← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Spinal Tap II: Older, Not Wiser
00:28:45
Forty years ago, Spinal Tap first dialed it up to 11 in a genre-defining mockumentary.
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A
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll speak with biographer Nicholas Boggs about his new book titled A Love Story. We'll talk about community supported agriculture and learn how to get the most out of your CSA share and the stars and the director of the musical Saturday Church will join me in studio. That's the plan. So let's get this started with a modern day Spinal Tap epic with guest Elton John.
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In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived a strange rice of people.
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Drew it.
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No one knows who they were or what they were doing, but their legacy remains huge. Into the living rock of Stone age.
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Stonehenge where the demons dwell where the.
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B
Band you live and if you live.
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Well Stonehenge where a man combined and the children who dance to the pipes.
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A
That is a new take on a familiar classic Stonehenge, featuring the now, shall we say august Spinal Tap and Elton John. It's part of a documentary, wink Wink about the band getting back together for one more show amidst contractual reasons. And this is where we meet the heavy metal heroes in Spinal Tap 2. The end continues. Directed by Marty DeBurghy, aka my next guest, Rob Reiner, the new movie sees the trio of David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnell and Derek Smalls reuniting, looking for a drummer who can survive and trying to get past or old wounds. Reiner is also the author of a new book called A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, the Story of Spinal Tap, which details the making of both the first movie and its sequel. He will be speaking Tonight, Rob Reiner, that is at the 92nd Street Y with Alan Zweibel tonight at 8pm and he joins us now. It is really nice to meet you.
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C
Well, nice for having me. Thanks for having me, Alison.
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A
So when did you start talking about actually making a sequel to the film?
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C
We didn't start talking about until a couple of years ago. We'd been asked over and over over the years to do it and we kind of let it alone because we thought, well, we've done it, you know, and don't mess with the thing. It was, you know, was put into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It, you know, this goes to 11, you know, in the Oxford English Dictionary. So we thought that's it, leave it alone. But then we got the rights back. Harry Shearer was, you know, Very aggressive about trying to get the rights back because we made any money on it. So once we did, we said, oh, well, let's see. Is there anything that we, you know, is there a story? Because we don't want to do it just for the sake of doing it. And we came up with a story based on something that was very real, which is the guys themselves had not played together for 15 years. And we started thinking, well, why is there bad blood? Are they not talking to each other? That became the basis of the. Of the one last concert that they had to do so that, you know, we started. Then we called up Elton John, we called Paul McCartney, and we found ways of integrating them into the film. And also Garth Brooks and, you know, the rest, as they say, is history.
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A
In the book A Fine Line between Stupid and Clever, you describe a long and torturous ownership history. I'm curious, what did you learn from the process of getting the rights back to this film that other early filmmakers should know about?
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C
Well, here's what you should know about. There's a thing called net profits, and I call them not profits, because you never wind up with anything. They have this creative accounting. And we were owned by Canal plus and MGM and De Laurentiis. I mean, there was even a cosmetic company that had some interest in it. And with all of that, the DVDs, the videos, and, you know, foreign sales. This is going to sound like a joke, but the four of us, which had 40% of the net profits split equally, we each made, and this sounds like a joke, but we each made 82 cents a piece. So here's a picture that's, you know, become this cult classic. It's on the tour bus of every rock band in the world and each got 82 cents a piece. So I would say to filmmakers, make sure you read the fine print in your contract. Before you enter into any kind of financial arrangement with these creative accountants, you.
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Have to know who owns the property.
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Yeah. And so we didn't, you know, we didn't get anything. And we. We love doing it. And, you know, you don't do it for the money. You do it because you love doing it. But you'd also wouldn't mind getting paid a little bit for, for, for the effort, as they say.
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A
All right, you got your rights back. You're excited, you back. What happened next?
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We got together, we sat around and we said, well, what. What do we do with this? And at first we said, now let it. Let it be. The bar is too high. You know, let, Let it alone. But like I said, we came up with this idea and that we thought if we could figure out a. An idea that would stand alone. In other words, you wouldn't have to have known about the first one in order to appreciate this one. Once we had that idea and we came up with it, we said, okay, let. It's worth making. Now, obviously, if you've seen the first one, there are references you'll get in the second one, but if you haven't, it works. It works as these, these old rockers, which is very familiar these days. You see the Stones out there, you see the Eagles are out there. Paul McCartney is performing Oasis Just Got Back Together. I saw the other day Roger Daltrey from the whole was back playing with, you know, Pete Townsend and all that. So it's a theme that you see where these old rockers are still working at it. And once we said, okay, there's a story about old rockers who are getting back together for one final concert.
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A
I'm speaking to director Rob Reiner about Spinal Tap 2 the end continues, as well as the new book, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, the Story of Spinal Tap. Okay. We meet Nigel, David and Derek at the movie. They're all in different places in their lives. Nigel is running a cheese shop. David is trying to stay relevant, playing in a mariachi band. He's also helping murder podcasts. Derek owns a glue museum. Go figure. Which one was your favorite? To imagine where he'd be 40 years later.
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C
Well, I mean, it's just insane what these guys are up to. They're all still trying to play music. I mean, Derek, even though he runs the. The. The new Museum of Glue. I'd like to know what the old museum was, but he's got the new museum. He plays with the symphony orchestra at times. And you've got David, like you say, he's playing with the mariachi band and also composing music for. When you're on hold.
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Yes.
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On the phone. And he, he's very proud of the fact that he won a holdy for his music that he did. And then Nigel also plays at a pub, but also has this cheese and guitar shop. He sells cheese and guitars and he. He actually barters and he swaps cheese for guitars. There's no way you'd think that any of these things would be happening to these guys. But they're all forced together to have to play because there's a contract that was inherited by their late manager. Ian Faith passed away and passed this contract on to his daughter Hope, Faith. And it calls for one more concert, but she feels there it's worthless because what, you know, they haven't played in 15 years. And then all of a sudden we. This came out of a real place. We saw. We remember that Kate Bush had a song that was on Stranger Things. And all of a sudden the song blew up again. And so we thought, what if a very famous musical artist were to screw around at a sound check and somebody catches it on an iPhone, throws it up on TikTok, it goes viral, and all of a sudden, Spinal Tap is resurrected. So then she decides, okay, let's honor this contract. And they do this one last concert.
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In New Orleans, but they have this new smarmy manager.
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Oh, yeah.
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Tell us who he is and how you found him.
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C
Well, his name is Simon Howler. He's played by Chris Addison. Brilliant, brilliant improviser, by the way. The whole film, you know, all this. All the dialogue is improvised. So good lately, improvised to make it more like a documentary. And this guy comes in and his whole thing is he doesn't understand music. He doesn't like music, he doesn't hear music. He just wants to make money. And he has all these ideas about how they can exploit the band and find ways of. Of just generating as much money as possible. And, you know, he's bit of a, you know, ugly impresario, as they say.
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Well, let's hear a clip from Spinal Tap 2 where the band is discussing what the final show will look like with their smarmy new manager. He speaks first. Let's listen.
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If this is the final gig that Spinal Tap do, then what we need to do is secure your legacy. Now, the simplest, most effective way. Yeah. That we could do that is that if during the gig, at least one, but ideally no more than two of you were to die. That's what I call the Elvis effect. It really allows for a sort of lean flowering of pretend die. I think that would complicate matters. It's easier if you just. If, you know, the exertion. Expire. Do you mean actually died? Yes. Yeah. Well, yeah, but I don't want to arrange. No, no, no, I. I appreciate that, but I. I think in terms of your legacy going forward, how you'll be remembered, how you'll be talked about, what effect that will have on record sales. I'm thinking documentaries. I'm thinking a huge memorial.
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C
You can do that without actually killing one of us, though, can't you?
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It's very difficult to do a memorial concert when the person is still alive. That's just a sort of rule of thumb. Would you settle for of coma? Oh, no. That's interesting, you know. Oh, no.
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Now, David, that's really expensive.
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That's a great bit of thinking outside. Well, a literal box, I suppose, actually.
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That's from Spinal Tap 2. I'm having the hardest time doing this segment, keeping a straight face, because this movie is really funny. It is really, really funny. Thank you, Rob. By the way, do the guys actually want to play a show together?
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They love to play. I mean, that's what. That's the great thing about this. And we found this even after not having worked with each other for 15 years, you fall right back in. It's like old friend. You know, you pick up the conversation where you left off. And we started, you know, doing shtick and Schneidering with each other. That was fun. And the guys love to play, and they fall right back. And just like jazz musicians, they can. They can easily just gel with each other, and they love to play. And I asked Paul McCartney in the, in the movie about that. What keeps you going and talked about, you know, just loving to play music. And that's, that's really the, The, the, the glue of all of this.
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So let's talk about your character, Marty DeBurge. What's changed for Marty in these past 40 years?
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Marty's had a very rough time. I mean, a very, very rough time. I mean, he, he, when he made the first film, he thought that was going to, you know, trigger a great directing career and he was going to get a, a shot at a Hollywood picture, which he did. But it. Kramer vs. Kramer, and it was Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Godzilla, and it didn't do nearly as well as Marty would hope. And then he kind of went into a tailspin and he joined a, a retreat, a commune, and was run by this guru, Baba Ram Dass boat. And he was sitting there in the morning, sipping on his spirulina smoothie, and he saw in the Deadline, Hollywood, they're going to do another. Another Spinal Tap concert. And he got all exc. Because he thought, well, maybe they'll have me back. Even though they didn't like what he did the first time, they thought it was a hatchet job. They thought he, he showed them in a bad light. He was hoping that they would take him back. And. And they did. They. They were forced to have to do the concert. So they, they also were forced. Marty was forced on him, too. So he, he has a second shot, let's say, and let's see if he can parlay this into something better.
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He seems so excited to be there.
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Well, he's very excited because, you know, I mean, he, he, you know, all he could do was maybe the Purina Dog Chow commercials and the, the little dog was chasing a chuck wagon and trying to find the food and everything, and he couldn't do anything more than that. And he, he has this idea, though. He's hoping that if this movie, this. This new documentary is good and it. People like it, maybe you'll get another shot. He has an idea for a film which is based on that chuck wagon thing. And he thought, you know, they made a movie out of a doll, and Barbie make a whole movie out of a doll. Why couldn't they make a movie about a chuck wagon? You know, maybe he's on a wagon train going west or something like that, and you could, you know, see all the great adventures that that could come from that. So he's hoping he can parlay this second documentary into a. Into a career.
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We're talking with Rob Reiner about Spinal Tap 2 the end continues. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is director Rob Reiner. We're talking about Spinal Tap 2, the end continues, as well as the new book, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, the Story of Spinal Tap. By the way, Rob will be Speaking at the 92nd Street Y with Alan Zweibel tonight at 8pm it was hard to believe, but Spinal Tap was your. Your directorial, your first feature film, right?
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Yes. Yes, it was.
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Do you remember lessons learned from that experience that you were able to either work in or change this time around?
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Well, you know, it's interesting because the first film I did had no script. You know, we had a story outline, but like I say, the. All the dialog was completely improvised. And everybody said, well, what do you. I can't believe you, with your first film, you'd have no script yet. But it seemed natural to me. You know, it seemed like, okay, you know, this is the way I was, you know, taught. I was raised in improvisational theater, and so were the rest of us. And so it felt very natural for us to do it that way. It didn't seem difficult at all. And the second one, the same thing. I mean, we loved it. Doing. The only difference we had was the first film was shot, you know, on 16 millimeter, and I only had one camera. The second one is on Dig is digital. And I have two cameras, so, you know, it was a little easier to facilitate. But no, I mean, to me, if I could do every film that's improvised, I mean, I, I would do it because it's fun and it's comfortable and it's natural for me.
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A
In the book, you tell a little bit about the history of Spinal Tap. And in the beginning, this is really funny that you wanted to investigate like a heavy metal band in the wild. So you and three guys, you guys get together and you go to a Judas Priest concert. Right, right. What made you realize that this was possible after going to see a Judas Priest concert?
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C
Well, you look at what, the audience is going crazy. I mean, you know, it's bedlam. I mean, all these heavy metal concerts, you know, whether it was Judas Priest or AC DC or Van Halen, whatever, people were insane. They were going crazy. And, you know, I was in my 30s at the time, so, you know, I was maybe past the age that, but. And I knew I was because my chest was, you know, I thought I was having a heart attack. The music was so loud and the, the pounding of the, the bass and all that. It was like you're, you're, you're heart was jumping out of your chest. But I thought, wow, it's, it's, you know, it's really exciting and it's still going on. I mean, people love that music, that young people pick it up and it's, you know, it's like you say you can't give it. You can't kill heavy metal music with a stick. It's always going to be around.
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And there's a joke in the film when the guys are pointed towards a MacBook and there's like, all music is made on that, on the MacBook. Does that resonate for you as a filmmaker? Does new technology matter to you as a filmmaker?
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You know, it matters only in terms of, you know, their tools to, to make a film. But you're still telling a story. And in my case, I, you know, tell a story, and I want it to be about real people, about characters and, and, you know, have an emotion connected to it. And that's the funny part about this. It's a satire, but there's also an emotional undercurrent to it. And I just felt. And normally emotion and satire, they don't want to live with each other. They. They're enemies, you know, But I felt like if you could find a way to, to blend them in a. In a seamless way, it's much more satisfying for the Audience, they. They're watching something, they're laughing, they're having a good time, but at the same time, they're feeling something. For these characters, in this case Nigel and David, who have been friends since they're little kids and like brothers, and so they fight, there's conflicts, but. And that's where the emotion comes from. And so to me, that's the key, is to find a way to always bring some emotion into it. And to me, it's the same. Whether you're using new technology or, you know, as deep fakes or, you know, AI, Whatever it is, you're still telling a story. And to me, the human part of it is. Is. Is still the most interesting. Interesting.
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A
It's so funny you say satire because I worked at MTV for a long time in the late 80s and 90s, and we used to do rockumentaries, and they looked sometimes quite a bit like Spinal Tap.
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C
They all do. I mean, that was the whole idea. I mean, when. When we first came out, the rock bands, I mean, people like, you know, Steven Tyler from Aerosmith or Axl Rose from Guns N Roses, even Ozzy Osbourne, who just passed away, they. They were upset because they said, hey, they're making fun of us that we take our art seriously. And what we were trying to do was to say, yes, there is a pomposity to taking yourself too seriously. And also, we love rock and roll. We're the first generation that grew up on rock and roll in the 50s and 60s. So we love rock and roll, but there's also a way of making fun of it and loving it at the same time. So what we wanted to do was not just make fun of that, but also make fun of the genre of documentary filmmaking. So, as you notice, I'm in the film as the director of the film, Marty deburge. I took that from watching Marty Scorsese do the Last Walls. And I had never seen a documentarian in the film. And here he was interviewing the members of the band, and I thought, okay, well, I can do that. So we're trying to make fun of it all. And at the same time, like I say, hopefully, people have an emotional feeling about it as well.
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A
You had so much improvisation in the film. What's a scene that you really had trouble cutting for Spinal?
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I mean, listen, you know, you have to be ruthless when you put these together, because we shoot hours and hours and hours of film like a documentary, and then you have to cull it down to what actually tells the story and what moves the story. Along. So there's all kinds of things that you laugh at, you think is really funny that you have to leave out because it doesn't move the story along. But anytime I'm doing a scene with Chris Guest, when he plays Nigel, that is always. It always gets me. I mean, we did a scene in the first one where he's showing me his guitars and his amp that goes up to 11. And that was. I have so much fun with that. And in the new one, he's got this big pedal board with all these different sound effects that he can put on his guitar. And I had fun doing that. You'll. When you see it, you'll see the scene where he explained. He has one guitar that if you flip it over, there's a. A cheese grater and a piece of cheese and a cheese board on it so that if he gets hungry during the concert, he can always have a little cheese.
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I wanted to ask you about the writing of this a little bit, even though we've been talking about it being. It being improvised, because it's been a big summer for sort of Gen X comedies. You've got the Naked Gun was out, Happy Gilmore 2. How do you balance the. The past references, the past jokes that we got great enjoyment out of, but create something new?
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C
Well, I mean, there are certain things from the past that you have to kind of touch on. One is the Stonehenge. You played Stonehenge at the beginning of the piece, and we know that's a theme that runs throughout Spinal Taps life. They're always, you know, in the first one, the Stonehenge was too little. Then they played Albert hall and the Stonehenge was too big. They couldn't even get it into the theater. And now this one, we have, I think, a good payoff on the Stonehenge joke. So we want. We have to keep that in there. But a lot of the references, you know, we don't want to play on them because, like I said, this is a movie that has to stand on its own. If you have to. If you have to have seen the first one in order to get this one, then we haven't done our job. So we try to touch on the things that we think are important and, you know, let it go. There's nothing. There's no reference to things going to 11, for instance, which is a. Which is a line that everybody, everywhere, it's all over the place. Like I say, it's in the Oxford English Dictionary. Not just as something where, you know, it's relating to music. Loud music. But anything done in excess can go to 11. And that, you know, so that's a. So we try to just touch on the things that are really important.
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A
There are great cameos in this. You've got Questlove, Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lars Ulrich from Metallica, all trying not to be Spinal Tap's drummer, by the way.
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C
Well, yeah, because the drummers are always. Spinal Tap has a really shaky past with drummers. I mean, they all wind up meeting with demise in some kind of weird way. And the last drummer they had was a guy named Skippy Scoffleton who died sneezing to death. He sneezed himself to death. He had a sneezing fit and couldn't stop. And that was the end of Skippy. And so they need a new drummer for the, for the. For the new. For the concert. So they put out a, you know, an offer to all these different drummers, like you mentioned, those three. Chad Smith and Lars o' Rourke and Questlove. And they all turn them down because it's too risky. You know, they, they, they. They value their lives a lot more than they do the enjoyment of playing music. So they all turn them down and they wind up with another drummer. And you'll see in the movie who that is. And that person is taking their life in their hands, and they know it. They know it, but they're willing to do it because, you know, they. They love music so much that, you know that. That they're willing to risk their lives to play with Spinal Tap.
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A
In the book, you write about not having enough money in the first film to afford extras in the crowd for the big concert. How about this time?
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This time we had. And it was interesting because we were down in New Orleans and we just put out the word that we're going to do a concert there. And people showed up. I mean, it was like. And it wasn't just like, you know, you hire Hollywood extras to act as if they're excited. You know, these people were totally into it. And it was great because it really got the. It motivated the people on cities, our band guys on stage to really put a full performance out. So it was great. You could ask them. I mean, you know, even Elton John was saying, wow, you know, this is like a. It's a real concert and we have great concert lighting. And it looks like, you know, I mean, we're in this arena, the Lakefront arena in New Orleans, like 11,000 seats. And, you know, we had thousands of people there.
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A
Very interesting. A caller Called in and said, alison, you haven't mentioned all in the Family at all. I loved him as Meathead. I just wanted to share.
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C
Here's an interesting thing you mentioned. You just mentioned all in the Family. And young people, I would say, people under the age of 40 or whatever, they never even heard of all in the Family. They don't even know what it is. And this is the. This is a show that was the number one show in America five years straight, every single week. And every single week, 40 to 45 million people watch that show every week. And you had to watch it when it was on because There was no DVR, TiVo video cassettes. So you had 40, 45 million people every single week having a shared experience. And you got, you know, young people, they even heard of the show. They don't even know what it is.
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We just made Sherry really happy because she liked Just Meathead.
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Okay, good, good.
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Our final question. You know, this is a movie about Legacy, Spinal Tap 2. Even if it's making fun of leg Legacy a little bit. Do you think at all about your own career legacy at all?
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C
You know, I don't think about it so much because, like I just said, people don't even remember.
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Oh, yeah, they do.
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Family.
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Yes.
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They're telling you. A lot of people never even heard of it. They don't even know what it is. So to me, it's about, you know, it's. It's that cliche live, you know, be here now. Yeah. I mean, you know, you do what you do and. And try to find things that. That you enjoy. I tell people who go into this business or any business, you. You spend more time doing this thing that you do than anything else. So you better like it and better enjoy it, because that's your time on the planet where you're doing that. So you don't think about legacy. You just, you know, move on. And the people, they don't know who Jimmy Stewart is. They don't know who Clark Gable is. Humphrey Bogart. I'm mentioning people who are monster stars. They never even heard of them. So you don't think about legacy. Just live in the moment and, you know, enjoy doing the work you do.
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A
I've been speaking director Rob Reiner about Spinal Tap to the End continues. There's also the new book, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, the Story of Spinal Tap. He'll be at the 92nd Street Y tonight with Alan Zweibel at 8pm it was a real pleasure talking to you.
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C
Hey, it was a great talking to you, Alison. Have a great rest of your day.
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A
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