This is Spinal Tap was a delicious offering to the hungry Rock N Roll Gods. A mockumentary about a fictional heavy metal band written and performed by Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean. It paved the way for similar comedic films and made the three band members music legends. Most internet lists to go 10, but ours is special… ours goes to 11. Here are 11 things you didn’t know about the movie ‘This Is Spinal Tap”.
11. Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean were given $10,000 to write a script, and made a 20-minute version of the film with the money to better demonstrate the improvisation they had in mind. Several scenes from this demo are in the final movie.
10. There is a deleted subplot in the movie which explains the cold sores on the band members’ lips: the band takes on an opening act for the tour and the lead singer, a slutty girl, sleeps with each bandmember, giving each one herpes in turn.
9. Nigel Tufnel’s name is a joke on Eric Clapton, derived from “dull name” and “location in London”. Eric became Nigel, and “Clapton Pond” became “Tufnell Park”: Nigel Tufnel.
8. The actors are all competent musicians, and the soundtrack is actually them playing.
7. In the scene where Derek comes and gets Nigel and David to come hear a song from their past on the radio, the radio announcer’s voice is being supplied by Harry Shearer, who played Derek.
6. Rob Reiner was originally going to be one of the band members, but ended up directing the film after Harry Shearer commented that “he didn’t look good in spandex”.
5. According to the cast on the Criterion audio commentary, the production never left Los Angeles county for the shooting of the entire movie.
4. In the course of the film, Spinal Tap has four different drummers: John “Stumpy” Pepys, Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs, Mick Shrimpton, and Joe “Mama” Besser. These names were inspired by the four different men who played the role of third Stooge in The Three Stooges films: Curly Howard, Joe DeRita, Shemp Howard, and Joe Besser.
3. According to Rob Reiner on the Criterion DVD commentary, his character’s name, Marty DiBergi is an homage to Martin Scorsese (Marty), Brian De Palma (Di), Steven Spielberg (Berg) and either Federico Fellini or Michelangelo Antonioni.
2. As the film was improvised by all the performers, Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer went to the Writers’ Guild hoping to give proper credit to everyone. The Board of Directors voted 15 to none that the credits should stay as it was including only the four of them.
1. There’s a common misconception that the “too small Stonehenge” disaster is a parody of Black Sabbath’s oversized Stonehenge sets from the Born Again tour. This is impossible, the Stonehenge Spinal Tap scene existed as early as 1982 when the film existed as a 20-minute short, and Black Sabbath didn’t begin using their Stonehenge sets until 1983.
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