This Is Spinal Tap


This Is Spinal Tap is a 1984 American mockumentary comedy film directed by Rob Reiner in his feature directorial debut. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer play members of the parody heavy metal band Spinal Tap. Reiner plays Martin "Marty" Di Bergi, a documentary filmmaker following the band's American tour.
The film satirizes the behavior and musical pretensions of rock bands and the hagiographic tendencies of rock documentaries such as The Song Remains the Same and The Last Waltz, similarly to what All You Need Is Cash by the Rutles did for the Beatles. Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer wrote the screenplay, though most of the dialogue was improvised and dozens of hours were filmed.
This Is Spinal Tap was released by Embassy Pictures on March 2, 1984 to critical acclaim, but found only modest commercial success in theaters. Its later VHS release brought greater success and a cult following. Credited with launching the mockumentary genre, it is also notable as the origin of the phrase "up to eleven". Deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2002. Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer reprised their roles for the 2025 sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and the 2026 concert film Spinal Tap at Stonehenge: The Final Finale.

Plot

Filmmaker Martin "Marty" Di Bergi is filming a documentary about English rock band Spinal Tap's 1982 United States concert tour to promote their new album, Smell the Glove. The band comprises childhood friends David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel on vocals and guitar along with bassist Derek Smalls, keyboardist Viv Savage, and drummer Mick Shrimpton.
The documentary shows Spinal Tap's early days as the skiffle group The Originals; they renamed themselves the New Originals when it was discovered another band was already called The Originals, only to change it back when the original Originals changed their name to The Regulars. They later had a hit as the Thamesmen, "Gimme Some Money", before changing their name to Spinal Tap and achieving a significant hit with the flower power anthem "Listen to the Flower People"; they subsequently began performing heavy metal music.
Several of the band's previous drummers died under strange circumstances: John "Stumpy" Pepys died in a "bizarre gardening accident" that police said was better left unsolved, Eric "Stumpy Joe" Childs died choking on someone else's vomit, and Peter "James" Bond exploded on stage. Nigel shows Marty his extensive guitar collection, as well as a custom-made amplifier that has volume knobs that go up to eleven; Nigel claiming that this makes the amplifier "one louder" than most other amplifiers, on which the volume setting only goes up to "ten".
Tensions rise between the band and their manager, Ian Faith, as several shows are canceled for low ticket sales, and major retailers refuse to sell Smell the Glove because of its sexist cover art. David's girlfriend Jeanine, a yoga and astrology devotee, joins the group on tour and participates in band meetings. Nigel and Ian dislike Jeanine's ideas for Spinal Tap's costumes and stage presentation. Without consulting Spinal Tap, the band's record label releases Smell the Glove with an entirely black album cover. Despite Ian's assertion that it could have a similar appeal to the Beatles' White Album, Smell the Glove fails to sell.
Nigel suggests staging a lavish, Druid-themed glam rock show and asks Ian to order a Stonehenge trilithon. However, Nigel mislabels its dimensions, and the resulting prop is only high rather than, making the group a laughing stock. The group blames Ian, and when David suggests Jeanine should co-manage the group, Ian quits. The tour continues, rescheduled for much smaller venues, and Jeanine and David increasingly marginalize Nigel.
At a gig at a United States Air Force base, Nigel is upset by an equipment malfunction and quits mid-performance. At their next gig, in an amphitheater at an amusement park where the band is billed below a puppet show, the band finds their repertoire is severely limited without Nigel. At Derek's suggestion, the band improvises an experimental "Jazz Odyssey", which is poorly received.
On the last day of the tour, David and Derek consider ending Spinal Tap and exploring other projects, such as a musical about Jack the Ripper called Saucy Jack. Before they go on stage, Nigel arrives and tells them that Spinal Tap's song "Sex Farm" has become a major hit in Japan and that Ian wants to arrange a tour there. David bitterly refuses, but later, as Nigel watches the band performing from the wings, David relents and invites Nigel to join the band onstage, delighting the crowd but infuriating Jeanine. During the performance, Mick explodes on stage. Ian is rehired as the group's manager, and Spinal Tap performs a series of sold-out shows in Japan.

Cast

Background

Michael McKean and Christopher Guest met while in college in New York City in the late 1960s, and they played music together. They worked with Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner on a TV pilot in 1978 for a sketch comedy show called The TV Show, which featured a parody rock band called Spinal Tap. During production of that sketch McKean and Guest began to improvise, inventing characters that became David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel.
Guest had previously played guitar under the name "Nigel Tufnel" on Michael McKean and David Lander's album Lenny and the Squigtones.

Development

The entire film was shot in Los Angeles over a period of about five weeks on handheld 16mm cameras. The visit to Elvis Presley's grave was filmed in a park in Altadena, with a mock-up of the grave site. The band sings "Heartbreak Hotel" because that was the only Elvis song for which producer Karen Murphy could obtain rights.
Rob Reiner procured $60,000 from Marble Arch Productions to write a screenplay with McKean, Guest and Shearer, based on the Spinal Tap characters. They realized after a few days of writing that no script could capture the kind of movie they wanted to make, so they decided instead to shoot a short demo of the proposed film. They shopped the demo around to various studios but had no takers, until television writer-producer Norman Lear decided to back the project, providing them with a budget of $2 million.
Virtually all dialogue in the film is improvised. Actors were given outlines indicating where scenes would begin and end and character information necessary to avoid contradictions, but everything else came from the actors. As often as possible, the first take was used in the film, to capture natural reactions. Reiner wanted to list the entire cast as writers on the film to acknowledge their contributions, but the Writers' Guild objected, and so only he, Guest, McKean, and Shearer received writing credit.
Veteran documentary cameraman Peter Smokler worked as cinematographer on the film. Smokler had great instincts for camera placement on set, according to Reiner, and is responsible for the film's handheld cinéma vérité style—although the cinematographer did not understand what was supposed to be funny about the movie. With Smokler behind the camera, the film was shot not as a feature film, but as a documentary, without a script or traditional shooting schedule. So much footage was filmed that it eventually required three editors to complete the film.
Inspirations for the film included the documentaries Dont Look Back, which was made about Bob Dylan, and Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, which was about The Band. The scene where Spinal Tap becomes lost backstage was inspired by a video of Tom Petty at a venue in Germany, walking through a series of doors trying to find the stage, but ending up on an indoor tennis court. Rob Reiner also went to see the English heavy metal band Judas Priest in concert as part of his preparation for the film. He later said, "It physically hurt my chest. The reverberation in the hall was so strong that I couldn't stay there any longer." According to Harry Shearer in the Criterion edition DVD commentary, keyboard player John Sinclair had just returned from touring with Uriah Heep when principal photography was about to begin, and told them how they had been booked to play an Air Force base. They subsequently used the story in the film.
In post-production, Christopher Guest was very concerned with the verisimilitude of the finger positions on the band's instruments during the concert scenes, and even re-shot some footage after the movie was edited to ensure their hands appeared in sync with the music.
The character of Jeanine, David's disruptive girlfriend, was added during the production to provide a storyline to the material—in part to mollify studio executives who worried the movie would be plotless. Actress Victoria Tennant was briefly considered for the role, but June Chadwick won the part, thanks to her chemistry with the cast and her improvisation skills.
Robert Bauer played the same character, Moke, in another Reiner movie, The Sure Thing.