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It was nearly two years ago that actor-filmmaker Rob Reiner got our amps into gear with the news that documentarian Marty DiBergi would be back to chronicle the exploits of British rock band Spinal Tap. I think it’s fair to say that fans were cautiously optimistic, caught between excitement over new material from arguably the world’s favorite fictional band, and wariness that retreading on hallowed ground would somehow diminish the original. For my part, I was quickly won over with the update on DiBergi alone: that 40 years later this character was a “visiting adjunct teacher’s assistant at the Ed Wood School of Cinematic Arts.” Perfect. Well, the moment is upon us, folks — Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is out now in theaters! Interview Mag just had Seth Rogen speak with Reiner, the man who launched a thousand mockumentaries. I’ve excerpted the Spinal Tap portions:
Reiner: You can ask anything. It doesn’t have to be about the movie. It could be sex, religion, politics.
Rogen: [Laughs] Perfect. I’ll start with the movie, though. Had there been improvised comedy before This Is Spinal Tap?
Reiner: Well, onstage you had [the] Second City and such, but I don’t think anybody had done a completely improvised film. People said, “It’s your first film. Why don’t you have a script?” I said, “Because this is what I feel comfortable doing. I was raised doing improv.”
Rogen: You created a format of comedy that is still alive today.
Reiner: I had a conversation with Ricky Gervais the other day, and he was saying that it became the way he did The Office. Then Chris Guest had an idea, and that became Waiting for Guffman, which was done the same way.
Rogen: What made you want to do it?
Reiner: Over the years, people kept saying, “You’ve got to do a sequel.” We said, “We don’t want to, we’ve done it.” But then Harry [Shearer] had filed a lawsuit against the people who owned it, because, you’re going to laugh at this, but the four of us had a deal that said 40 percent of all profits will go to us. I’m not exaggerating, but over the 35 years, we each got 82 cents.
Rogen: Oh my god.
Reiner: So Harry said, “This can’t be right. We should get a little bit more with DVDs and videos and re-releases.” So he sued these companies that owned the rights, and we got back the rights.
Rogen: That’s amazing.
Reiner: Now that we had the rights back, what do we do with it? Initially we were saying, “Let it be.” Then slowly we started coming up with this idea, and we could still make each other laugh, so we started doing it.
Rogen: You wrote it in a room together?
Reiner: Yeah. We came up with ideas for scenes. You sit around and do schtick with each other—Chris calls it schnadling. We do the scene a couple of times and something funny comes out.
Then they spend some time talking about several of the other genre-defining classic films Reiner has helmed, before making their way back to Spinal Tap and how it wasn’t an immediate hit:
Reiner: No, no, no. A lot of people didn’t even get it. We screened it in Dallas, and people came up to me and said, “Why would you make a movie about a band nobody’s ever heard of and one that’s so bad?”
Rogen: They thought it was real.
Reiner: A lot of people did. Even some rockers who saw it were pissed off.
Rogen: Was there a moment where you’re like, “Oh, sh-t, it’s a f–king hit”?
Reiner: When people started quoting it. When you see things like “These go to 11” being entered into the Oxford English Dictionary as a phrase that refers to not just music, but anything that exceeds its capacity, then it’s like, okay, we’re in the zeitgeist.
82 cents over 35 years?? That’s insane! I attempted reverse-engineering the math and it made my brain hurt. 40% of all profits to the four of them — Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer — and over 35 years that 40% split four ways came to 82 cents each. 82 cents multiplied by four comes to $3.28, which is 40% of $8.20. This Is Spinal Tap only made $8.20 in 35 years?! Either I’m mathing wrong (entirely possible!), or those guys were royally screwed over. If only cast member Fran Drescher had been SAG president back in 1984…
Anyway, we’re not here for the math; we’re here for the music! And several lines from the trailer were music to my ears, like the band describing the demise of their drummer: “He sneezed himself into oblivion.” It also seems like people were just champing at the bit for cameos, as I spied Paul McCartney, Elton John, and Questlove. What truly took my breath away, however, was the hair and beard art direction done on Harry Shearer. You guys, he looks like Senior Citizen Yosemite Sam. That alone is worth the price of the theater ticket!