll take our instruments up to the room.

Don't know where my bass is.

I beg your pardon.

I don't know where my bass is.

Where is it?

I think it's at the airport.

You have to get back there, don't you?

I don't know.

Do I?

I think you better.

Where's my bass?

It's at the airport.

Scene.

And scene.

Yes.

He said this went on for like 20 minutes.

So it's like who's on first with the bassist and bass?

Who's on first with an extremely dumb bassist.

And he said he was standing there thinking, quote, this is good.

This is important.

Also, speaking of the British accents, Chris, do you know why Christopher Guest is very good?

I have no idea.

So his father is British.

Oh.

But he's not just British.

He is actual nobility.

His father was Peter Hayden Guest, the fourth Baron Hayden Guest.

He was a UN diplomat and a member of the House of Lords.

And Chris, do you know who the fifth Baron Hayden guest is?

It's not Christopher?

It is Christopher Guest.

He's a Baron.

Okay.

Wow.

He's a Baron.

He made all these great movies.

He's married to Jamie Lee Curtis.

Yes.

Oh, poor Christopher Guest and his amazing life.

Jamie Lee Curtis, who looks great

in everything.

Yeah, he actually apparently attended the House of Lords pretty regularly until, I guess, a bunch of people who had inherited the titles lost their seats in the early 2000s.

Also, quick fun fact, Jamie Lee Curtis used to use the name Baroness Hayden Guest to make dinner reservations in London because that got her a better table than Jamie Lee Curtis.

Rude.

Well, the Brits have failed.

Yeah, seriously.

So as they began to build the band's lore in their characters, the rest of them pulled from their own experiences in the music industry, as well as interviews with actual bands, like this one with Iron Maiden from the British magazine New Musical Express.

And I'm going to read some of the quotes.

The reporter is basically just being a gigantic troll, which I really loved.

And the band's answers, I think, as you will be able to tell, are straight up spinal tap.

So on the live audience's reaction to their shows.

Quote, if a pile of shit walks on, they'll soon let you know they don't like it.

You can't get away with just farting.

On whether their fans feel more alive after a concert.

Quote, I hope when they go home, they're so fucking wasted they can't fart anyone.

You know what I mean?

great

great

and then my personal favorite and this one is almost a direct lift in spinal tap when asked about whether heavy metal has a sexist attitude their actual answer not joking was well there are only two songs we've written about women as such and both are really really tongue-in-cheek fantasy things about going with a prostitute which not everyone can say they've done i'm not saying we have well i haven't the other bandmate chimes in don't say nothing about hamburger and back to the first guy.

But it's like a fantasy thing.

Really is tongue-in-cheek.

That's why it's a really sexual energy, and young boys love it.

In the interview, they also ask them, like, why their whole audience is men, and particularly white men.

And they love it, because it's very sexual.

Yeah.

They have the craziest answers.

I know they're making fun of hair metal, but I like that the sound of the band, to me, the band, I'm not a music expert, obviously.

The band, Spinal Tap sounds very much like the who meets Jethro Toll to me.

It's like pseudo storytelling.

Like they want like these epic sagas of the stories, but they're also stupid.

So stupid.

It's great.

I love it.

It took them many, many months to map out about 17 years of fake history so that they would have all the info they needed when the camera started rolling.

Now, in terms of inspiration, you've, of course, got rockumentaries like Gimme Shelter, which I love.

Have you ever seen that one?

Yeah, yeah.

I saw Gimme Shelter.

And what's the Bob Dylan one?

That is Don't Look Back, the D.A.

Pennebaker, which is kind of the first.

And that's another big inspiration.

Yeah, it's great.

But possibly the biggest inspiration was the 1978 documentary, The Last Waltz.

Have you ever seen it?

It's great.

It's essentially a concert film of the band's self-professed final concert before they wrap up Life on the Road for Good.

But you asked about this at the top.

What Spinal Tap borrows most heavily from this is that Martin Scorsese inserts himself into the film via interviews.

Got it.

Got it.

And I forgot that Scorsese had that exact facial hair.

Yes, it is.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That's, yeah, if it was Milius, he would have had a cigar.

That's right.

I should have known.

It's Marty.

Yeah.

According to Rob Reiner, he was actually kind of pissed about this initially, but he eventually got over it by the time they did The Wolf of Wall Street, and he told Rob Reiner that he loved it.

And Rob Reiner steals that scene in The Wolf of Wall Street.

It is.

Yes.

Now, this is kind of surprising.

Marty DeBerge is such an essential and, as you pointed out, funny part of this movie, which makes what I'm about to tell you all the more shocking.

He was not the first person they considered to direct this.

Oh, Reiner wasn't.

No, there was someone else that they actually approached before settling on Rob Reiner.

Oh.

It's someone who's popped up before, although we've never covered one of her movies.

It's Penelope Spheres.

Oh, she would do Wayne's World.

That's right.

She would go on to do Wayne's World.

Interesting.

She actually, do you know anything about her?

I don't know much.

No, I know she had a really hard time on Wayne's World and Mike Myers made her life not fun.

A living hell.

Yeah.

So she actually does make a lot of sense for this because clearly she has a lot of comedy sensibilities, but she also at that time was probably best known for a really fantastic documentary about the LA punk scene called The Decline of Western Civilization.

So she literally came from the rock documentary World.

And according to Penelope, Guest and Shearer actually met with her several times and did want her to direct the film, but she is the one who said no.

Oh.

According to a 2011 legendary rock interview, she said, quote, I was really into a lot of the bands and really seriously listening to a lot of it all and enjoying it.

It was clear they were really making fun of it and putting it down, and I couldn't do that.

I liked the music so much that I couldn't take it on, so I just stepped away from it.

I think that's interesting because I don't, she's talking about heavy metal in particular.

Right.

I don't think they're putting down the music.

I completely agree.

This feels so loving to me.

And it also feels like they're riffing on as many types of music as possible.

Like they have their origins and they start with the very clean American bandstand style stuff.

Yes.

Into the flower child type stuff.

And then

it's like the monkeys, right?

Like they're trying to be the Beatles, you know, early on.

Give me some money.

Like Walkhard does that and it's very funny.

Walkhard borrows extremely heavily from Spinal Tap.

So does Pop Star Never Stop Never Stopping, which I also think think is an underrated film.

I agree.

But Christopher Guest actually dislikes the term mockumentary because he doesn't feel like they're mocking this.

I agree.

I think they play it straight, which is what makes it funny.

Exactly.

And he actually refers to this as a spomage, a spoof and homage.

So I'm glad she turned it down because

they end up going back to Rob Reiner.

And of course, he would make this his directorial debut.

Now, for his part, in terms of preparing, Reiner Reiner attended a Judas Priest concert.

He was not a fan and said that it, quote, physically hurt his chest to stand in the auditorium and he could not stay there very long.

Protect this man at all costs.

I love him so much.

So, in early 1980, all four guys, Reiner, Guest, Shearer, and McKeon, started meeting pretty much every day to construct the history of the band and also set up the basic elements of the story.

Meanwhile, Rob Reiner pitched this as Final Tap Around and managed to get a maybe

from the U.S.

wing for Sir Lou Grade's production company called Marble Arch.

And if you don't know who Sir Lou Grade was, British TV super producer and studio head who was responsible for a few American hits like The Muppet Show, actually.

He was pretty convincing and Marble Arch offered them $60,000, offered him, I think, $60,000 to write a script.

So they sat down and they got to work on the screenplay.

And after about a day and a half, they realized there would be no screenplay.

Here is Rob Reiner on the Today Show explaining what happened next.

But we couldn't figure out how we were going to communicate in screenplay form what this thing was, which is a, and you know, it's a documentary and improvised.

We had to make it look real.

So I went to the head of the studio.

I said, give me the money that you were going to give us for the screenplay, and we'll make you some of the film.

So we made 20 minutes of the film.

Very smart.

It's a smart idea.

Reiner put $25,000 of his own money into this.

The guys added another $5,000.

And for around $90K, they put together, as he said, a 20-minute demo shot over four days called Spinal Tap the Final Tour.

You can actually watch the whole thing on YouTube.

For the next few months, Rob Reiner was assembling the footage, but unfortunately, Marble Arch was making some financially terrible decisions, including The Legend of the Lone Ranger and Raise the Titanic, which to quote Michael McKean was right boat, wrong direction.

And unsurprisingly, the company went under.

But not to worry, because United Artists started showing interest in Spinal Tap.

So they're saved, right, Chris?

Absolutely not.

There's no way.

That's right.

They were absorbed by MGM.

And as often happens on this show, the new guard got rid of everything on the old desks, including Spinal Tap.

So now they literally had a can of 16 millimeter film, no script, no funding, and no studio.

But Rob Reiner was not going to let that stop him.

So he, alongside producer Karen Murphy, literally put the can of film under his arm and walked from one lot to the next trying to sell the movie.

He told Rolling Stone that he looked at Karen and said, if we ever get this film made, we're going to be able to say that we went with a can of film under our arms.

We're doing that.

We're doing the thing they always say in these stories.

We're doing it.

According to Guest McKean and Shearer, David Begelman at Columbia got about two-thirds of the way through the demo, turned to them and said, boys, boys, I'll be honest with you.

I've already given $1 million to the Eagles to do a rock and roll movie.

Can you guess what maybe one of the biggest problems they were having was with this?

Did people think it was a real band?

Yes, they did not know what they were looking at.

Yeah.

So they just thought, like, who are these idiots?

Not this is a comedy.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Because the music's good enough.

It's, it is good enough that they're good enough at playing it.

Yeah.

But they didn't even realize a lot of the time that the guys they were talking to were the ones they were looking at in the movie.

Were the band, right?

For me, especially Michael McKean, because I

he's changed a bit.

He is almost unrecognizable in this movie to me.

He's unrecognizable then, too.

Like the hair and the way that they're dressing him, it does not look like him at all.

he's so funny honestly christopher guess too in that jeff beck wig it would be very hard to that's true yeah yeah that's true the most recognizable person in the movie also was rob reiner and that actually wasn't a good thing Reiner told Indywire, quote, in those days there was a big division between movies and television.

Television people were peons and the movie people were royalty.

They looked down on us.

But after a lot of hustling and not giving up, they got a stroke of luck because a young executive named Lindsay Doran at Avco Embassy Pictures, which is an independent production company behind some pretty big hits like The Graduate, The Producers, and Escape from New York, was looking to attach a director to a film that they had in development.

She was talking to Pete Turner, who was an agent at William Morris, which was not even Rob Reiner's agent.

Rob Reiner wasn't even at William Morris, but this guy had seen the 20-minute reel because this thing had been floating around absolutely everywhere.

So he told her she should consider Rob Reiner for the gig that she was trying to fill.

She asked to see the reel.

He showed it to her.

And according to Rob Reiner's interview with Collider, her next question was: Forget the movie we're looking at.

What are you doing with this thing?

She would actually go on to become the VP of production at Paramount, where she oversaw development on some little movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ghost, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and was EP on two of my favorite Emma Thompson movies, Dead Again and Sense and Sensibility.

So I think she knew a good thing when she was looking at it.

Clearly.

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So Lindsay Doran of Avco Pictures met with Rob Reiner and he was basically like, look, I cannot get anybody to finance this thing.

She takes it to Frank Capra II, the head of Avco Embassy at the time, and he said if they can find some financing, that he would distribute it.

So Rob Reiner manages to come up with about a million dollars, and he came back in ready to make the thing.

But what happens, Chris?

Is there regime change?

Is Lindsay out?

There is regime change.

Avco Embassy is sold.

Great.

And again, everything in development got scrapped.

And in the 80s, these companies are all getting bought and sold.

Like the 80s was the crazy time of the goes from Gulf Western and then it's Coca-Cola.

Now there's Sony.

Well, everyone's on cocaine.

I think you make a lot of deals very quickly.

Deal, sales, sales.

Deal, sales, deals.

Sell it.

Buy it.

But the good news is this time Rob Reiner actually had an in with the new owners because the company had been purchased by Jerry Parenchio and Reiner's all-in-the-family creator, Norman Lear.

So Rob Reiner threw a Hail Mary.

He begged for a meeting with Norman and Jerry.

And because of his all-in-the-family connection, he got it.

Here he is speaking with Collider about what happened next.

So they gave me a meeting and all these executives around and I I went to this crazy pitch, screaming, you know, it's going to be brilliant, it's going to be funny, kids are going to love it, it's repeat business, it's rock and roll.

It's, you know, 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 me he can't do this?

And basically, Norman took a leap of faith.

And if it wasn't for him, there's no way I could get this made.

I love that.

His passion was too much.

So thanks to Norman Lear, they finally had financing and distribution for This is Spinal Tap.

But they were pretty desperate to make this movie, Chris.

And that's important to remember because of the deal that they signed.

Now, by spring of 1982, This is Spinal Tap was finally happening with a budget of around $2 million, and the full team was being assembled.

Meanwhile, As I said, Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer were writing all of the music.

They write all all of it.

They perform all of it.

Now, Reiner was very specific about the crew he hired.

He wanted people from the world of rock and roll.

So he actually hired cinematographer Peter Smokler, who had done a ton of rock and roll documentaries, including being at Altamont for Gimme Shelter.

He literally filmed Gimme Shelter.

That is who shot Spinal Tap.

He also brought on production designer Brian Jones, who had worked with Santana and a lighting designer who'd worked with Boston.

For the supporting cast, you mentioned this, but they brought in a lot of old friends like Billy Crystal, Ed Begley Jr., and Paul Schaefer.

They also found some new faces, including Angelica Houston.

And of course, one of my favorite performances in the whole thing, a very early pre-nanny Fran Dresher as Bobby Fleckman.

Boys, boys.

Boys.

According to her memoir, Enter Whining, Great title, she showed up at her audition the day after a night shoot on a feature film and she said, quote, I was so tired, but somehow my exhaustion paid off for me because Rob really responded to my slow, monotone, I could give a shit, I'm so fucking tired attitude.

Yep.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

They will not put it in Kmart.

June Chadwick joined as Janine Pettibone after reportedly beating out Steve Martin's then-wife, Victoria Tennant.

I also saw in a couple places that the addition of Janine may have been a request from the studio to give a little bit more conflict and shape to the story.

The pseudo-Yoko kind of character coming in.

Yeah.

Although they avoid the heroin trajectory that those two went on, which I think was the right decision.

Yeah, yeah.

They go in more of an astrology direction, which is great.

Yes.

Yeah.

There are also actual musicians in this.

R.J.

Parnell as drummer Mick Shrimpton, current drummer, we should say, and David Caff as keyboardist Viv Savage.

I think that guy is so funny.

So have you ever seen the movie American Movie?

No.

It's a documentary about a guy in the Midwest who's attempting to finish a short film, then to make a feature film called Coven, Coven, is how he pronounces it.

And it's kind of just about American delusions of grandeur and hubris, but also a small town rallying around like a very eccentric person.

And he has a best friend who looks like Peter Jackson and this character from Spinal Tap, who's weirdly a guitar prodigy.

And there's just a scene where he's just sitting in front of the camera and he plays this beautiful guitar part and just kind of smiles.

And like, that's the whole scene.

And this, the keyboard has reminded me so much of that character from American Movie.

And I recommend American Movie to everybody out there.

Yeah, I want to watch it.

He actually was not the first choice, though.

A musician named John Sinclair was, but he had to drop out in order to go on tour with Uriah Heap.

This ended up being a stroke of luck because he called them to tell them that Uriah Heap was booked to play an Air Force base.

And that's why they put that in this movie.

The interfering radio calls are so funny.

Incredible.

Scene.

It's so good.

But not everyone everyone knew what they were in for in terms of this production.

Paul Schaefer, who plays Artie Fufkin, of course, the Midwest promo rep who messes up their ass.

Pick me in the ass.

He's so funny.

Kick my ass right now.

Who messes up their record store signing?

Apparently, he asked Harry Shearer if he would be getting his lines ahead of time, to which Shearer replied, You'll be making them up, sir,

which I love.

Artie Fufkin.

Artie Fufkin.

Never prepared.

Principal photography began in late 1982 and lasted about five weeks or 25 days.

This must have been a pretty insane experience for everyone on set because as we've mentioned, there was no script.

There really weren't rehearsals.

They'd written an outline that sketched out all the scenes and the basic plot points of what would happen in the movie, but that was about it.

You know, there are some visual jokes like the amp going to 11, the pod not opening on stage, but outside of that, nothing was planned.

This includes things like Fran Drescher going on a rant about the white album.

She had no idea that their black album was going to be a plot point later in the movie when she said that.

It's very, very good.

You think about how much more black it could be.

None blacker.

None more black.

Rob Reiner also said that one of the few scenes that was completely organic was where Nigel is playing his mock piano song for Marco.

To D Minor, how he writes everything in D Minor.

What's this one called?

Lick My Love Pump.

Yes.

That happened because he just saw christopher guest noodling around on the piano and told peter smokler to go over and start filming him it was great now bonus points this meant the studio could not ask how many pages they'd shot because there were no pages so there's no way to know if they were behind or ahead and they probably had a ton of dailies because they're just rolling on everything So the studio can't even watch all the dailies.

They had so much footage.

There's no way.

Nor do I think they probably would want to because this was not, this was a real, you know, long shot the band also played all their own instruments including sometimes live like for jazz odyssey in fact they were so pitch perfect as their characters that at one point rob reiner told collider that peter smokler again the cinematographer who had literally shot gimme shelter turned to him and said what is this this is not funny this is exactly what they do right and rob reiner was like no no It's, I mean, we're close to the bone, but we're not exactly.

Because of their very small budget, the whole movie is is shot in LA, including all the concert scenes being shot at the Raymond Theater in Pasadena, Chris, our hometown.

I did recognize, I think, one location.

Oh, what?

I believe the Elvis Grave is a park in Altadena.

Yes, it was filmed at a park in Altadena.

And also reportedly the reason they sing Heartbreak Hotel is because that's the only song they could get the rights to.

It's not in a different key.

It's a hominy.

In fact, because the budget was so low fran drescher said quote there were no dressing rooms no costumes no money and no script each actor was given a 25 page outline pointing out any key information that needed to be covered in the scene after that what was said and how we got to the plot point was anyone's guess she said she wore her own clothes did her own hair and makeup june chadwick said the same thing everything she wore was her own and the wardrobe lady basically just helped them put stuff together I gotta, Billy Crystal must have pitched the mime caterers.

It seems like such a Billy Crystal thing for him to just say, Rob, Rob, Rob, we're gonna be mimes.

That's what we're gonna be doing.

Probably.

Well, speaking of that, they had a really hard time keeping their shit together on set during some scenes because obviously they don't know what they're gonna say.

They didn't know what questions they were gonna be asked or how the conversations are going to go.

So here's Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer again on the Today Show talking about that.

But generally, the questions were a lovely surprise because mainly we knew the answers.

When he said you can't dust for vomit, I mean, I went a couple of places that I had to go.

You can't dust for vomit.

That one got me.

Oh, Paul Benedict, the late Paul Benedict.

Oh, yeah.

Do you know who that is?

No, he was the hotel clerk when we were checking out.

Yes, yes.

He just got made me.

Yes.

And it's like everything out of his mouth, which just made, just broke everybody up.

And Fred Willard, when we were visiting the Air Force Base, that was really the

hold it in.

Hold it.

Yeah.

Hold it in.

Yeah, yeah, it just sounds like this would have been so much fun to be on set for.

But one actor, actually, the guy who played Duke Fame, do you remember who that was?

He's the one that they see in the hotel lobby, who's the like more.

The rival, yes, right, right, right, right.

Whose album cover was allowed because it was him being whipped on the table by the women.

Well, he had a very different reaction to being on set.

He showed up and was so scared that he literally couldn't talk, which is why Howard Hessman is in the movie as his manager and does all of the speaking in that scene.

That's great.

It works great.

It's amazing.

According to McKean in the Criterion Commentary, he said, his character did not exist until the day before we shot it.

It was going to be a rock and roll star, a rock and roll performer, Duke Fame, that they run into, but the guy we got to do Duke Fame couldn't talk at all.

He was just terrified.

He looked great.

He looked perfect.

And so it was like, can you get Howard over here in eight hours?

I think he could be a manager or something.

And he's great.

So the film was shot using handheld cameras on 16 millimeter film, which was then blown up to 35 millimeter.

Reiner was often acting as a human camera dolly, just physically moving Smokler around where he wanted him to go.

He used three cameras to shoot every song three times, so he had nine angles to work with.

And for this performance with the transparent shells, there were actually crew members laying underneath the platforms, opening and closing the pods manually on queue.

And according to Shearer, that was really, they were like struggling to hold them together because they were actually so easy to open.

They may have had no money and no time and no script, but as you pointed out, they went out of their way.

for authenticity.

In fact, one day when they were scheduled to tape a backstage scene, they walked onto set and it looked all wrong.

According to Shearer in GQ, quote, we walk in and it looks like the art director has visited freeway underpasses near Mexican gang areas.

So we say, no, no, here is the phone number of the troubadour.

Go to the troubadour and go upstairs.

We'll wait.

And they did.

They redecorated the entire set.

Good for them.

And now, speaking of authenticity, of course, Chris, we have to talk about some of the bands that they are spoofing.

One of my favorite scenes in the whole thing is obviously, Hello, Cleveland.

Lost.

Lost backstage.

Unbelievably, there are several real-life inspirations for this.

I think you actually see a little bit of it in the Bob Dylan documentary that you mentioned.

But my favorite one is Tom Petty getting completely lost backstage and somehow winding up on an indoor tennis court.

Let's take a look.

We're in the wrong room.

Want to go back up?

Let's go back up and get in the right room.

Oh yeah, this is happening.

Tennis anymore?

Oh, we're in the wrong room.

We're in the wrong room, Tommy.

If you guys want to see this, you should go over to our Instagram and you can see it is actually Tom Petty

walking around backstage going, we're in the wrong room.

We're in the wrong fucking room.

And then they wind up on an indoor tennis court for no apparent reason.

Chris, I also want to play you a little snippet.

This is the Trogs, who were being recorded unbeknownst to them.

Give into it.

It's a fucking number one.

It is.

Whether you're not.

I like so or not.

That is a number fucking one.

And if that bastard don't go, then

I fucking retire.

I fucking do.

it a good song.

I agree, it is a good song.

But it fucking will won't be unless we spend a little bit of fucking thought and imagination to fucking make it fucking number one.

You've got to put a little bit of fucking fairy dust over the bastard.

Yo, look at, you know,

I'll kiss over the time.

You know what I mean?

I'll put a little bit of fucking fairy dust over it.

You know what needed that?

Bohemian Rhapsody needed one of those scenes.

It did.

It needed a little bit of fairy dust.

Nigel's freak out over the tiny bread was at at least partially inspired by some real riders, including Van Halen's insistence that no brown M ⁇ Ms be present anywhere backstage.

Although I've heard that this was potentially a test, actually, to see if people were paying attention to the rider.

And riders, to be clear, these are stipulations in the contracts of performers, for the most part,

although I'm sure directors as well, actors,

musicians, where, you know, this must be present in the green room when I arrive.

And sometimes it's literally very basic stuff.

Can I please make sure there's water available for me when I arrive at this place?

So these are not, most of the time, I don't think these are unreasonable.

They are very just like human decency level requests, but sometimes they are very funny.

Yes.

Very funny.

And of all people, Yule Brynner had a very,

not a rock star, but had.

A really specific and weird rider that included, quote, under no circumstances may white eggs be substituted for brown.

All right.

There were also a couple of complete coincidences, like Black Sabbath chose a Stonehenge set for their own tour two weeks before the movie came out, and then they proceeded to accuse Spinal Tap of stealing their idea, to which Rob Reiner told Newsweek, it shows how dumb they are.

Right.

It took us two years to make the film.

Time travel, Mike.

You know?

What's that?

Also, weirder and sadder, one of their drummers dying in a freak gardening accident actually kind of happened to the drummer of Toto, who died of a heart attack that may have been partially brought on by inhaling insecticide while gardening.

Oh, jeez.

Among other things.

Very sad.

So even though the shoot took 25 days, the edit took seven or eight months, which makes sense given, as you pointed out, they shot somewhere between 50 to 70 hours of film for this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rob Reiner's first cut was four hours long, and that didn't even include three hours of interview footage.

It's pretty amazing that he and editors Kim Sekrist, Kent Beta, and Robert Layton were able to eventually whittle down a seven-hour cut into an incredibly tight 84 minutes.

And it probably would have been hard because I'm guessing a lot of it was still very funny.

It was.

And how do you decide which joke's the best and which one could maybe further the story?

And that's really hard.

Well, it's not even the jokes, too.

I mean, they cut entire storylines.

Right.

And songs, I'm sure, too, that they'd spent a lot of time writing.

Certainly a Kill Your Darlings.

Kill Your Darlings.

That's right.

Was there anything that stood out as being unexplained over the course of the movie?

Perhaps something that appears on some of the bandmates' faces.

The herpes outbreak?

Yes.

Yeah.

I wrote it down.

I wrote, Michael McKean, herpes cold sore?

Question mark?

They all have herpes cold sores, except for the drummer.

Right.

He was the one I noticed.

I don't know when I noticed it, but yeah, I just thought it was a funny sight gag.

Like, oh, yeah, they're sleeping with road, you know, the groupies or whatever and getting herpes.

It totally still works, but it actually was an entire storyline that got cut.

It was featuring Sherry Curry, who's the lead singer of The Runaways, and she was going to be shown in several scenes with a herpes sore canoodling with the members of the band, everybody except for the drummer.

So it was a running joke that they were all getting herpes outbreaks because of her.

But as you've pointed out, it's not there, and it still works just as well, I think, with no explanation for why they all have it.

Yeah, it's just a little Easter egg.

They were, as we've said, very focused on authenticity in the edit as well, particularly Harry Shearer, maybe sometimes to a fault.

He actually got into it with Rob Reiner a few times over the concert scene where the stagehand is trying to help him get out of the transparent pod.

He was arguing that you should not be able to hear the hammer because it's a live show.

And Rob Reiner was like, no, it's comedy.

I'm going to make the hammer audible.

Right.

Rob Reiner won.

Editor Robert Lee said that one of the actors, again, I'm guessing Shearer based on what I've read, got upset when they were doing the sound mix because at the party, they were turning the music down so you could actually hear the audio.

And he was angry.

He was like, they wouldn't be able to do that.

It should be like unintelligible during this scene.

Now, the studio was less interested in everything being authentic and more interested in people, to your point at the beginning of this, understanding that it was a joke.

In fact, apparently the head of marketing, according to Harry Shearer, said, quote, don't you guys think you need to wink sometime in the first 30 seconds to let people know you're kidding?

And the guys were like, No, that opening scene with Marty is enough of a tip-off.

And it's what it is now that you know, but it's not.

He plays it completely earnestly.

Yeah, that's what's so funny about it.

Well, also, I mean, I'm guessing they were thinking Rob Reiner is recognizable.

They have to know that this is not real if he's introducing himself as Marty DeBergey.

But at the same time, I don't know that you automatically know that that's Rob Reiner.

I don't know what people would think at the time.

He seems recognizable to me, but I think the real tip-off is the introduction of Spinal Tap as one of England's loudest loudest bands.

That to me is like, oh, okay, I know what we're doing now.

That is the tip off.

I know, but they play it so dry.

They do, which is what makes it so funny.

So the studio was like, fine, but if the first two critics that see this and write preview reviews don't like it, it will not be released.

But lucky for all of us, critics pretty much universally loved this is Spinal Tap.

Now, audiences, on the other hand, were a little confused.

Reiner told Collider, quote, the first screening was in Dallas and people came up to me and they said, what is this?

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?

Christopher Guest and Michael McKean were actually getting popcorn when two women came up to the counter and just said, these guys are so stupid, not realizing they were standing next to the two stars of the movie.

Also, though, why are they screening in Dallas?

Come on.

I know.

Go to L.A.

New York.

Go to a music scene.

Sorry, no offense, Dallas.

Nashville.

Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, though, at least they were like, they're right.

They are stupid.

Like, that's the point of the movie.

That is true.

Someone also left a comment card at another screening suggesting they get a new cameraman.

Well, I guess they don't understand that it's a concert film.

Right.

You know, I get it.

But it is very rude.

So despite being featured on numerous top 10 best of lists for 1984, this is Spinal Tap only pulled in around $5 million in its theatrical run.

With a budget of $2 million, that means Tap at best broke even, but more likely, it was a big-time flopper, Chris.

Well, a little.

A small flopper.

It was a medium-time flopper, let's say.

Certainly not as big as that cucumber.

that was shoved down

Derek Small's pants.

So that's actually one of the story arcs that was cut.

There's a lot more about the cucumber.

The guys are sort of like making him feel bad about not, you know, not having an almodillo in his pants, if you will.

Right.

And so they're like convincing him to make it bigger and bigger.

And then there's a whole scene of them wrapping it and everything.

So we don't see any of that.

We just see him go through the metal detector, which honestly is, that's all I need.

Yeah.

And then to look on his face of like, are you happy now?

As he walks away.

Yes.

Just this insolent child.

It's so funny.

He's so great.

Can I tell you where my mind went?

Yeah.

A penis piercing.

Yeah.

Right.

And you're thinking, penis piercing, penis piercing.

And nothing could be more embarrassing than penis piercing.

And then then it's more embarrassing than pianis piercing.

It's so good.

Speaking of penis piercings, I don't know if you watch Final Destination Bloodlines, but that is

probably their best death involves a heavily magnetized MRI machine that rips out numerous piercings, including a penis one.

One sweet fun fact is that Rob Reiner's directorial debut, As we said, Spinal Tap, was frequently featured opposite his father's film from that year on a lot of the top 10 lists.

It was all of me starring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin, which I really love that movie.

But despite the lack of box office success, something did save Spinal Tap.

A technological advent in the mid-80s, Chris, what was it?

Home video?

That's right, home video.

Pretty much entirely through word of mouth, Spinal Tap started to gain a following through the home video market.

It was passed around college dorms, high schools.

People were quoting it endlessly.

Over the course of many years, it became the definition of a cult classic.

Yeah.

Even rock stars that it parodies started to worship the tap.

It was Dave Grohl, right, who said this was the only good rock and roll concert film?

I don't know, but that would make sense.

It was like him and Kurt Cobain, and Cobain was like, they've never made a good rock and roll movie.

And then Dave Grohl says, except for Spinal Tap.

And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

That's the only one I mean, it is.

It legitimately is a good rock and roll documentary.

I had always heard it was very well respected amidst a lot of the

rock and rollers who came up after it.

It totally is.

In fact, when Sting auditioned for The Princess Bride, he told Rob Reiner that he had seen it like upwards of 50 times, and every time he watched it, he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

That does make me like Sting more because he comes across a little humorless in the Emperor's New Groove sweatbox documentary that I watched.

But that does make me like him more.

I know.

It makes me think if he's able to laugh at Spinal Tap, he must be at least a little bit fun.

But everything came full circle in 1991 when Spinal Tap performed for a live concert at the Disneyland Hotel.

And they actually parlayed this into a full album, Break Like the Wind, in 1992,

which this thing was produced by T-Bone Burnett.

It featured Jeff Beck, of course, potentially the inspiration for at least Nigel Tufnell's look.

Cher, Slash, and many, many more.

Have you ever heard this?

Yeah.

And didn't they play Wembley

next year yeah 92 yes they played wemble stadium they played royal albert hall it is incredible spinal tap became a successful band

and also keep that in mind they are playing and selling out stadiums like wembley stadium and royal albert hall that's going to come back in just a few minutes the enormodome

is that the one that duke fame is going to play yeah

spinal tap obviously launched rob reiner's directing career it obviously had a huge influence on Christopher Guest, too.

You mentioned this.

He goes on to really sort of perfect the mockumentary or Spomage with movies like Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and many more.

He told Flavor Wire, quote, if it hadn't been for Norman Lear, there would never have been a movie because he was the only one who said, just go and do this.

And he trusted Rob.

And then years later, when a company called Castle Rock was formed, which of course we've talked about recently on Shawshank, Rob Reiner said to me, just go and make a movie.

And I made a movie called Waiting for Guffman, and then I made several more.

That doesn't happen anymore, where someone says, just go and make your movie.

Rob was lucky to have Norman as his patron, and I was lucky to have Rob as mine.

Good for Reiner.

Good for Norman.

Good for both Reiners.

Yeah.

Good for all Reiners.

Why do you think this is not happening anymore?

I think that, well,

this is a big conversation, Lizzie.

I think that as

management in the United States has become more and more divorced from the work that it oversees, that has become true in Hollywood as well.

I think a studio executive is, at the end of the day, a dilettante, right?

There's somebody who deeply admires the work but doesn't do the work themselves necessarily.

But that can be a powerful thing.

That can be like an advocate, for example.

But I think it's like the management consultification of everything.

The goal now is

to minimize the chance that you'll

be fired and you can maintain your position.

And risk-taking, I think, has gone out the window.

And movies are riskier now.

So there are fewer opportunities to make your money back than there used to be.

But I think that fewer and fewer creative people are in positions of power within this business.

And movies have always been weird in that

it's an art like

this.

You've got, I have a lot of weird thoughts on this.

Okay, Okay, so you know, like to be an artist, right, to specialize in something that's very specific and has debatable or abstract value to society, you have to be subsidized by that society, effectively, right?

And that's where like patronage comes from: is I'm willing to pay for your room and board and food because Leonardo da Vinci, you're going to paint me some masterpiece.

And I'm a rich person and I want it.

And in the modern capitalist version of that, you get versions of rich people wanting to play Hollywood, et cetera.

And I think that rich rich people's children in particular, yes.

Sure, exactly.

I'm looking at Ellison with Skydance, for example, and his sister with Anna Perna, and God bless them.

Please spend your father's billions on making movies.

That's fantastic.

But I think that right now, more than ever, the ability to make a movie is really contingent on your ability to fundraise.

And historically, producers have been that intermediary between writers, directors, actors, and the money.

And I think that the creative producer, right, is

hard to find.

And Reiner was a great creative producer.

He wanted to write and direct, but obviously he ushered in Daribont, he ushered in Christopher Guest.

But that's what a lot of these other folks saw themselves as, too.

You know, we're going to talk back to the future.

Sid Sheinberg saw himself as that for Spielberg.

Spielberg saw himself as that for Zemekis.

There was a reaching back quality.

I'm not saying that it doesn't still happen.

Jordan Peel, I know, is attempting, you know, to do some of this stuff with his production company.

I just think it's hard now.

Money's harder to come by, and there are more competing forces for our attention.

And

the industry is a little more in survivalist mode.

And so I think people are less likely to,

people kind of hole up and they hermit instead of reaching across the aisle.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the creative producer issue, because

it seems like as we get into the movies that are more recent across this podcast, those people tend not to be creators themselves.

And there may be more sort of company men and women.

And they're increasingly being forced to

legitimize themselves, like give a reason for why they're there.

And I think this is just going to get worse with the advent of AI, because that is to a certain degree eliminating a lot of sort of creative middle management.

And

I just think if you're afraid for your job, which a lot of people in those positions are, you're going to go for the reliable hit.

I think you've said this before, Chris.

It's just like on the studio where it's like, even if the Kool-Aid movie isn't a hit, you can at least point back and say, it's not my fault.

This is a, you know, billion-dollar food brand that everybody knows.

So of course, this should have been a hit.

It must be somebody else.

And I think it's really unfortunate that so few original ideas are having this kind of creativity and financial backing put behind them.

But

speaking of non-original IP, talk of a sequel to Spinal Tap has been kicking around for many, many years.

In fact, according to all the guys, plenty of executives who passed on the original film have been begging them to revive Spinal Tap.

Guest even told the Today Show that, quote, years later, I got a phone call.

The person shall be nameless for the purposes of this, and that person had said no.

And this time they said, I'm looking for a new job.

They said, is it all right if I tell people that I worked on the film?

And I said, I don't think it is.

Definitely not.

Yeah, what?

But thanks for asking and not just putting it on your LinkedIn, which a lot of people would do.

That's true.

Now, I really hope that the guys make some money from the sequel because despite the massive success of Spinal Tap over time, because it was financially a success over time, they saw almost no money from it.

Do you know about this, Chris?

I know that they, I believe Harry Shearer at first filed a lawsuit.

So Shearer told GQ, quote, I think we all shared this fantasy that because we'd made fun of this stuff, it wouldn't happen to us.

When we started getting fucked over, we were just like, my God, in blank disbelief.

So here's what happened.

Embassy Pictures went through a bunch of different owners over the years.

Like you said, Chris, everybody's on cocaine, everybody's buying and selling, which meant the rights to Spinal Tap went wherever Embassy went.

Obviously, allegedly on cocaine.

I don't know that for sure.

Now, Embassy got kind of split up for parts between Sony, which owns TV syndication rights to to most of its titles, and Studio Canal, which owns ancillary rights to most of their movie library.

So Spinal Tap effectively wound up in the hands of the parent company of Studio Canal and Universal Music Group, Vivendi.

As you said, in 2016, Harry Shearer started to look around and wonder, what the fuck?

Why have we not received basically anything off of the original film after all these years?

So he filed a legal complaint.

What's so funny to me is that it took this long for them to notice that they weren't getting any of the residuals from Spinal Tap.

I mean, maybe it's just because they all had so much money.

I don't know.

Harry Shearer was a regular on The Simpsons.

It's easy to assume.

That's true.

That's the assumption.

People are rolling in money.

And they also, there are a lot of other people taking cuts.

There are lawyers and managers and agents.

And so.

Listen, I'm not begrudging him.

Damn government.

Now, according to the legal complaint that he filed, Vivendi claimed that between 1989 and 2006, their total income from Spinal Tap soundtrack sales was, Chris, any guesses?

Total income.

$1,000.

$98.

There we go.

That's that studio math.

There it is.

Good old-fashioned Hollywood accounting.

It was just very expensive to promote.

We were selling them at less than cost.

It was just, you know, like, yeah.

No, you weren't.

They also set the four creators' share of total merchandising income at $81.

Yeah.

were selling out Wembley Stadium.

So, of course, Chris, to your point, this is because of good old-fashioned Hollywood accounting, where they are stacking up supposed losses against the income.

Now, the question becomes whether or not those losses are real.

Applicable, right?

Yes.

So, shortly thereafter, Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean all joined Shearer and boosted his original complaint for damages up to $400 million.

Shearer made the point that a lot of production companies literally put a line item in their budgets for a lawsuit because they know they may have to sue the studio down the line.

Is that true, Chris?

I don't know.

I believe it.

I wouldn't have been privy to a conversation about that, although I'll happily sue David Zaslav any point for anything.

Just kidding.

What I will say is my initial reaction when I heard that number, $400 million, was, oh my God, that's high.

But actually, when you think about it, what you also have to think about, well, it's not just the gross sales, it is the interest on on that income that has also been foregone in not being paid out at an appropriate time.

So we are talking about income from nearly 40 years ago that has compound interest on top of it that would have

quadrupled, quintupled by the time, you know,

by today.

Right.

And of course, you know, we're talking about the initial box office was not a lot, but home video was a ton.

Home video rentals.

And I directed this little movie Moonshot, that I've made it.

I'm not going to share numbers.

I've been happily surprised by how much I have been, I have received as residuals on video rentals.

It's all that I'll share there.

And that's, and again, that's because it's the DGA and my contract is protected and they have to pay me, you know, and that's why we have these protections in place.

Hey, go out and rent Moonshot.

Rent Worm.

Yeah.

To quote Rob Reiner in The Guardian, quote, fair reward for artistic endeavor has long been raised by those on the wrong end of the equation.

What makes this case so egregious is the prolonged and deliberate concealment of profit and the purposeful manipulation of revenue allocation between various Vivendi subsidiaries to the detriment of creative talent behind the band and film.

Such anti-competitive practices need to be exposed.

I am hoping this lawsuit goes to 11.

You know what, Chris?

It did go to 11.

They settled in 2020, and I believe they settled with Universal Music Group about the soundtrack a year earlier.

But most importantly,

the rights to characters, trademarks, and associated rights are now owned by Authorized Spinal Tap LLC, aka Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean.

According to Shearer, David St.

Hubbins, Nigel Tufnell, and Derek Smalls were unavailable for comment.

It's very good.

They got it.

I'm thrilled that they got it.

I am too.

What a happy ending.

And also, I think a good reminder for all of us that

If you can,

retain ownership.

I know that's easier said than done done and very hard in a situation like this where they were desperate to get this made.

But.

Yeah.

I think if anybody believes enough in your idea to want to be a part of it, assume they'll still want to be a part of it, even if you don't give it up.

Yeah.

Or that you can find somebody else who will.

I have a friend who's pitching a TV show right now.

And

I don't want to give out any details other than they have been working.

There's a sales agent who has contacted them saying, basically, I have a major streamer interested.

Like, I have this person who, and I'm, you have to sign with me and then I will connect you.

No, I'm sorry, sir.

Go fuck yourself.

Yeah.

It is, it's ridiculous.

There are plenty of people in this business who just want to make good things and will do it in an ethical way.

And

you will find those people, you know, hold out if you can.

Yes.

The people who make the thing should participate in the rewards of said thing.

That's right.

All right.

Chris, what went right?

I mean, so many things,

but I'm going to have to give it to the collective decision not to wink.

I,

we mentioned Walkhard.

I love Walkhard.

I think Walkhard, I can't believe it bombed when it came out.

I can't either.

It's honestly one of my favorite movies.

It's so funny, but it winks heavily at the audience.

I mean, his brother gets sliced in half with a sword in the opening of the film.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm cut in half real bad.

It's so good.

Another one, Pop Star Never Stopped, Never Stopping, doesn't wink quite as hard, but it winks pretty hard as you have, you know, Adam Levine grinding with a hologram of himself in the first five minutes, which is very funny.

But again, both do wink, I think, because they felt felt like they needed to wink to clue the audience in.

And because this movie doesn't wink,

when Nigel Tufnall

comes back, right, to play the show at the end.

Yes.

It's actually kind of emotional.

It's actually really good.

And when he says to Vikin, you know, play a good show.

And he's genuine because above all else, they care about the music.

It works.

It works on an emotional level that wouldn't work if they winked, I don't think, or it wouldn't work as well.

So kudos to them.

Kudos to everybody involved for just bringing it and not ever breaking.

Because, you know, it is, they do it in the style of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

But in Curb, you can feel that they're on the edge of breaking or the edge of absurdity.

You know what I mean?

Tearing the reality.

And it's really funny, but it's not emotional.

And this movie is very emotional to me.

I agree.

I think they set out to make...

Like they didn't set out to make a mockumentary.

They set out to make a really good rock documentary about

the stupidest band they possibly could.

And that's exactly what they did.

And it's perfect.

This movie is perfect.

I love it so much.

I love it more after learning about it.

I think I have to give my what went right to honestly Norman Lear.

As we discussed a few minutes ago, it's not often that that kind of trust is placed in a creator.

And I just love that story about Rob Reiner going in and so passionately pitching this thing, screaming at all the executives, and then Norman Lear just being like, I'm not going to tell him he can't make this.

Are you?

Like, let him do it.

Let's see what happens.

And I'm so glad he did because, of course, we got one of the greatest movies of all time, I think.

Certainly one of the funniest and definitely one of my favorites.

So that wraps up Spinal Tap.

What a fun one.

What a fun one.

Lizzie, do you want to say what we have coming next week?

Do you want me to say what we have coming next week?

I can say what we have coming next week.

We have a much requested movie that was a box office hit, but that I believe an awful lot went wrong on, and that is Back to the Future.

That's right, Lizzie.

Quite a bit did go wrong, but all is well in due time.

And time will be a big theme as we discuss Back to the Future.

I'm very excited.

It's a...

well-trod history, but one that I think we've come up with a fun way to tell that that I hope you guys enjoy.

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What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

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