Release Year: 1984

Genre: Comedy, Musical

Director: Rob Reiner

Writer: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner

Stars: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer

Remember that Iron Maiden tour in 1977 where the headbanging was out of control and Bob Sawyer got thrown out of the band because he was pretending to play guitar with his teeth but totally wasn't and everyone knew it?

Neither do we.

No worries, though. You've got the next best thing: This is Spinal Tap. Come to think of it, it's the best thing.

This is Spinal Tap follows the fictional (don't tell them that) legendary British heavy metal band Spinal Tap on its 1982 North American tour to promote the release of their new album. After 17 years, the band members have lost none of their enthusiasm but lots of their fans. The film is a dead-on parody of the whole rock documentary genre, with its inside look at happenings onstage and off. It morphed the rockumentary into a mockumentary—the fake documentary—and the rest is (fake) history.

Spinal Tap was the first ever megahit mockumentary; it inspired generations of filmmakers and TV writers since to give it a go. Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman? Mockumentaries. The Office and Parks and Recreation? Mockumentaries. Any comedy that looks and feels like a documentary, but…so isn't.

Because of the documentary format, and the fact it's basically just one long sketch, it's not particularly complex, plot-wise. Short story even shorter: David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel, who have been playing together since they were eight years old, find that their friendship and band chemistry are tested when David's girlfriend sticks her nose in where it's not unanimously wanted. Other than that, it's just about the aging, fading headbangers playing some wicked loud tunes, and hoping that their once-rabid fans become rabid again.

Very few have topped what director Rob Reiner and company were able to achieve with this equal-parts-hilarious-and-utterly-ridiculous send-up of 1980s hard rock hair bands. The 1984 film, produced by Spinal Tap Productions (probably not a coincidence), was not an immediate hit. Just like the song "Sex Farm Woman," it needed time to burrow deep into the audience's consciousness before ultimately cementing its legacy.

But the film eventually became a cult favorite.

• The late great film critic Roger Ebert thought it was "one of the funniest movies ever made" (source).
• Nirvana's drummer at the time, Dave Grohl, called it "the only rock movie worth watching" (source). (Kurt Cobain agreed.)
• Sting told Rob Reiner that he always watches it before he goes on tour (source).
• On the film's 30th birthday, Rolling Stone insisted "it remains the funniest, truest, most emotionally honest movie ever made about rock & roll and the people who live for it" (source).
• And in 2002, the Library of Congress finally got around to naming the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" (source).

Heck, we knew that in 1984.

You should care because David and Nigel are visionaries. Poets. Fire and Ice.

That's according to the bass player, Derek Smalls, anyway. And this guy must know what he's talking about. You have to be something of a visionary yourself to grow facial hair like his.

But most of all, you should care because this film got the whole "mockumentary" ball rolling. The format is done to death nowadays, but back in 1984 it was truly innovative. There were a few mockumentary-style films about bands before Spinal Tap—A Hard Day's Night comes to mind—but those films weren't really shooting for realism. As Rob Nixon of TCM points out, the true ancestors of Spinal Tap were the real rock documentaries:

Anyone who has ever seen a "factual" film about rock musicians, or even brief interviews and band profiles, will recognize the elements here: backstage squabbles, power struggles, and petty jealousies; pretentious comments about the music and an over-inflated sense of importance; on-stage catastrophes and bungled personal appearance events; the hyper-adolescent sexuality of a bunch of overgrown boys on the loose; and the tendency toward hagiography on the part of those who produce-direct these types of documentaries. (Source)

The film was totally convincing. Rob Reiner recalls screenings where audience members would ask each other why someone would make a film about such a mediocre band. They completely fell for it. Real heavy metal groups found it to be a disturbingly accurate portrayal of life on the tour. Ozzy Osbourne (who, btw, was one of the people who thought the film was real) admitted he'd once got lost on the way to the stage, just like our hapless boys in the film (source).

Art imitated life in Spinal Tap and art returned the favor: the film spawned a real—well, "real"—Spinal Tap. The boys in the band—Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean—took the fake band on a real tour. Or is it the real band on a fake tour? Anyway, the guys still performed as Spinal Tap 25 years later, aging rockers indeed.

That's what we'd call a successful mockumentary.