Do you often revisit your films, or is this a special case with This Is Spinal Tap?
Rob Reiner: I never go back and think about doing a sequel or looking at it—in the old days they had to do recuts for airlines and for TV; sometimes you had to do loop lines and stuff. I never liked that. This is different, because it’s helping people understand what this is in order to get them to see the sequel. And doing it with Criterion. They are very pristine about preserving things and making them really good.
What was it about this world that made you want to return? This is your first time doing a sequel, as opposed to The Princess Bride 2 or A Few More Good Men.
We never considered doing a sequel to this, because we felt like we [nailed] it. The Library of Congress had put it in the National Film Registry; it was in the Oxford English Dictionary, “These go to eleven.” But [co-writer and co-star] Harry [Shearer] was adamant about suing the people that owned the rights, because we never got any money. We own 40 percent of the film, and the profits—we never got anything; we literally got 82 cents apiece. And so he soon said, “Let’s get the rights back.” It took him years, but he did.
But then we said, “Okay, now, what do we do with this?” We started thinking more about it, and we came up with an idea that came out of a very real place, which is that the guys hadn’t played together in fifteen years. Maybe they hadn’t even talked to each other in fifteen years. Maybe there’s bad blood. Then, in reality, Tony Hendra, who played their manager Ian Faith, passed away. So we said, “What if there’s the contract inherited by his daughter, Hope Faith, which calls for one more concert?” But she thinks, “This isn’t valuable.” They haven’t played in fifteen years, and who cares about them? Then we remembered we saw this thing about Kate Bush, who had the song, [“Running Up That Hill”]. It was on Stranger Things, and it blew up, and it re-energized people about that song and her.
So we thought, what if somebody big is screwing around at a sound check and does a Spinal Tap song. Somebody catches it on an iPhone and throws it up on TikTok. It goes viral. All of a sudden they’re resurrected. And Faith goes, “Oh, now I can make the concert.” All those ideas started coming together.
Watching This Is Spinal Tap with a crowd is the best, but so much revolves around streaming these days. Will the film come to a streaming service at some point, so that more people have a chance to watch it?
It will, but the reason we went with Bleecker Street to distribute it theatrically is because they were the only ones who wanted to. Most of the other studios all just want to throw it up on the platforms. I thought, some people have called it the best comedy ever made. You have to have a shared experience. When you watch a comedy, you have got to laugh with the people. Eventually, it’ll be on HBO Max. But I want people to be in the theater and see it—nothing replaces that.
