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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
How did a heavy-metal spoof end up as light as a soap bubble?
Sep 8, 2000 | "Every instrument has its own personality. For example, I love the piano for the depth of its feeling. But the piano is not really an instrument -- it's really taking an orchestra, shrinking the people and putting them in a box. The guitar is actually an opera singer with a long neck. If you're not making it sing, you might as well go home."
-- Nigel Tufnel, in a 1992 "Guitar World" interview
Everyone who loves "This Is Spinal Tap" has a story about how many times they've seen it, or how stoned they were when they first saw it, or something. Before a recent screening, the last time I saw "Spinal Tap" was in the dentist's chair -- my dentist is one of those progressive types who has kindly installed a video-hookup contraption over the seat of torture. Somewhere between the point at which my tooth was ground down to a nubbly stump and the moment where a temporary crown was popped on with some stinky glue, Spinal Tap lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel babbled on to documentary filmmaker Marti DiBergi about his special amp, the one "wot goes to 11."
And I had to laugh -- but I could only use my eyes.
This Is Spinal Tap
Directed by Rob Reiner
Starring Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer
There's really no point to that story, but I told it because it somehow sums up the abstract wonder, and clear genius, of Rob Reiner's 1984 mockumentary about a heavy-metal band that many fans have grown to love so much they want desperately for it to be real. But for a cult favorite, "This Is Spinal Tap" -- which, beginning Friday, will enjoy a theatrical re-release to coordinate with a brand-new special edition DVD -- is surprisingly subtle. You almost can't blame its legions of faithful followers for memorizing huge chunks of it, and for turning many of its jokes (especially that bit about the amp) into permanent fixtures of rock 'n' roll vernacular. How else do you grab hold of "This Is Spinal Tap," a parody that's so close to its target, so spot-on and elusive at the same time, that it almost -- almost -- isn't even funny? How is it that a heavy-metal spoof can be as light as a soap bubble?
It's a mystery more baffling than Stonehenge.
What is identifiable about the mystery of "Spinal Tap" is the way the improvisational comedians who conceived it -- Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, who play band members Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls, respectively -- managed to tap into almost every element of the mythology that surrounds not just beloved bands but rock 'n' roll itself. "This Is Spinal Tap" came to life without a written script; the bare bones of the scenes were worked out ahead of time, but the actors improvised almost all of the dialogue. (They also wrote all of the songs. "Since there wasn't a script, we had to write something," McKean has said.)
Guest, McKean and Shearer dig into every dusty corner of established rock lore, riffing on everything from mindless band interviews in which musicians gas on about nothing at all, to songs that profess to have deep meaning but really say diddley squat ("(Listen to the) Flower People"), to the perceived but always unspoken idea that one drummer is as good as another. (Spinal Tap goes through drummers like Kleenex: One spontaneously combusts; another dies from choking on vomit -- someone else's.)
The band's stage performances in the film are delectably overblown and hugely satisfying, featuring absurdities like checkered Spandex pants and stage props that include giant transparent pods. Each band member has a signature look: bass player Derek, an astonishing crop of mutton-chop facial hair; lead singer David (the most comely of the three), a leonine golden mane; and lead guitarist Nigel, a Bay City Rollers shag haircut and a perpetually gobsmacked demeanor. (The band is filled out by real-life musicians keyboardist David Kaff, as Viv Savage, and drummer R.J. Parnell, as the ill-fated spontaneously combusting Mick Shrimpton.) Spinal Tap's stage antics cover all the usual heavy-metal clichis -- splayed legs, horrifying Pat Metheny-style facial contortions during guitar solos -- so perfectly that the group's members come off more like real musicians than parodists. And that's scary.
