Three weeks ago, I wrote in my weekly film column that we were in a golden age of music documentaries. Now I can add that we are also in some kind of age for music mockumentaries, but whether it’s a golden age or a dark age remains to be seen.
The mockumentary itself emerged not too long after the invention of film, as filmmakers soon discovered the line between what is “real” and “fake” on screen is not nearly as clear-cut as we might like to believe. The surrealist genius Luis Buñuel toyed with the concept of fake documentary footage presented as real in the early 1930s. In 1939, Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre presented H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds as a fake radio newscast and caused a sensation still talked about to this day. As TV ownership spread in the 1950s, the ubiquity of TV news inspired many people to mock it. The Beatles film debut, A Hard Day’s Night, plays on the Fab Four’s saturation level presence on TV to show what “really” went on behind the scenes. Monty Python’s fake BBC presentations inspired Saturday Night Live’s fake newscast Weekend Update. In the 1980s, Special Bulletin, a TV movie about a group of terrorists who build an atomic bomb in Charleston, South Carolina, presented in War of the Worlds fashion, caused consternation and won awards. And I take every opportunity to plug one of my all time favorite movies, Man Bites Dog, a Belgian mockumentary about a film crew following a serial killer, which is difficult to find today, but oh so worth it.
The king daddy of all mockumentaries is This Is Spinal Tap. The 1984 film was the brainchild of Michael McKean and Christopher Guest, friends and bandmates who met in the 1960s while pursuing their comedy careers. McKean was a breakout star of Happy Days spin-off Laverne & Shirley, and met SCTV’s Harry Shearer and fellow TV comedy star Rob Reiner while filming a failed sketch comedy pilot in the late 1970s. Spinal Tap was the essence of a pretentious, late-’70s rock band. The key to the comedy magic was saying very stupid things in an oblivious deadpan. Little did they know that the characters they came up with for the pilot would reverberate for the next five decades when made into a film.
This Is Spinal Tap did not do great at the box office during its initial run, but it hit a nerve on home video. Coming in the wake of a wave of music documentaries that began with Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1970, and including Martin Scorsese’s classic The Last Waltz and the frankly bizarre Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same, there were a lot of ripe targets for satire. Ironically, it was people in the music industry who loved Spinal Tap the most, even though the film ruthlessly exposed that very industry’s shallowness and stupidity. U2’s The Edge called it “chillingly accurate.”
Everyone involved with the original film went on to have stellar careers. Reiner had a string of great films in the ’80s and ’90s, and got a Best Picture nomination for A Few Good Men. Michael McKean recently wowed on Better Call Saul. Harry Shearer has been integral to the epochal success of The Simpsons. In addition to being married to Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Guest made the improvisational techniques pioneered in Spinal Tap into his calling card, resulting in some of the funniest movies of the last 30 years, such as Best in Show. Even bit players like Billy Crystal and Fran Drescher — who was president of SAG during the 2023 strike — went on to greatness.
So what took so long to get the band back together? The short answer is, litigation, and lots of it. The nest of lawsuits which were recently resolved in the creative team’s favor didn’t stop them from making some memorable live appearances as Tap over the years, some of which is used as B-roll in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.
Reiner reprises his role as Marty DiBergi, the documentarian whose fascination with Spinal Tap led to the demise of both the band and, we learn, his own directorial career. Reiner’s Marty is the source of one of my all time favorite sight gags. He wears a Navy cap from the USS Ooral Sea. Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman), the daughter of Tap’s deceased manager, notices the band was contractually obligated to play a farewell show, which they hadn’t done during any of their numerous comebacks over the decades since the first movie. Marty tracks down the lads so he can film them receiving the news. Nigel Tufnel (Guest) manages a cheese and guitar shop in rural England, and plays gigs with the Celtic band down at the local pub. David St. Hubbins (McKean) makes a decent living composing music for podcasts. Derek Smalls got rich off of crypto and now runs a glue museum.
The gig is in New Orleans, and the first order of business is finding a new drummer, after No. 11 sneezed himself to death. A clutch of famous drummers cycle through Zoom calls with the lads, including Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lars Ulrich from Metallica, and Questlove, who turns down the gig because “I don’t want to die.” They settle on Didi Crockett, played by Valerie Franco, a fantastic drummer in real life who brings a jolt of energy every time she’s on-screen.
Everyone is generally on their game. Drescher slays her one scene, as does Paul Shaffer. The big celebrity cameos are all fun. Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood covering “Big Bottom” is a slam dunk. Paul McCartney plays an extended studio scene with the lads and effortlessly gets the better of them. Most game of all is Elton John, who delivers the climactic “Stonehenge.”
This Is Spinal Tap was lightning in a bottle, so it’s no surprise that the legacy act version lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. The sequel is fun for fans, but if you’re new to Tap, do yourself a favor and go watch the original. It goes to 11.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
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