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, while Reiner plays Martin "Marty" Di Bergi, a documentary filmmaker following the band on tour.
The film satirizes the behavior and musical pretensions of rock bands and the hagiographic tendencies of rock documentaries such as Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same (1976) and the Band's The Last Waltz (1978), similarly to what Eric Idle and Neil Innes had done for the Beatles with the Rutles. Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer are credited with writing 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 idiom "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 unreleased 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 hit with the flower power anthem "Listen to the Flower People"; they subsequently began performing heavy metal.
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 (including a Fender Bass VI so valuable it cannot even be looked at), as well as a custom-made amplifier with volume knobs that go up to eleven; Nigel claims that this makes the amplifier "one louder" than most others, 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 due to low ticket sales and major retailers refuse to sell Smell the Glove because of its planned 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 the band, 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 stage show and asks Ian to order a replica 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; later, however, as Nigel watches the band's performance from backstage, David relents and invites him onstage, delighting the crowd but infuriating Jeanine. Mick subsequently explodes on stage. Ian is rehired as the group's manager, and Spinal Tap (now with Joe "Mama" Besser as their drummer) performs a series of sold-out shows in Japan.
Cast
Michael McKean as David St. Hubbins Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls Rob Reiner as Martin "Marty" Di Bergi Tony Hendra as Ian Faith R. J. Parnell as Mick Shrimpton David Kaff as Viv Savage June Chadwick as Jeanine Pettibone Bruno Kirby as Limo Driver Tommy Pischedda Ed Begley Jr. as John "Stumpy" Pepys Danny Kortchmar as Ronnie Pudding Fran Drescher as Bobbi Flekman Patrick Macnee as Sir Denis Eton-Hogg Julie Payne as The Mime Waitress Dana Carvey as The Mime Waiter Sandy Helberg as Angelo DiMentibelio Zane Buzby as Rolling Stone Reporter Billy Crystal as Morty the Mime Paul Benedict as Tucker "Smitty" Brown Howard Hesseman as Terry Ladd (Duke Fame's Manager) Paul Shortino as Duke Fame Lara Cody as Duke Fame's groupie Andrew J. Lederer as Student Promoter Russ Kunkel as Doomed Drummer Peter "James" Bond Victory Tischler-Blue as Cindy Joyce Hyser as Belinda as The Airport Security Officer With The Security Wand Paul Shaffer as The Incompetent Promoter Artie Fufkin (Polymer Records) Archie Hahn as The Room Service Guy Charles Levin as Disc 'n' Dat Manager Anjelica Huston as Polly Deutsch Donald Kendrick as a background vocalist Fred Willard as Air Force Lieutenant Bob Hookstratten Wonderful Smith as The Janitor Robert Bauer as Moke, Spinal Tap's Roadie Fred Asparagus as Joe "Mama" Besser
Production 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 (while being burned with oil from an on-stage effect) McKean and Guest began to improvise, inventing characters that became David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel.From the Criterion Collection DVD Commentary
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 and around Los Angeles over a period of about five weeks on handheld 16mm cameras beginning on November 8, 1982. The band's 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 the 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. First takes were used in the final cut as often as possible in order to capture the actors' natural reactions. Reiner wanted to list the entire cast as writers on the film to acknowledge their contributions, but the Writers Guild of America 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. The film was shot like a documentary, without a script or traditional shooting schedule. So much footage was filmed (over 100 hours) that it took three editors to complete the film.
Inspirations for the film included the documentaries Dont Look Back (1967), which follows Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, and Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz (1978), which was about a 1976 concert by The Band billed as the group's farewell. 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 film's Criterion Collection 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 the band had been booked to play at 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 improvisational skills.
Robert Bauer played the same character, Moke, in another Reiner movie, The Sure Thing (1985).
Reception and legacy
Contemporaneous reviews At the time of its release, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars and wrote "This Is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest, most intelligent, most original films of the year. The satire has a deft, wicked touch. Spinal Tap is not that much worse than, not that much different from, some successful rock bands." Ebert later placed the film on his ten best list of 1984 and would later include it in his Great Movies list in 2001 where he called it "one of the funniest movies ever made". Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also awarded it four out of four stars: "It is so well done, in fact, that unless you are clued in beforehand, it might take you a while to realize that the rock group under dissection in This Is Spinal Tap does not really exist."Siskel, Gene (March 29, 1984). "'Spinal Tap' a smashing rock parody". Chicago Tribune. Section 5, p. 12. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised it as "a witty, mischievous satire" and "obviously a labor of love."