Many film makers try to present on screen fiction as reality, but few are so successful in it that such fiction becomes off screen reality of its own. Arguably one of the first and the most influential such achievements is This Is Spinal Tap, 1984 comedy directed by Rob Reiner, film responsible for the word “mockumentary” entering worlds’ vocabularies.
The plot begins in Summer 1982 when Martin DiBergi (played by Reiner), television commercial director, begins filming his first feature documentary chronicling the US tour of British heavy metal band Spinal Tap. The band consists of five members, but only three are regulars that used to be there from its beginning in 1960s – lead singer David St. Hubbins (played by Michael McKean), lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest) and bassist Derek Smalls (played by Harry Shearer). The tour, which is supposed to promote the band’s latest album Smell the Glove, soon gets into trouble due to logistical mishaps, quarrels with manager Ian Faith (played by Tony Hendra) and record company executives. The band is soon faced with the unpleasant fact that they aren’t as popular as they thought they were and their venues get smaller and smaller with decreasing audience. This leads to infighting between members, which intensifies with an arrival of David’s girlfriend Jeanine Pettibone (played by June Chadwick) who wants to manage the group. The band is near break-up before being almost miraculously saved by the surprise popularity of their songs in Japan, which allows them to have another, much more successful tour there.
This Is Spinal Tap is in its essence a parody of “rockumentaries” – feature films that in pre-MTV era used to cater to the fans of popular rock bands by providing them exclusive “behind the scenes” look at their idols. Many of those films were accused of being too hagiographic while at the same time portrayed rock musicians turned out to be pretentious people with inflated sense of their importance. This Is Spinal Tap works because its characters and situations are only slightly exaggerated version of real rock musicians of the era and perfectly captures what 1980s heavy metal bands with their sexist songs lyrics, deliberately provocative album covers and megalomaniacal stage sets used to look and sound like. It looks paints an impressive portrayal of people who earned their fame relatively early and easy and the effects easy access to sex and drugs can have on someone’s judgment and ego. This picture is convincing because the film looks and sounds like a documentary. It was actually made as such. The main characters were years earlier created by McKean, Guest and Shearer and most of the scenes and dialogues are result of improvisation. Reiner who, just like his fictional counterpart, had the feature debut, actually didn’t have to work that hard. The film was shot as a large number of scenes and gags with total running time in hundreds of hours; only the work in editing room provided some sort of coherent plot. The authenticity, however, wasn’t achieved at the expense of humour. The three scriptwriters were not only talented comedians, but they also recognised that they can make audience laugh only if they play their roles completely straight. This seriousness makes various situations and dialogues even more absurd and funny.
This Is Spinal Tap also works because the script, while mocking the world of pretentious rock stars, treats protagonists affectionately. They are perhaps slightly dimwitted and detached from reality, but they are actually competent at their work which they obviously love, even after years at stage. The film is also helped with McKean, Guest and Shearer being accomplished musicians who actually played the music performed in film. They continued to do so after the premiere, occasionally reuniting as Spinal Tap and having real life concerts. Decade and half later, in another interesting mixing of fiction and reality, they provided in-character audio-commentary for the first DVD edition of this film. Although the film might not be that pleasing to audience that doesn’t like 1980s rock music, it is nevertheless an important piece of cinema history which gave impetus to entire subgenre of modern comedies.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
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