November 20, 2025 • 52 mins
This week on Earsay, we're turning it up to 11 with national treasures Rob Reiner and Michael McKean for a deep dive into A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap. They explore the making of the landmark 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap and its long-awaited sequel, Spinal Tap Two: The End Continues.
Together, they unpack the art of “schnadling” (their term for improvisational riffing), and Ed compares notes from another influential mockumentary — The Office. Rob and Michael reflect on why maintaining affection for these magnificently oblivious characters has made all the difference in the process of building a 40-year mythology around a completely fictional band.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Earsay, the iHeart and Audible Audio Book Club.
I'm Ed Helms and I am the host of another
podcast called Snaffo and with Me is the host of
yet another podcast. Here we go again, my dear buddy
cal Penn.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello, sir, how are you serving? I'm great, I'm great,
You are great?
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Can I just say cal Pen is great? Everybody?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Come on, what a nice thing to say.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I mean, you're freaking funny and delightful and incredibly smart
and insightful. And that's a killer combination of traits.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'm glad I don't have these traits at age eleven. Again,
they were not helpful as an eleven year old, but
I do enjoy them as an adults.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, yeah, that's not uncommon. A precocious child is actually
a very charming adults.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
But man, a man, are they annoying.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I'm sorry to have dug up that trauma. All right,
I'm gonna name some names here. I want you to
tell me what these names have in common?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Are you ready?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yep?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Eric Stumpy, Joe Child's, Peter James Bond, Mick Shrimpton, Richard
Rick Shrimpton, Joe, Mama Besser and Scott Skippy Scuffleton.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
More than half sound familiar, and I honestly cannot place it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, these are all drummers from the band Spinal Tap,
who all met their very untimely demise. In the Spinal
Tap lore, there was a bizarre gardening accident. There was
I believe some one of them spontaneously combusted, rather dramatic.
(01:54):
This is Spinal Tap is, of course, the pioneering nineteen
eighty four mockumentary created by Rob Reiner and starring Reiner
along with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKeon. It
spoofs the over the top world of rock and roll
and heavy metal in the seventies and eighties, and it
also spoofs the documentaries that venerate these rock stars. Kl
(02:17):
do you remember watching Spinal Tap.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
A very very long time ago? And I should also
note it was like one of those two am in
college kind of things. Yeah, kind of viewerships. Of course,
huge Chris Guest Rob Reiner fan, but it has been
a while. I need to revisit.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I have to say, Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest and
all these guys, they live in a very special comedy universe.
And it's so fun to learn about all of their
history together and how their lives kind of interweave and overlap.
And then of course Spinal Tap is its own ecosystem,
like they've created an entire mythology around this totally fake band,
(02:59):
and it is just beyond hilarious, and I have to
say it's very much a part of my own comedy development. Listeners,
if you haven't seen the original nineteen eighty four movie,
you should definitely just stop right now and go see it.
It is so damn special and hilarious. But as a refresher,
Rob Reiner plays Marty de Berghie, a documentary filmmaker who
(03:24):
follows the fictional band Spinal Tap, portrayed by Christopher Guest,
Michael McKeon and Harry Shearer. Marty follows Spinal Tap and
what I would call a series of escalating mishaps. It's
definitely a cult movie, but one that has left a
huge mark on pop culture, not the least of which
is the Christopher Guest line they scout to eleven, a
(03:46):
version of which made it into the Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary in two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
That's an accomplishment right there.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, I know, it's pretty cool if you can like
affect the codified language. I also have to say this
movie is widely considered the original mainstream mockumentary, and that
of course spawned a vast ecosystem of great movies and television,
including all of Christopher guests subsequent movies like Best in
(04:14):
Show and Waiting for Guffman and so many other great ones,
and then of course the show I worked on the
Office that was a mockumentary, right, I feel like The
Office and Parks and Rec and all these great mockumentary
shows are descendants of Spinal Tap in a way.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
That must have been awesome. Then to have loved Spinal
Tap so much and then get to work on The
Office in I don't know if saying in the style
of is even correct, but like, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It was The Office was a dream in so many,
so many ways, which is a whole conversation for another day.
But today we're talking about the new audiobook A Fine
Line Between Stupid and Clever, the story of Spinal Tap.
It's written by Rob Reiner, with Christopher Guest, Harry Shear,
and Michael mckeonnon and voiced by Rob Reiner, although they
(05:07):
all appear in the audio book as well. It's a
history of how the movie and the band came together,
the film's unexpected afterlife, and how forty years later everyone
got the band back together for the sequel, which is
out now. It's called Spinal Tap two. The end continues,
I mean, come on, is that not the best title ever?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
The audiobook also includes an in universe oral history featuring
all the actors as their respective characters. It's called Smell
the Book for the uninitiated. That's a bit of wordplay
on one of Spinal TAP's albums from within the movie
called Smell the Glove, and what that means God only knows.
(05:51):
But this is an absolutely ridiculous and delightful and wonderful
component of the audiobook, and it features all of the
main players just doing their own over the top stick
cal I'm super excited for this one. I get to
talk to not one, but two of the core people
who made Spinal Tap, and this audiobook happen incredible.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I am jealous. So I'm just gonna get out of
here and we'll talk again after the interview's.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Over all, right, I'll see you later.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Now, here to get into a fine line between stupid
and clever. The story of Spinal Tap is the audiobooks
author and voice Spinal Tap, creator and director and co
star director of stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally,
The Princess Bride, and so many more great movies. Rob
Reiner also joining the show. One of the great comedic actors.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Of all time.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
He is, of course, in the movie Spinal Tap, as
well as Spinal Tap.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
The end continues.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
He's incredible in the great show Better Call Saul. He's
in other movies like bestin Show, Oh, and just an
overwhelming resume of tremendous comedy over so many decades. Rob
Reiner and Michael McKeon, Welcome to Earsay. It is truly
such a pleasure to have you join our audio book
(07:14):
club today.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
It's a pleasure to be here. Ed nice to be joined.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Well.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Of course, you are part of the incredible team behind
Spinal Tap. Rob, you directed that legendary movie. Michael, you
are part of the band. This is such a thrill
from me because that movie means so much to me.
I remember it came out in nineteen eighty four. I
(07:40):
was ten years old. I was not aware of it then,
but very soon after when it landed at Blockbuster Video,
I was like, I'd been hearing about this from the
older kids at school, and like, this is a thing
I had to and I got it. I forced my
dad to rent it for me, and he was like,
what the hell is this?
Speaker 4 (08:00):
He's looking at the.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Hard rock picture on the front, and he's like, well, what, okay, fine,
and we get home, we start watching it, and I'll
be honest as like a twelve year old at that time,
I don't think I got half of it. I got
half of it. Yeah, you got it by half of it,
and we know which half. Yeah, But my dad was howling, oh,
(08:21):
he was yeah, And I realized, like, this is important,
this is something I have to latch on to, and
so of course I just rewatched it over the years
and it's become very much a part of my comedy
DNA truly, and I want to thank you for that.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Nada our pleasure. You're totally welcome.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Do either of you have a favorite scene from the movie.
I mean, that's an impossible question, but do you do
something jump out?
Speaker 5 (08:47):
I used to say that my favorite thing because I
had nothing to do with it, and it's brilliant. It's
about a minute and a half, maybe two minutes. Rob
could Robbie tell me of Chris just soloing on the
stage with you know, with all the feedback, and then
the violin.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
And my favorite moment in that moment is he picks
up the violin and uses it again, you know, but
then at one moment he just a little the peg. Yeah,
just tunes a peg a little bit, just to get
it just right. It's it.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
It's great pantomime, noisy pantomime. I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
It's well, my favorite, my favorite scene, and it's become
the title of the book that we that we put
out called a fine Line between Stupid and Clever. And
my favorite line in the movie is a fine line
between stupid and clever. And it's a scene where spinal
Tap is their gig has just been canceled, and they
(09:40):
were sitting in the hotel and the lobby there, and
all of a sudden, this very big famous rock musician,
Duke Fame, walks in and they say hello, and he's
a big shot and he's got a manager played by
Howard Hessman, and Howard says, listen, I wish I could
talk to you guys, but I have to go in
the lobby and wait for the limo. I don't have
(10:01):
time to talk. I love that.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
And then he leaves, and then everybody says, what a
wanker that Duke Fame. He's a wanker. There we used
to he used to open for us.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
He people boodoo. He was terrible. And then the manager
comes back. He says, I don't understand Duke Fame's got
it because they had an album that they couldn't release
called Smell the Glove, which had a sexist cover and
they couldn't release it. And he says, well, I understand
Dupe Fame.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
He has an album cover where he's naked and there's
all these women that are whipping him.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
And and then Tony Hendrew plays. The manager says, well,
you don't understand the difference is he's the victim. See
in your album, she's the victim because she's on all
fours and she's being made to sniff a glove. And
then the guys are like they're puzzled. He's, oh, I
see what they did. There's a twist. They turned around,
and one guy says, yeah, there's a fine line between
(10:54):
stupid and then Harry says and clever. And I love that,
and to me, that's the essence of spinal top fine
line between stupid and clever. I think you're right. And
it's also something that happened on the moment. It happened conversational.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
I mean, the entire film is improvised, but it was
one of those things we were all kind of thinking
on the same track and it just kind of spilled out, right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
And it's interesting because we shot the film with one camera.
We shot maybe a scene two or three times, and
it because, like Michael says, it's improvised. You don't know
what's going to come out on what's you know, it's
not going to be matched. It's not going to be
like a script when you say the same things, so
different things would come out. And in that case, the punchline,
which is Harry saying and clever, is off camera. Now
(11:41):
you normally would you know, you'd focus on that, Yeah,
you pick it up. But we found this in the
cutting room and I said, well that works in the
tracks and so, and it works. The joke works even
though the punchline's not on camera.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
It's the title of this book and audiobook, and I
think you're right. It captures not only what's so fun
about the spirit of the movie, but also to me,
what you have done as the creators of Spinal Tap
is to create these characters that are so beautifully stupid.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Thank you right.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
They're right at this sort of like nexus of confidence,
obliviousness and stupidity. But to execute that and to improvise
that with such precision and consistency takes a profound cleverness.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Well, we had our work cut out for us because
the people we were doing, the people we were embodying,
take themselves very very seriously, of course, and if you
do that, if you're on the level, that's where the
funny comes from. Because there's something about the audacity of
someone who's got a very dim bulb up here telling everyone.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Else what's what, and also their philosophies of life and
how deep and profound they are.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Yeah, what's wonderful is we have, you know, these great
albums where you know, rock and roll creation and all
these very high fallutine ideas about these guys thinking about
how they've really got a grasp of the way the
world works and the way the universe works, and to
be honest. You know, there were a lot of heavy
metal rock musicians that were very upset with us because
(13:28):
they did take themselves seriously and they're making fun of us.
You know, that's not right. You know, we really do
make great music and all this stuff, and they do
make great music, but it's not as high fallutine as
they think it is.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Isn't that the sort of highest compliment though? Doesn't that
mean that you've really punched the button if they're feeling
a little agitated at the parody of self importance?
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Yeah, I think so. And a lot of them over
time got to really dig it. Sure. I mean they
accepted it and they said, oh, this is really cool
and they love the fact that we were making fun. Yeah.
Sincere form of flattery and all that.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
So I had heard that, I've read about some of
the blowback at the time from people like Ozzy Osbourne
and Steven Tyler. How real was that? I mean, did
they hold grudges for years? Was this something that affected
your lives?
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Well, here's the thing. Blowback used to be a different
sized animal than it is now. We encountered Steven Tyler
and this was his thing. It was like too close
too close, and he would smile a little bit, but
mainly it was like this hurts it's so close. Yes, yeah,
and we heard that Ozzie didn't like it, but it
was the same thing. It was like I felt uncomfortable, yeah,
(14:39):
because I felt spied on, But that came down as
they didn't like it, right, right, and it's like nonsense.
I met Ozzie years later and he was adored the
movie and he was great about it. But now it's
like somebody says anything and you'll get thirty thousand people.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Said, did you hear that?
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah, yeah, so it's a different world. I mean, the
same thing happened Actual Rose and then Slash basically said
to him, no, no, it's funny they're making it. And
then Actual Rose, oh yeah, I see, I get what
they're doing. And the same thing. When I first met Sting,
he was just you know, hitting with the police and everything,
and he said, listen, I watched this movie over and over.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Yeah, you know.
(15:19):
I mean, so that was like, you know, a great compliment.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
The movie is affectionate, and this is what I think
elevates certain comedy from other comedy. You're not really punching down.
There's a genuine affection for these characters, as oblivious as
they are and as self important as they are, and
you're sort of having fun with their hubris. But I
never felt like there was ridicule baked in there.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
And we we're the first generation that grew up on
rock and rolls right in the fifties, and we love
rock and rolls. Of course, we all grew up with that,
so you know, it was a love of the music
and also could find what's funny about it too, exactly,
so you know, you try to mix those things.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
So when you're saying your favorite band is printed on
your forehead, and it's like it's who you are.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And every article of clothing that you wear, that's right,
that's right, and it's all about that, and it's like,
you look at yourself, what a stupid kid I was?
Speaker 5 (16:13):
And boy I was happy. Yeah, I love the music.
So I was been listening to the Kinks a lot lately.
That's kind of my my pet third band. You know,
everybody loved the Beatles, everybody loved the Who and the
Stones and all that, but the Kinks were always like
so on the money to me, and I know I
wasn't an English guy, you know from Muswell Hill.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
I was this American kid.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
But there's something about those days which when you're sixteen,
that's what you do. You take on that coloration, you know,
and it stays with you, or it stays with me.
I show no signs of growing up.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Amen.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
But I just bought A King's album about a week ago,
so you know, there you goabulous. You know.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
One time I was at this party once for Nick
Poledge was his birthday, ninetieth birthday party, and his stepson,
Max is a musician. He's a guitarist. Now he plays
with Taylor Swift, but he was with Kesha. He's played
with a lot of different bands. Nick says to me,
you know, he's got a spinal tap tattoo on his back. No, really,
get out of here. So I go over to him
(17:15):
and I said, Max, Nick told me that you have
a spinal taptooth. He takes down his shirt and.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
In the back he has the cover of Shark Sandwich
tattooed to his back, which is the sandwich with a
little finn.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Coming out of the Wow. Yeah. So yeah, So you
talk about having your favorite band tattoo to your far ahead.
He literally had a tattoo.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
All right, I want to talk a little bit about
the creative process. The audiobook details Schneedling tell us what
exactly that is and the role it plays in the
sort of writing and execution or even in the origin
of the movie.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
That's a term that Chris Guessed first threw out a
long time ago. He referred to the back and forth
of improvisation as you're snailing with each other. You just
kind of riffing, riffing with each other. You know where
that where that what that word means exactly? Or it's
a made up word, just a made up word. Okay,
here's a great story. You got you like this? So
(18:19):
we've been trying there's a guy in prison in in
that's not the funny.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Part, not so far, not so far.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
But there's a guy in prison in Texas. His name
is Nan and Williams. And this guy has been in
we've been trying to get out for a long time.
He's a great guy. He's in there for crime he
didn't commit. He's got three master's degrees, he's written books,
he teaches all these young inmates. And he asked me
he said, you know, I send me a book, send
(18:45):
me one of the books, you know, fine line between stupid.
So I sent him the book. We talked about it
and he read some You know, these kids, they don't
know who's spiled happens, They don't know who I am,
they don't know any of it, but they're listening to it,
and they picked up on snailing. Says, hey, what's that
we stopped and the start we gotta stop schnadling with
each other. So you got these prisoners down and down
(19:06):
in Houston snadling.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It's therapeutic for sure.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
That's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, So schnadling is essentially improvisation. There's an anecdote in
the audiobook about a video shoot that you guys are doing,
and the schnadling sort of starts during a like an
over shot there all everybody's lying on the floor.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Yeah, we were doing a takeoff of our debut. Yeah,
this was a takeoff of Midnight Special. Was part of
a TV show that had a satire of all kinds
of different things on television. You know, we had sitcoms
and telethons and commercials, and one of the things we
did was this midnight special. Eye came out as Wolfman,
Jack and I introduced for the first time Spinal Tap,
(19:53):
England's loudest band, and they came out and they played
a song called rock and Roll utt. Pire of it
was live, and part of it was kind of an
MTV video, like cheesy video. Cheap, yeah, really cheap. And
uh there was one part where they had this, I
guess a fogger or a smoke, a bee smoke or something,
and it kept leaking hot oil on them. Yeah, and
(20:16):
we had them on the floor. We were trying to
do like a Buzzby Berkeley kind of thing with the
legs going, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Right, but you're getting like a medieval torture. Torture, yeah, yeah, yeah,
of some sort.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
But they started, you know, they started making fun and
they started, you know, schnadling. They started doing shtick and
those characters. And then we said, Jesus, these guys, we
should find something else for them to do, not just
lie on the floor and get hot oil board on them.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Although although that's all a conversation, another conversation.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
That's fabulous now when you guys are schnadling, especially while
the camera is rolling, Are you breaking a lot? Are
there any bad laughers in your group?
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Well, there were a few scenes that ended slightly early,
and Paul Benedict, who was one of the great guys ever,
who plays the hotel clerk, and he gets into a
contretempt with Tony who's making cracks about his sexuality and everything.
And it's like Paul comes in for a day and
just lays all of us out. He's so brilliant, so funny.
(21:19):
Tony Hendris, the manager, is always carrying around this cricket bat,
so he puts the cricket bat up on the counter
while he's talking to the guy get these rooms straightened out,
and Paul, the hotel clerk, just points to the bat
and he goes, well, you can't take that to your room.
And Tony goes, innocently enough, why not, And Paul said, well,
(21:43):
it's enormous, that's all there was to it. It makes
no sense, no, but the little story that we told
ourselves in our heads at that moment started laughing before
he even got the rest of the word out. And
there's no reason why that's so brit funny, but it was.
And Fred Willard also had away. He was one of
(22:05):
the best improvisers. And you can see in this one
scene where he's telling me about the gig they're going
to play on the Army base, and you can see
Chris's guest kind of ducking behind somebody because he's starting
to go you just want to root the take. And
there was one that I actually went and that was
Chris totally surprised me. He's playing a piano, very quiet,
(22:28):
kind of classical piece and I go, that's interesting. You know,
that's something very different from what you normally play. He says, well,
it's you know, it's a classic comedy Mozart and Bacchus
called mock piece. It's in D D minor, which I
think is the saddest of all keys, and it's just
simple lines intertwined.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And I said, well, what do you call this? He says,
lick my love pump, and I went, I went, we
had to do that all scene over and see.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I was notorious the Office for ruining takes, for laughing,
and there were, like you described, Chris, there's a scene
in a Christmas episode where Steve Krell is being so
funny that I have to duck behind a plant and
I'm behind the plant for the majority of the scene.
But it's part of what's so fun and frustrating about improvisation, right,
(23:21):
is that the best stuff can get ruined so easily.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's how things happen in a
good improvisational company. And there are a few, and there
have been many over the years. The mistake you can
make is to look for that punchline instead of living
in the scene. Yes, because that's amen some of the
Peter Bonders is one of the best improvisers I ever saw,
and I never saw him crack a joke or anything
(23:47):
like it.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
He just existed in the scene. Anything he was doing.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Was completely absurd, but he took it dead seriously and
he was hilarious and he would never break in a
million years.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That is the secret, just to take take it all
dead seriously, take it all bitch, and not chase the
not chase the punchlines. There are a lot of scenes
that feel in the movie completely improvised.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Like they're all improvised, every every all the dialogue is
improvised completely.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I guess that's my question. Like there's the talking about
the drummers that have died and Chris breaks in that,
by the way, on the vomit line, yes, which I think,
which he says, and he starts to chuckle, but he
saves it.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Yeah, and he keeps it in character more or less
right enough.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But I love it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's just a little glimpse under the veil. But then
there are scenes like the legendary amp that goes to eleven,
which clearly was.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Prep Oh yeah, well, yeah, we had the we had
the prop. We knew that we were going to have
an AMP that went to eleven, but we didn't know
how we were going to get to it, or how
it was going to be revealed, or what we were
or how you feature something this big in a movie
that's a documentary, or what we were going to say
about it. And my favorite moment in there is Chris
(25:07):
is showing me around all the different guitars and then
he shows me this amp that goes up to eleven
and I said, well, I don't why do you have
it gold? He said, well, it's one louder, isn't it.
I said, well, yeah, but I mean, couldn't you make
the top number be ten and just make that a
little louder? And he had no answer. For that I
hit him with something that I basically painted him into
(25:29):
a corner made him was a long, long pause, and
he goes, well, this goes to eleven. Yeah, he had
no answer.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
For the honesty of his performance in that moment is
so perfect.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
There's another little tiny moment that Chris does. It's when
we're in the airport and Janine has taken over the
management of the band and she's laying out all this
shit about you know, astrology is telling us to go
to this city and not this one. She's re arranging
everything and Chris, who was wearing a Colt Boy hat
for the only moment in the film he's wearing that,
(26:03):
She says, have you got this? And he just, without
even really looking at her, he kind of tilts his
head and holds up the same thing she's reading it
from and then puts it down. And there's something about
that moment that just says everything, how about you go
to hell but without actually saying it, and don't worry
about me, I'm out of here anyway.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It's great. Laden that's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
There's one moment I have to know if it was improvised,
and it's the fabulous scene with Bruno Kirby A is
the limo driver and I know that what you shot
was actually much longer than what made the movie. But
the bit where he starts to go off on Frank
Sinatra and the window between the limo driver cab and
(26:49):
the passenger section.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Just slowly rises. Yeah, I think that was one of
you guys just did that or something. No.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I think going into the scene, we said, when he
starts going on about stuff, just shut him out of
the world.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yeah, but we didn't know where.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
So funny, it's just so funny, and Bruno Kirby's reaction
was perfect.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
Yeah, there's an outtake of scene where we get his
character really high and he winds up singing my way
into a chunk of pizza and in his underwear, in
his underwear, and then he passes out. It nearly killed him.
So missed a desk by like this much in the
hotel room. Wow, but it was awfully funny. But it
(27:33):
was just, oh, we if we go there, we'll be
there for ten minutes. Yeah, we had some great stuff
that wound up.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
As they say on the cutting room floor, my favorite
thing was and it's it just it was a great joke,
great stuff, but it just took too long to unfold.
There was a band that opened for Spinal Tap at
one point called The Dose, which was kind of a
punk band, and the lead singer was Sherry Currey from
from the Runaways, and you see then Nigel and her
(28:02):
are kind of canoodling a little bit, and the next
scene Nigel has a herpie sore on his lip and
we don't make much of it. The next thing you
see David, you know, played by Michael, and he's also
making out with her, and the next and Viv and
the next scene herpee saw. Yeah, it makes it way
all the way around. And then there's a band meeting
(28:23):
where five of them are sitting around deciding they're going
to vote whether or not they're going to keep The
Dose on the tour. And before there's four guys with
herpe stores they saying I think we should draw I think,
and the drummers. The only guy without a herpe story,
he says, I think they're gonna think about them. But
it just took so long, and the only remnant, the
only thing left is there's a scene where you see
(28:45):
Nigel and David they both have herpee, So we never
explain it no, and it gets a laugh for some reason.
I don't know. I never know to this day why
I got that laugh.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
For one reason, there's this little undercurrent about how close
Snigel and David really are and always have been, you know. Uh,
and it's God. So you're saying it's a gay thing.
That's what you're saying. I'm saying it's it's a gray area.
It's a gay area. But Richard Curtis, the wonderful screenwriter
(29:16):
and director, I met him and he said, you know,
Spinal TAP's my favorite romantic comedy. He says, it's got
it's got the same structure. It's you guys belong together,
and you know, everything else in the world is kind
of a distraction because you're looking for that moment when
you were two little assholes on the street corner playing
skiffle music, you know, And so it.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Was like, Okay. Ricky Gervay said the same exact thing
when I interviewed him. He said, it's a romantic comedy.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I hadn't thought of that.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So Spinal Tap is obviously a parody band. The songs
are insanely funny, but they're not exactly a joke.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Themselves. Let's let's listen to a clipping.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
Okay, so the songs are hilarious, but they're also objectively
(30:22):
great songs.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
That was the goal. The goal was the humor would
come out in the lyrics, never in the music. They're
all great musicians, they all take it seriously, and the
music is good, like you say, so, we never wanted
the music to be the thing that got the laughs.
It was always the lyrics.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I'm just curious how you arrived at that. I remember
a debate we had on the Office. My character was
in a production of Sweeney Todd in the World of
the Office, and there was a debate in pre production.
It's Scranton Community theater. Do we want these actors to
(31:00):
be bad and for it to sort.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Of be silly?
Speaker 1 (31:03):
And I felt very passionately that that even community theater
actors are oftentimes extremely talented and they're extremely committed, and
that that isn't what's funny about the scene.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
It's it's a very tricky line to walk because they
can't be sensational actors, sure, but they can be adequate proficient.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I mean, Chris, you're not finding humor in how bad
they are?
Speaker 4 (31:30):
No, but Chris Guess made this thing about community theatical
waiting for Guffman, of course, and it's kind of perfect
because they're, you know, they're doing their thing. But it's
just like the line that we have to tread with
Spinal Top. We love what they do, but we also
can make fun of it.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I have the book and the audiobook, and obviously this
podcast is about the audiobook. Both the book and the
audiobook contain this fabulous of little surprise at the end
Smell the book, which is the oral history of Spinal Tap,
where you guys basically just live inside the mythology and
(32:11):
make up new memories as you go, and it's wild.
After all these years, it just it feels like all
these fake stories have just taken on the weight of
actual rock and roll cannon.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Before we started the first film, we had a bible.
I mean, we knew who these characters were, because when
you're improvising, especially David and Nigel, if they were kids
together from Squatney, they have to have shared experiences and
so we improvise. But we also have the background of
knowing who left the band, who joined the band. We
(32:47):
knew all those things. Yeah, so we could riff off
of that rather than just have to make all that
up right.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
We did do a little cramming right before we did
the interviews for the book, where we said, let's.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Go over this again.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Okay, yeah, are we gonna get to lesson Mary Chiswick
or what are you know? There are three dozen names
we can pick up, you know, we can throw in
of course, and that we all shared this history. We
weren't going to get to it all, but it's nice
to have it there.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Yeah. Yeah, like a giddy in Bible pretty much.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Sure, when you're in those sort of schnadling moments, do
you find yourself in a flow state?
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Ever?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Do you ever find that?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It just you feel like, oh, this is definitely gonna
make the final cut.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
This is the I never know. I never know what's
gonna make the final clup. All I know is just
stay in the moment. Stay in the moment, because I'm
working with brilliant minds and brilliant comedians and brilliant improvisers,
and something's gonna come out and I don't know what
it's gonna be. I never know.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
So it's been forty years since the original spinal tap
forty one actually forty one now yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
Or is the spinal theft people would call the Golden Anniversary.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
So finally with the film sequel out now Spinal Tap two,
The End Continues, which is just one of the greatest
comedy movie titles of all time. I'm wondering, after such
a definitive first film, talk about some of the challenges
and opportunities that presented themselves in revisiting these characters. Was
(34:24):
it truly effortless kind of slipping back into.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
This, well? Did it take a lot? Of The effortless
part was the way we interacted with each other. That
always is there. We always had fun with that. But
the idea of doing a sequel to something that we
all said, no, we've done it, let it be. It's
a high bar. You know, it's a really high bar,
and we're old. But as we talked, something came out
(34:49):
of it that was very real, which is, first of all,
the guys hadn't played together in fifteen years, so we said, well,
what's that about. Is there bad bloody not talking? What's
going on? And then the idea of older people still
touring or still performing that was out there. M Paul
McCartney was in the movie he's still performing. You see
(35:12):
the stones, you see the who the who's out there
doing it, and the eagles and oasis back together. So
that's a real thing. And then we had to think, well,
what's the reason why weren't they talking and what's the
reason that throws them back together. Once we had that,
we said, okay, it's a story that could stand on
its own. You don't have to have seen the first one.
(35:34):
Obviously better if you have, you'll get some of the references.
But if you haven't. And we had screenings where half
the people had never seen the first one and they
they went with this, they thought this was great.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yeah, well huge, congrats on just the universe that you've
created and now expanded on even further with Spinal Tap two.
It's it is a hell of a treat and I
hope you make maybe at least three or four more.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Do you have it in yet?
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Here's the thing, and we can tell you because it's
not a secret. No, well, it's been released to the
press that after we finished Spinal Tap two, the end continues.
We were approached by the Heritage Foundation in England to
do a concert at Stonehenge at the actual stoneheng Oh
(36:27):
my God, and so it was an impossible thing not
to say yes to. And we got together. We went
over to England and did a concert in front of
this Stonehenge and you know this, Eric Clapton came on
and performed, and Shanaiah Twain came on. And my favorite
(36:48):
thing be though, was Josh Grobin sings a Bitch School
And it's worth the price of admission yet. Yeah, it's
pretty amazing. Yeah, yeah, will that be that'll come out
next year'll be visible next year?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Oh fantastic.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Yeah, and that one's called it's called Spinal Tap at Stonehenge,
the final finale.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Per But don't give away the ending, rob No, I'm
not gonna do. I won't do.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That isn't redundancy always funny?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Listen.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
We wrote a song called tonight, I'm gonna rocket tonight.
How do you think we feel about that?
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Yeah? There it is.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
All right.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
We're gonna jump into a section of the interview called
plot twist, where I'm just gonna just fire at you
some questions, all right. Spinal TAP's infamous custom amps famously
went one louder to eleven. What in your lives have
you turned up to eleven?
Speaker 4 (37:59):
That's a good quest question. My Lee's your time. It's
approaching one hundred percent, and I'm delighted.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
You've turned it down to eleven. No, no, no, I
just listened. Rob and I are the same age. We've
all been doing a lot of things for a long time,
and it's like really appreciating that. It sounds very corny,
very hallmark, but I really do think that me not
doing much of anything on a really nice day is
(38:26):
better than.
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Anything that's fabulous. Listen.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
I'm probably of the four of us, I would say
the most driven.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I'm crazy driven, and in my mind, I haven't gotten
the eleven yet. I mean as close as I ever
got with you. Know it's a cliche, but you're the
birth of your children. I mean that is like ooh,
that can't get doesn't get any better. But in terms
of my work and stuff, I still feel like there's
an eleven out there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Amazing. Oh I love that.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Two very different answers, Yes, all right.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
The band had new.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Spinal tap moments like getting lost backstage or the monumental
stone hinge prop being extremely tiny, have you experienced a
moment in your professional or personal life that felt like
a true spinal tap moment.
Speaker 5 (39:14):
In nineteen eighty four, when the film came out, we
played a handful of cities, and some of them, the
New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston were really well attended.
Boston was huge, but the film played for a year
in Boston. It became like this is what we when
we go to the movies, this is what we do.
(39:34):
So we were really kind of hot. And we played
at a place called the Channel Club. And I've had
this corroborated by people who were there, said, man, I
was there the night you played, and it did it
really rain on the stage?
Speaker 4 (39:47):
And yeah it did.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
There was this terrible storm outside and the stage was
drenched and We're there with electric instruments and I'm wearing
boxing shoes. I'm wearing boxing shoes which have this little
kind of you know, just the thickness of Barbara Walter's skin.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Yeah, and it.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
Was like, well, if we go here, at least we're
a hit in this town, you know.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
But it really was. It was like and Chris and
I are looking at each other going goodbye.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Maybe wait, so this is your spinal tap moment in
your life is also an actual spinal tap.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:22):
I mean we've I've had little things, you know, when
we did all the way this play that I did
in New York, but we did in Cambridge first, by
the way, I loved that playing Oh thank You, thank you. Yeah,
that was great, and Bryan Cranston played LBJ. The first
scene is he's having this vision about what the iman No,
(40:43):
I'm the president. All of a sudden, JFK's been killed.
I'm the president. What am I gonna do? How'm gonna
do this? And then his desk rises out of the
floor and he goes behind his desk and begins the
scene proper with other people. Well, opening night, it got
halfway up it's and so they said, well, maybe we're
going to reboots. Everybody's standing on the stage and they
(41:05):
lower it again and they bring it up again and
then it just breaks and he goes, good, gut no yeah,
And so then it's like dealing with that, but those
are in the moments they're happening. It's horrible stuff, but
you know what, tomorrow and I will come back and
try it again, you know, That's all you can do amen.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
Well for me. I mean I've had a million of
those kind of things on stage where stuff goes wrong,
but one that just popped in my head. I was
in the Summer Theater in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Albert Brooks
was in the company with me. We were doing a
production of Mary Mary, you know, which is a comedy,
and we're eighteen years old. We're playing people in their
(41:46):
forties with the corn starch and the hair and all
this stuff. And you know, they had shows once a week.
You know, they turned the show over every week. So
you do a show for a week, you take the
set down and put the other set back up. And
they didn't get the set quite ready for the first
performance of Mary Mary, and Albert and I are on
(42:06):
stage and we're doing, you know, back and forth, back
and forth, and then he goes to make an exit
and there was supposed to be some escape stairs and
he just he just went off the edge and gone
in. In other words, I opened the door, he walked out
the door and just disappeared. Oh no. And then he
(42:26):
comes back. He comes back and his head was just
on the.
Speaker 5 (42:30):
Floor above the thing and he and he goes bye
bye like this he's had a wife.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
So yeah, those those kinds of things happened. I love
the best, Yeah all right.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
One of my favorite little tidbits in the audiobook describes
how the creative team used Grimsby card oh yes, which
were cards with the stern news anchor Roger Grimsby's head
shot on one side.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
Yes. Harry Shearer was going with a woman who worked
at ABC News at the time, and Roger Grimsony was
a broadcaster. He was on camera, and they had a
whole stack of like promotional cards where they had picture
Roger Grimsby on the front and was empty on the back.
We used these cards. We had a big bulletin board
and anytime we have a scene that we thought, well,
(43:16):
this could work, we put it up on the bulletin board.
And it got to be where if we had an
idea and we thought maybe it was good, or should
it be in the movie or not, we would say
does this merit a Grimsby? In other words, should we
commit this to a Grimsby? And so if it did,
if it got on the board, it was a Grimsy.
(43:36):
When we did the sequel, Michael goes, where did you
get those pictures? Michael you got.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
I just grabbed it off the internet. He got off
the internet. There was a picture Roger Grimsey and he
had an old.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Stack of Grimsby's made up, so we, you know, keep
the tradition alive.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Oh that's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I feel like somebody needs to sell Grimsby cards to screenwriters.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
Oh my god, the money will come rolling in. Yeah,
I mean, what a million dollar idea.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yes, Oh guys, this is our next adventure, this is
our next step. Here we go all right, Well, you
know it's it is such a fun, clever creative technique.
Do you have either of you have an unexpected or
unusual method in your own creative process.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
God, I don't know. I wouldn't even know how to
begin to describe where things come from.
Speaker 5 (44:27):
I just have to keep remembering to breathe, you know,
because sometimes if you're kind of waiting for something to happen,
you kind of lose the reality because a real person
is going to be breathing. I've just sometimes I got
to remind myself okay, and it just helps you stay
with them. I don't know, I don't have any other style.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
That's a hell of a good answer.
Speaker 5 (44:47):
I've always liked making these guys laugh and and they
they know I'm a soft.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Touch when it and he does all the time. I mean,
that's the thing about Michael and his brain. Will you know,
all three of them, their brains work in different ways,
but very fast, and they come at comedy in different ways,
and you just never know how it's gonna work. I'm
you know, I'm George Burns. I'm you know, I'm my
dad to mel Brooks. I tried to you know, I'm
(45:13):
the straight guy to hopefully get the best out of them.
And it's pretty easy when you're working with them, I'm
telling you, it's pretty easy. They come prepared to get
goodwood on the ball every time.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
You guys have incredible chemistry. And it is so fun
to see it still, just to see those sparks flying
forty years later, it's just it's just as alive as
it ever was. It's it's so so great.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Last question, what are you listening to or reading right now?
And and or what's next on your list?
Speaker 5 (45:49):
I'm reading the new Mark Twain autobiography, which is this
thick and amazing. I'm sorry, the new He just put
out a new one. No, no, not the new and
it's not an autobiography. It's ron Cherno was biography. Oh fabulous,
and it is. It's it's amazing. And what am I
listening to? I'm listening to a couple of things. I
(46:10):
got a book called Consciousness. What is consciousness? So this
is fascinating and so I listened to it at night.
It puts me right to sleep.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
I can tell. It's a really good book. But I
lose consciousness. It should be called unconsciousness. Unconsciousness, yes, yeah,
but it's it's a cool book. And yeah, I.
Speaker 5 (46:29):
Listened to I listened to a lot of different kinds
of things. I'll tell you my favorite guy. There's a
guy named Bill Homewood, like home h O.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
M E.
Speaker 5 (46:38):
Wood Homewood, British guy. And he did a fifty two
hour unabridged reading of The Counter of Monte Cristo.
Speaker 4 (46:49):
It's one of the greatest things I've ever heard. It was.
Speaker 5 (46:52):
It's like, I can't wait to get in the car
and just drive nowhere just so I can listen to
this and do nothing but this.
Speaker 4 (46:58):
He's brilliant.
Speaker 5 (46:59):
He also did The Three Musketeers and Tom Jones and
a couple of other things like that.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Wait, how long did that take you to listen to
fifty two hours?
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Michael? Do you listen to books more than you read them,
or do you read more than you listen.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
I'm starting to listen more than I read, but I
still love to just park myself with a book. But
at night, you know, if I'm kind of trying to
chill out, I'll plug into something like that. And there's
a woman named Shanade Dixon who does most of Dickens
and it's amazing. Shaneed Dickens, you should call herself amazing.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
And Maria Margley's also does a great There's a lot
of great Dixon stuff.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
I love blues music, I love country music, I love bluegrass.
I like to watch Instagram and what I like about
it because I'm old. They you know, in TikTok, he'll
give you two seconds, they'll give you a full performance
of somebody. So if like Billy Strings comes on, I'm like,
(47:58):
ooh good, there a whole Billy String's number. Or if
it's Linda Ronstat harmonizing with Dolly Parton and Emmilu Harris,
you know, I'll listen to all that or Christaple, whoever
it is. And I love I will just listen to
those kind of things. That's what I love listening to.
And any blues guitarist go from one to the other.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Yeah, we're in the same sort of musical loops there.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
I love it. Any audio books or.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
Books, well books right now, you see, I'm in the
midst of finishing up a book based on this podcast
that I did last year about the jeffk assassinations called
Who Killed jeffk We did it on iHeartRadio with sold
with solo Dad O'Brien. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it got
to like ten million downloads and people like this. So
(48:53):
Simon and Schuster asked us if we would write a book,
so we started working on it, the two guys that
are work with on the podcast. So I've been writing
on that. So I still I'm reading. There's a book
that came out about what happened to Dorothy cl Gallan,
and so I just keep reading more and more stuff
about that. Right now, I'm kind of still immersed in
(49:14):
that world.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Wow, that's a good one. That's a juicy one.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Well, Rob Reiner, Michael McKeon, it was truly excellent having
you on Earsay.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Thanks for having us Yeah, thank you, Ed, thanks for
having us on. Yeah, absolutely anytime.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, I wish we could.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Wish we'd just be hanging out having a beer right now.
Speaker 5 (49:36):
We're allowed to you. I'm going to continue hanging out.
You just might not be there.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
You'll just keep.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Talking into your microphone for the next forty five minutes.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Well, truly a pleasure, guys.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
Thanks a lot, Ed, thanks a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Well, that was awesome.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
This was like such a.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Dream for me to just pick their brain and hear
so many of the stories. As a person that works
in comedy, I just love to hear how other people's
brains work. Yeah, like and how their process works, and
especially material that I've appreciated so deeply for so many years.
Just to get under the hood and just see.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
How that sausage is made. It's really a.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Privilege, especially when it makes you laugh.
Speaker 4 (50:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
I just find such joy in being able to go
into the brains of other weirdos in the best way possible.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
As a weirdo.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
It's fun to learn about other weirdos totally.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
And you and I are very proud to be weird.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Of Yes, of course, it's a badge.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Of honor.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
All right, well you can find the new audiobook A
fine line between stupid and clever, the story of Spinal
Tap at Audible. Thank you for tuning into this episode
of ear Saying the Audible and iHeart Audio book Club.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
On the next episode, we're diving into a supernatural romance
co authored by Nicholas Sparks and m Night Shamalan. There's
a haunted house, a ghost love story, a mystery that
must be solved. You don't want to miss this.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah, that sounds quite saucy.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Yeah, extremely Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well we'll see you then and if you had fun
with us today, consider following the show wherever you listen. Hearsay,
the Audible and iHeart Audio book Club is a production
of Iheart's Ruby Studio.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
We're your hosts Ed Helms and Kelpin. Our executive producer
is Matt Schultz, with theme music and post production by
Marcus Bagala.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
For Ruby Studio.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
Our managing EP is Matt Romano. Our EP of post
production is Matt Stillo. Our production coordinator is Abby Aguilar.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
And of course, a big thank you to our friends
at Audible. Don't forget you can listen to what we're
listening to. On the Audible app or at audible dot com.
Sign up for free day Audible trial in Your first
audiobook is free. Visit audible dot com slash year say
until next time, Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Earsay, the iHeart and Audible Audio Book Club.
I'm Ed Helms and I am the host of another
podcast called Snaffo and with Me is the host of
yet another podcast. Here we go again, my dear buddy
cal Penn.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello, sir, how are you serving? I'm great, I'm great,
You are great?
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Can I just say cal Pen is great? Everybody?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Come on, what a nice thing to say.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I mean, you're freaking funny and delightful and incredibly smart
and insightful. And that's a killer combination of traits.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'm glad I don't have these traits at age eleven. Again,
they were not helpful as an eleven year old, but
I do enjoy them as an adults.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, yeah, that's not uncommon. A precocious child is actually
a very charming adults.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
But man, a man, are they annoying.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I'm sorry to have dug up that trauma. All right,
I'm gonna name some names here. I want you to
tell me what these names have in common?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Are you ready?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yep?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Eric Stumpy, Joe Child's, Peter James Bond, Mick Shrimpton, Richard
Rick Shrimpton, Joe, Mama Besser and Scott Skippy Scuffleton.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
More than half sound familiar, and I honestly cannot place it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, these are all drummers from the band Spinal Tap,
who all met their very untimely demise. In the Spinal
Tap lore, there was a bizarre gardening accident. There was
I believe some one of them spontaneously combusted, rather dramatic.
(01:54):
This is Spinal Tap is, of course, the pioneering nineteen
eighty four mockumentary created by Rob Reiner and starring Reiner
along with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKeon. It
spoofs the over the top world of rock and roll
and heavy metal in the seventies and eighties, and it
also spoofs the documentaries that venerate these rock stars. Kl
(02:17):
do you remember watching Spinal Tap.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
A very very long time ago? And I should also
note it was like one of those two am in
college kind of things. Yeah, kind of viewerships. Of course,
huge Chris Guest Rob Reiner fan, but it has been
a while. I need to revisit.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I have to say, Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest and
all these guys, they live in a very special comedy universe.
And it's so fun to learn about all of their
history together and how their lives kind of interweave and overlap.
And then of course Spinal Tap is its own ecosystem,
like they've created an entire mythology around this totally fake band,
(02:59):
and it is just beyond hilarious, and I have to
say it's very much a part of my own comedy development. Listeners,
if you haven't seen the original nineteen eighty four movie,
you should definitely just stop right now and go see it.
It is so damn special and hilarious. But as a refresher,
Rob Reiner plays Marty de Berghie, a documentary filmmaker who
(03:24):
follows the fictional band Spinal Tap, portrayed by Christopher Guest,
Michael McKeon and Harry Shearer. Marty follows Spinal Tap and
what I would call a series of escalating mishaps. It's
definitely a cult movie, but one that has left a
huge mark on pop culture, not the least of which
is the Christopher Guest line they scout to eleven, a
(03:46):
version of which made it into the Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary in two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
That's an accomplishment right there.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, I know, it's pretty cool if you can like
affect the codified language. I also have to say this
movie is widely considered the original mainstream mockumentary, and that
of course spawned a vast ecosystem of great movies and television,
including all of Christopher guests subsequent movies like Best in
(04:14):
Show and Waiting for Guffman and so many other great ones,
and then of course the show I worked on the
Office that was a mockumentary, right, I feel like The
Office and Parks and Rec and all these great mockumentary
shows are descendants of Spinal Tap in a way.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
That must have been awesome. Then to have loved Spinal
Tap so much and then get to work on The
Office in I don't know if saying in the style
of is even correct, but like, that's so cool.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It was The Office was a dream in so many,
so many ways, which is a whole conversation for another day.
But today we're talking about the new audiobook A Fine
Line Between Stupid and Clever, the story of Spinal Tap.
It's written by Rob Reiner, with Christopher Guest, Harry Shear,
and Michael mckeonnon and voiced by Rob Reiner, although they
(05:07):
all appear in the audio book as well. It's a
history of how the movie and the band came together,
the film's unexpected afterlife, and how forty years later everyone
got the band back together for the sequel, which is
out now. It's called Spinal Tap two. The end continues,
I mean, come on, is that not the best title ever?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
The audiobook also includes an in universe oral history featuring
all the actors as their respective characters. It's called Smell
the Book for the uninitiated. That's a bit of wordplay
on one of Spinal TAP's albums from within the movie
called Smell the Glove, and what that means God only knows.
(05:51):
But this is an absolutely ridiculous and delightful and wonderful
component of the audiobook, and it features all of the
main players just doing their own over the top stick
cal I'm super excited for this one. I get to
talk to not one, but two of the core people
who made Spinal Tap, and this audiobook happen incredible.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I am jealous. So I'm just gonna get out of
here and we'll talk again after the interview's.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Over all, right, I'll see you later.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Now, here to get into a fine line between stupid
and clever. The story of Spinal Tap is the audiobooks
author and voice Spinal Tap, creator and director and co
star director of stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally,
The Princess Bride, and so many more great movies. Rob
Reiner also joining the show. One of the great comedic actors.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Of all time.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
He is, of course, in the movie Spinal Tap, as
well as Spinal Tap.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
The end continues.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
He's incredible in the great show Better Call Saul. He's
in other movies like bestin Show, Oh, and just an
overwhelming resume of tremendous comedy over so many decades. Rob
Reiner and Michael McKeon, Welcome to Earsay. It is truly
such a pleasure to have you join our audio book
(07:14):
club today.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
It's a pleasure to be here. Ed nice to be joined.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Well.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Of course, you are part of the incredible team behind
Spinal Tap. Rob, you directed that legendary movie. Michael, you
are part of the band. This is such a thrill
from me because that movie means so much to me.
I remember it came out in nineteen eighty four. I
(07:40):
was ten years old. I was not aware of it then,
but very soon after when it landed at Blockbuster Video,
I was like, I'd been hearing about this from the
older kids at school, and like, this is a thing
I had to and I got it. I forced my
dad to rent it for me, and he was like,
what the hell is this?
Speaker 4 (08:00):
He's looking at the.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Hard rock picture on the front, and he's like, well, what, okay, fine,
and we get home, we start watching it, and I'll
be honest as like a twelve year old at that time,
I don't think I got half of it. I got
half of it. Yeah, you got it by half of it,
and we know which half. Yeah, But my dad was howling, oh,
(08:21):
he was yeah, And I realized, like, this is important,
this is something I have to latch on to, and
so of course I just rewatched it over the years
and it's become very much a part of my comedy
DNA truly, and I want to thank you for that.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Nada our pleasure. You're totally welcome.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Do either of you have a favorite scene from the movie.
I mean, that's an impossible question, but do you do
something jump out?
Speaker 5 (08:47):
I used to say that my favorite thing because I
had nothing to do with it, and it's brilliant. It's
about a minute and a half, maybe two minutes. Rob
could Robbie tell me of Chris just soloing on the
stage with you know, with all the feedback, and then
the violin.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
And my favorite moment in that moment is he picks
up the violin and uses it again, you know, but
then at one moment he just a little the peg. Yeah,
just tunes a peg a little bit, just to get
it just right. It's it.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
It's great pantomime, noisy pantomime. I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
It's well, my favorite, my favorite scene, and it's become
the title of the book that we that we put
out called a fine Line between Stupid and Clever. And
my favorite line in the movie is a fine line
between stupid and clever. And it's a scene where spinal
Tap is their gig has just been canceled, and they
(09:40):
were sitting in the hotel and the lobby there, and
all of a sudden, this very big famous rock musician,
Duke Fame, walks in and they say hello, and he's
a big shot and he's got a manager played by
Howard Hessman, and Howard says, listen, I wish I could
talk to you guys, but I have to go in
the lobby and wait for the limo. I don't have
(10:01):
time to talk. I love that.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
And then he leaves, and then everybody says, what a
wanker that Duke Fame. He's a wanker. There we used
to he used to open for us.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
He people boodoo. He was terrible. And then the manager
comes back. He says, I don't understand Duke Fame's got
it because they had an album that they couldn't release
called Smell the Glove, which had a sexist cover and
they couldn't release it. And he says, well, I understand
Dupe Fame.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
He has an album cover where he's naked and there's
all these women that are whipping him.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
And and then Tony Hendrew plays. The manager says, well,
you don't understand the difference is he's the victim. See
in your album, she's the victim because she's on all
fours and she's being made to sniff a glove. And
then the guys are like they're puzzled. He's, oh, I
see what they did. There's a twist. They turned around,
and one guy says, yeah, there's a fine line between
(10:54):
stupid and then Harry says and clever. And I love that,
and to me, that's the essence of spinal top fine
line between stupid and clever. I think you're right. And
it's also something that happened on the moment. It happened conversational.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
I mean, the entire film is improvised, but it was
one of those things we were all kind of thinking
on the same track and it just kind of spilled out, right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
And it's interesting because we shot the film with one camera.
We shot maybe a scene two or three times, and
it because, like Michael says, it's improvised. You don't know
what's going to come out on what's you know, it's
not going to be matched. It's not going to be
like a script when you say the same things, so
different things would come out. And in that case, the punchline,
which is Harry saying and clever, is off camera. Now
(11:41):
you normally would you know, you'd focus on that, Yeah,
you pick it up. But we found this in the
cutting room and I said, well that works in the
tracks and so, and it works. The joke works even
though the punchline's not on camera.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
It's the title of this book and audiobook, and I
think you're right. It captures not only what's so fun
about the spirit of the movie, but also to me,
what you have done as the creators of Spinal Tap
is to create these characters that are so beautifully stupid.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Thank you right.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
They're right at this sort of like nexus of confidence,
obliviousness and stupidity. But to execute that and to improvise
that with such precision and consistency takes a profound cleverness.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
Well, we had our work cut out for us because
the people we were doing, the people we were embodying,
take themselves very very seriously, of course, and if you
do that, if you're on the level, that's where the
funny comes from. Because there's something about the audacity of
someone who's got a very dim bulb up here telling everyone.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Else what's what, and also their philosophies of life and
how deep and profound they are.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Yeah, what's wonderful is we have, you know, these great
albums where you know, rock and roll creation and all
these very high fallutine ideas about these guys thinking about
how they've really got a grasp of the way the
world works and the way the universe works, and to
be honest. You know, there were a lot of heavy
metal rock musicians that were very upset with us because
(13:28):
they did take themselves seriously and they're making fun of us.
You know, that's not right. You know, we really do
make great music and all this stuff, and they do
make great music, but it's not as high fallutine as
they think it is.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Isn't that the sort of highest compliment though? Doesn't that
mean that you've really punched the button if they're feeling
a little agitated at the parody of self importance?
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Yeah, I think so. And a lot of them over
time got to really dig it. Sure. I mean they
accepted it and they said, oh, this is really cool
and they love the fact that we were making fun. Yeah.
Sincere form of flattery and all that.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
So I had heard that, I've read about some of
the blowback at the time from people like Ozzy Osbourne
and Steven Tyler. How real was that? I mean, did
they hold grudges for years? Was this something that affected
your lives?
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Well, here's the thing. Blowback used to be a different
sized animal than it is now. We encountered Steven Tyler
and this was his thing. It was like too close
too close, and he would smile a little bit, but
mainly it was like this hurts it's so close. Yes, yeah,
and we heard that Ozzie didn't like it, but it
was the same thing. It was like I felt uncomfortable, yeah,
(14:39):
because I felt spied on, But that came down as
they didn't like it, right, right, and it's like nonsense.
I met Ozzie years later and he was adored the
movie and he was great about it. But now it's
like somebody says anything and you'll get thirty thousand people.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Said, did you hear that?
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah, yeah, so it's a different world. I mean, the
same thing happened Actual Rose and then Slash basically said
to him, no, no, it's funny they're making it. And
then Actual Rose, oh yeah, I see, I get what
they're doing. And the same thing. When I first met Sting,
he was just you know, hitting with the police and everything,
and he said, listen, I watched this movie over and over.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Yeah, you know.
(15:19):
I mean, so that was like, you know, a great compliment.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
The movie is affectionate, and this is what I think
elevates certain comedy from other comedy. You're not really punching down.
There's a genuine affection for these characters, as oblivious as
they are and as self important as they are, and
you're sort of having fun with their hubris. But I
never felt like there was ridicule baked in there.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
And we we're the first generation that grew up on
rock and rolls right in the fifties, and we love
rock and rolls. Of course, we all grew up with that,
so you know, it was a love of the music
and also could find what's funny about it too, exactly,
so you know, you try to mix those things.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
So when you're saying your favorite band is printed on
your forehead, and it's like it's who you are.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And every article of clothing that you wear, that's right,
that's right, and it's all about that, and it's like,
you look at yourself, what a stupid kid I was?
Speaker 5 (16:13):
And boy I was happy. Yeah, I love the music.
So I was been listening to the Kinks a lot lately.
That's kind of my my pet third band. You know,
everybody loved the Beatles, everybody loved the Who and the
Stones and all that, but the Kinks were always like
so on the money to me, and I know I
wasn't an English guy, you know from Muswell Hill.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
I was this American kid.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
But there's something about those days which when you're sixteen,
that's what you do. You take on that coloration, you know,
and it stays with you, or it stays with me.
I show no signs of growing up.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Amen.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
But I just bought A King's album about a week ago,
so you know, there you goabulous. You know.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
One time I was at this party once for Nick
Poledge was his birthday, ninetieth birthday party, and his stepson,
Max is a musician. He's a guitarist. Now he plays
with Taylor Swift, but he was with Kesha. He's played
with a lot of different bands. Nick says to me,
you know, he's got a spinal tap tattoo on his back. No, really,
get out of here. So I go over to him
(17:15):
and I said, Max, Nick told me that you have
a spinal taptooth. He takes down his shirt and.
Speaker 5 (17:21):
In the back he has the cover of Shark Sandwich
tattooed to his back, which is the sandwich with a
little finn.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Coming out of the Wow. Yeah. So yeah, So you
talk about having your favorite band tattoo to your far ahead.
He literally had a tattoo.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
All right, I want to talk a little bit about
the creative process. The audiobook details Schneedling tell us what
exactly that is and the role it plays in the
sort of writing and execution or even in the origin
of the movie.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
That's a term that Chris Guessed first threw out a
long time ago. He referred to the back and forth
of improvisation as you're snailing with each other. You just
kind of riffing, riffing with each other. You know where
that where that what that word means exactly? Or it's
a made up word, just a made up word. Okay,
here's a great story. You got you like this? So
(18:19):
we've been trying there's a guy in prison in in
that's not the funny.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Part, not so far, not so far.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
But there's a guy in prison in Texas. His name
is Nan and Williams. And this guy has been in
we've been trying to get out for a long time.
He's a great guy. He's in there for crime he
didn't commit. He's got three master's degrees, he's written books,
he teaches all these young inmates. And he asked me
he said, you know, I send me a book, send
(18:45):
me one of the books, you know, fine line between stupid.
So I sent him the book. We talked about it
and he read some You know, these kids, they don't
know who's spiled happens, They don't know who I am,
they don't know any of it, but they're listening to it,
and they picked up on snailing. Says, hey, what's that
we stopped and the start we gotta stop schnadling with
each other. So you got these prisoners down and down
(19:06):
in Houston snadling.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
It's therapeutic for sure.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
That's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah, So schnadling is essentially improvisation. There's an anecdote in
the audiobook about a video shoot that you guys are doing,
and the schnadling sort of starts during a like an
over shot there all everybody's lying on the floor.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Yeah, we were doing a takeoff of our debut. Yeah,
this was a takeoff of Midnight Special. Was part of
a TV show that had a satire of all kinds
of different things on television. You know, we had sitcoms
and telethons and commercials, and one of the things we
did was this midnight special. Eye came out as Wolfman,
Jack and I introduced for the first time Spinal Tap,
(19:53):
England's loudest band, and they came out and they played
a song called rock and Roll utt. Pire of it
was live, and part of it was kind of an
MTV video, like cheesy video. Cheap, yeah, really cheap. And
uh there was one part where they had this, I
guess a fogger or a smoke, a bee smoke or something,
and it kept leaking hot oil on them. Yeah, and
(20:16):
we had them on the floor. We were trying to
do like a Buzzby Berkeley kind of thing with the
legs going, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Right, but you're getting like a medieval torture. Torture, yeah, yeah, yeah,
of some sort.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
But they started, you know, they started making fun and
they started, you know, schnadling. They started doing shtick and
those characters. And then we said, Jesus, these guys, we
should find something else for them to do, not just
lie on the floor and get hot oil board on them.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Although although that's all a conversation, another conversation.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
That's fabulous now when you guys are schnadling, especially while
the camera is rolling, Are you breaking a lot? Are
there any bad laughers in your group?
Speaker 5 (20:57):
Well, there were a few scenes that ended slightly early,
and Paul Benedict, who was one of the great guys ever,
who plays the hotel clerk, and he gets into a
contretempt with Tony who's making cracks about his sexuality and everything.
And it's like Paul comes in for a day and
just lays all of us out. He's so brilliant, so funny.
(21:19):
Tony Hendris, the manager, is always carrying around this cricket bat,
so he puts the cricket bat up on the counter
while he's talking to the guy get these rooms straightened out,
and Paul, the hotel clerk, just points to the bat
and he goes, well, you can't take that to your room.
And Tony goes, innocently enough, why not, And Paul said, well,
(21:43):
it's enormous, that's all there was to it. It makes
no sense, no, but the little story that we told
ourselves in our heads at that moment started laughing before
he even got the rest of the word out. And
there's no reason why that's so brit funny, but it was.
And Fred Willard also had away. He was one of
(22:05):
the best improvisers. And you can see in this one
scene where he's telling me about the gig they're going
to play on the Army base, and you can see
Chris's guest kind of ducking behind somebody because he's starting
to go you just want to root the take. And
there was one that I actually went and that was
Chris totally surprised me. He's playing a piano, very quiet,
(22:28):
kind of classical piece and I go, that's interesting. You know,
that's something very different from what you normally play. He says, well,
it's you know, it's a classic comedy Mozart and Bacchus
called mock piece. It's in D D minor, which I
think is the saddest of all keys, and it's just
simple lines intertwined.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And I said, well, what do you call this? He says,
lick my love pump, and I went, I went, we
had to do that all scene over and see.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I was notorious the Office for ruining takes, for laughing,
and there were, like you described, Chris, there's a scene
in a Christmas episode where Steve Krell is being so
funny that I have to duck behind a plant and
I'm behind the plant for the majority of the scene.
But it's part of what's so fun and frustrating about improvisation, right,
(23:21):
is that the best stuff can get ruined so easily.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's how things happen in a
good improvisational company. And there are a few, and there
have been many over the years. The mistake you can
make is to look for that punchline instead of living
in the scene. Yes, because that's amen some of the
Peter Bonders is one of the best improvisers I ever saw,
and I never saw him crack a joke or anything
(23:47):
like it.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
He just existed in the scene. Anything he was doing.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Was completely absurd, but he took it dead seriously and
he was hilarious and he would never break in a
million years.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That is the secret, just to take take it all
dead seriously, take it all bitch, and not chase the
not chase the punchlines. There are a lot of scenes
that feel in the movie completely improvised.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
Like they're all improvised, every every all the dialogue is
improvised completely.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I guess that's my question. Like there's the talking about
the drummers that have died and Chris breaks in that,
by the way, on the vomit line, yes, which I think,
which he says, and he starts to chuckle, but he
saves it.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Yeah, and he keeps it in character more or less
right enough.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But I love it.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's just a little glimpse under the veil. But then
there are scenes like the legendary amp that goes to eleven,
which clearly was.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Prep Oh yeah, well, yeah, we had the we had
the prop. We knew that we were going to have
an AMP that went to eleven, but we didn't know
how we were going to get to it, or how
it was going to be revealed, or what we were
or how you feature something this big in a movie
that's a documentary, or what we were going to say
about it. And my favorite moment in there is Chris
(25:07):
is showing me around all the different guitars and then
he shows me this amp that goes up to eleven
and I said, well, I don't why do you have
it gold? He said, well, it's one louder, isn't it.
I said, well, yeah, but I mean, couldn't you make
the top number be ten and just make that a
little louder? And he had no answer. For that I
hit him with something that I basically painted him into
(25:29):
a corner made him was a long, long pause, and
he goes, well, this goes to eleven. Yeah, he had
no answer.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
For the honesty of his performance in that moment is
so perfect.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
There's another little tiny moment that Chris does. It's when
we're in the airport and Janine has taken over the
management of the band and she's laying out all this
shit about you know, astrology is telling us to go
to this city and not this one. She's re arranging
everything and Chris, who was wearing a Colt Boy hat
for the only moment in the film he's wearing that,
(26:03):
She says, have you got this? And he just, without
even really looking at her, he kind of tilts his
head and holds up the same thing she's reading it
from and then puts it down. And there's something about
that moment that just says everything, how about you go
to hell but without actually saying it, and don't worry
about me, I'm out of here anyway.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It's great. Laden that's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
There's one moment I have to know if it was improvised,
and it's the fabulous scene with Bruno Kirby A is
the limo driver and I know that what you shot
was actually much longer than what made the movie. But
the bit where he starts to go off on Frank
Sinatra and the window between the limo driver cab and
(26:49):
the passenger section.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Just slowly rises. Yeah, I think that was one of
you guys just did that or something. No.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I think going into the scene, we said, when he
starts going on about stuff, just shut him out of
the world.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yeah, but we didn't know where.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
So funny, it's just so funny, and Bruno Kirby's reaction
was perfect.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
Yeah, there's an outtake of scene where we get his
character really high and he winds up singing my way
into a chunk of pizza and in his underwear, in
his underwear, and then he passes out. It nearly killed him.
So missed a desk by like this much in the
hotel room. Wow, but it was awfully funny. But it
(27:33):
was just, oh, we if we go there, we'll be
there for ten minutes. Yeah, we had some great stuff
that wound up.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
As they say on the cutting room floor, my favorite
thing was and it's it just it was a great joke,
great stuff, but it just took too long to unfold.
There was a band that opened for Spinal Tap at
one point called The Dose, which was kind of a
punk band, and the lead singer was Sherry Currey from
from the Runaways, and you see then Nigel and her
(28:02):
are kind of canoodling a little bit, and the next
scene Nigel has a herpie sore on his lip and
we don't make much of it. The next thing you
see David, you know, played by Michael, and he's also
making out with her, and the next and Viv and
the next scene herpee saw. Yeah, it makes it way
all the way around. And then there's a band meeting
(28:23):
where five of them are sitting around deciding they're going
to vote whether or not they're going to keep The
Dose on the tour. And before there's four guys with
herpe stores they saying I think we should draw I think,
and the drummers. The only guy without a herpe story,
he says, I think they're gonna think about them. But
it just took so long, and the only remnant, the
only thing left is there's a scene where you see
(28:45):
Nigel and David they both have herpee, So we never
explain it no, and it gets a laugh for some reason.
I don't know. I never know to this day why
I got that laugh.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
For one reason, there's this little undercurrent about how close
Snigel and David really are and always have been, you know. Uh,
and it's God. So you're saying it's a gay thing.
That's what you're saying. I'm saying it's it's a gray area.
It's a gay area. But Richard Curtis, the wonderful screenwriter
(29:16):
and director, I met him and he said, you know,
Spinal TAP's my favorite romantic comedy. He says, it's got
it's got the same structure. It's you guys belong together,
and you know, everything else in the world is kind
of a distraction because you're looking for that moment when
you were two little assholes on the street corner playing
skiffle music, you know, And so it.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Was like, Okay. Ricky Gervay said the same exact thing
when I interviewed him. He said, it's a romantic comedy.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I hadn't thought of that.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
So Spinal Tap is obviously a parody band. The songs
are insanely funny, but they're not exactly a joke.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Themselves. Let's let's listen to a clipping.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
Okay, so the songs are hilarious, but they're also objectively
(30:22):
great songs.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
That was the goal. The goal was the humor would
come out in the lyrics, never in the music. They're
all great musicians, they all take it seriously, and the
music is good, like you say, so, we never wanted
the music to be the thing that got the laughs.
It was always the lyrics.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I'm just curious how you arrived at that. I remember
a debate we had on the Office. My character was
in a production of Sweeney Todd in the World of
the Office, and there was a debate in pre production.
It's Scranton Community theater. Do we want these actors to
(31:00):
be bad and for it to sort.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Of be silly?
Speaker 1 (31:03):
And I felt very passionately that that even community theater
actors are oftentimes extremely talented and they're extremely committed, and
that that isn't what's funny about the scene.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
It's it's a very tricky line to walk because they
can't be sensational actors, sure, but they can be adequate proficient.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I mean, Chris, you're not finding humor in how bad
they are?
Speaker 4 (31:30):
No, but Chris Guess made this thing about community theatical
waiting for Guffman, of course, and it's kind of perfect
because they're, you know, they're doing their thing. But it's
just like the line that we have to tread with
Spinal Top. We love what they do, but we also
can make fun of it.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I have the book and the audiobook, and obviously this
podcast is about the audiobook. Both the book and the
audiobook contain this fabulous of little surprise at the end
Smell the book, which is the oral history of Spinal Tap,
where you guys basically just live inside the mythology and
(32:11):
make up new memories as you go, and it's wild.
After all these years, it just it feels like all
these fake stories have just taken on the weight of
actual rock and roll cannon.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Before we started the first film, we had a bible.
I mean, we knew who these characters were, because when
you're improvising, especially David and Nigel, if they were kids
together from Squatney, they have to have shared experiences and
so we improvise. But we also have the background of
knowing who left the band, who joined the band. We
(32:47):
knew all those things. Yeah, so we could riff off
of that rather than just have to make all that
up right.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
We did do a little cramming right before we did
the interviews for the book, where we said, let's.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Go over this again.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Okay, yeah, are we gonna get to lesson Mary Chiswick
or what are you know? There are three dozen names
we can pick up, you know, we can throw in
of course, and that we all shared this history. We
weren't going to get to it all, but it's nice
to have it there.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Yeah. Yeah, like a giddy in Bible pretty much.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Sure, when you're in those sort of schnadling moments, do
you find yourself in a flow state?
Speaker 4 (33:24):
Ever?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Do you ever find that?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
It just you feel like, oh, this is definitely gonna
make the final cut.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
This is the I never know. I never know what's
gonna make the final clup. All I know is just
stay in the moment. Stay in the moment, because I'm
working with brilliant minds and brilliant comedians and brilliant improvisers,
and something's gonna come out and I don't know what
it's gonna be. I never know.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
So it's been forty years since the original spinal tap
forty one actually forty one now yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
Or is the spinal theft people would call the Golden Anniversary.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
So finally with the film sequel out now Spinal Tap two,
The End Continues, which is just one of the greatest
comedy movie titles of all time. I'm wondering, after such
a definitive first film, talk about some of the challenges
and opportunities that presented themselves in revisiting these characters. Was
(34:24):
it truly effortless kind of slipping back into.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
This, well? Did it take a lot? Of The effortless
part was the way we interacted with each other. That
always is there. We always had fun with that. But
the idea of doing a sequel to something that we
all said, no, we've done it, let it be. It's
a high bar. You know, it's a really high bar,
and we're old. But as we talked, something came out
(34:49):
of it that was very real, which is, first of all,
the guys hadn't played together in fifteen years, so we said, well,
what's that about. Is there bad bloody not talking? What's
going on? And then the idea of older people still
touring or still performing that was out there. M Paul
McCartney was in the movie he's still performing. You see
(35:12):
the stones, you see the who the who's out there
doing it, and the eagles and oasis back together. So
that's a real thing. And then we had to think, well,
what's the reason why weren't they talking and what's the
reason that throws them back together. Once we had that,
we said, okay, it's a story that could stand on
its own. You don't have to have seen the first one.
(35:34):
Obviously better if you have, you'll get some of the references.
But if you haven't. And we had screenings where half
the people had never seen the first one and they
they went with this, they thought this was great.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yeah, well huge, congrats on just the universe that you've
created and now expanded on even further with Spinal Tap two.
It's it is a hell of a treat and I
hope you make maybe at least three or four more.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Do you have it in yet?
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Here's the thing, and we can tell you because it's
not a secret. No, well, it's been released to the
press that after we finished Spinal Tap two, the end continues.
We were approached by the Heritage Foundation in England to
do a concert at Stonehenge at the actual stoneheng Oh
(36:27):
my God, and so it was an impossible thing not
to say yes to. And we got together. We went
over to England and did a concert in front of
this Stonehenge and you know this, Eric Clapton came on
and performed, and Shanaiah Twain came on. And my favorite
(36:48):
thing be though, was Josh Grobin sings a Bitch School
And it's worth the price of admission yet. Yeah, it's
pretty amazing. Yeah, yeah, will that be that'll come out
next year'll be visible next year?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Oh fantastic.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Yeah, and that one's called it's called Spinal Tap at Stonehenge,
the final finale.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Per But don't give away the ending, rob No, I'm
not gonna do. I won't do.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
That isn't redundancy always funny?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Listen.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
We wrote a song called tonight, I'm gonna rocket tonight.
How do you think we feel about that?
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Yeah? There it is.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
All right.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
We're gonna jump into a section of the interview called
plot twist, where I'm just gonna just fire at you
some questions, all right. Spinal TAP's infamous custom amps famously
went one louder to eleven. What in your lives have
you turned up to eleven?
Speaker 4 (37:59):
That's a good quest question. My Lee's your time. It's
approaching one hundred percent, and I'm delighted.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
You've turned it down to eleven. No, no, no, I
just listened. Rob and I are the same age. We've
all been doing a lot of things for a long time,
and it's like really appreciating that. It sounds very corny,
very hallmark, but I really do think that me not
doing much of anything on a really nice day is
(38:26):
better than.
Speaker 4 (38:27):
Anything that's fabulous. Listen.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
I'm probably of the four of us, I would say
the most driven.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I'm crazy driven, and in my mind, I haven't gotten
the eleven yet. I mean as close as I ever
got with you. Know it's a cliche, but you're the
birth of your children. I mean that is like ooh,
that can't get doesn't get any better. But in terms
of my work and stuff, I still feel like there's
an eleven out there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Amazing. Oh I love that.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Two very different answers, Yes, all right.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
The band had new.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Spinal tap moments like getting lost backstage or the monumental
stone hinge prop being extremely tiny, have you experienced a
moment in your professional or personal life that felt like
a true spinal tap moment.
Speaker 5 (39:14):
In nineteen eighty four, when the film came out, we
played a handful of cities, and some of them, the
New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston were really well attended.
Boston was huge, but the film played for a year
in Boston. It became like this is what we when
we go to the movies, this is what we do.
(39:34):
So we were really kind of hot. And we played
at a place called the Channel Club. And I've had
this corroborated by people who were there, said, man, I
was there the night you played, and it did it
really rain on the stage?
Speaker 4 (39:47):
And yeah it did.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
There was this terrible storm outside and the stage was
drenched and We're there with electric instruments and I'm wearing
boxing shoes. I'm wearing boxing shoes which have this little
kind of you know, just the thickness of Barbara Walter's skin.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Yeah, and it.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
Was like, well, if we go here, at least we're
a hit in this town, you know.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
But it really was. It was like and Chris and
I are looking at each other going goodbye.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Maybe wait, so this is your spinal tap moment in
your life is also an actual spinal tap.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:22):
I mean we've I've had little things, you know, when
we did all the way this play that I did
in New York, but we did in Cambridge first, by
the way, I loved that playing Oh thank You, thank you. Yeah,
that was great, and Bryan Cranston played LBJ. The first
scene is he's having this vision about what the iman No,
(40:43):
I'm the president. All of a sudden, JFK's been killed.
I'm the president. What am I gonna do? How'm gonna
do this? And then his desk rises out of the
floor and he goes behind his desk and begins the
scene proper with other people. Well, opening night, it got
halfway up it's and so they said, well, maybe we're
going to reboots. Everybody's standing on the stage and they
(41:05):
lower it again and they bring it up again and
then it just breaks and he goes, good, gut no yeah,
And so then it's like dealing with that, but those
are in the moments they're happening. It's horrible stuff, but
you know what, tomorrow and I will come back and
try it again, you know, That's all you can do amen.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
Well for me. I mean I've had a million of
those kind of things on stage where stuff goes wrong,
but one that just popped in my head. I was
in the Summer Theater in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Albert Brooks
was in the company with me. We were doing a
production of Mary Mary, you know, which is a comedy,
and we're eighteen years old. We're playing people in their
(41:46):
forties with the corn starch and the hair and all
this stuff. And you know, they had shows once a week.
You know, they turned the show over every week. So
you do a show for a week, you take the
set down and put the other set back up. And
they didn't get the set quite ready for the first
performance of Mary Mary, and Albert and I are on
(42:06):
stage and we're doing, you know, back and forth, back
and forth, and then he goes to make an exit
and there was supposed to be some escape stairs and
he just he just went off the edge and gone
in. In other words, I opened the door, he walked out
the door and just disappeared. Oh no. And then he
(42:26):
comes back. He comes back and his head was just
on the.
Speaker 5 (42:30):
Floor above the thing and he and he goes bye
bye like this he's had a wife.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
So yeah, those those kinds of things happened. I love
the best, Yeah all right.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
One of my favorite little tidbits in the audiobook describes
how the creative team used Grimsby card oh yes, which
were cards with the stern news anchor Roger Grimsby's head
shot on one side.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
Yes. Harry Shearer was going with a woman who worked
at ABC News at the time, and Roger Grimsony was
a broadcaster. He was on camera, and they had a
whole stack of like promotional cards where they had picture
Roger Grimsby on the front and was empty on the back.
We used these cards. We had a big bulletin board
and anytime we have a scene that we thought, well,
(43:16):
this could work, we put it up on the bulletin board.
And it got to be where if we had an
idea and we thought maybe it was good, or should
it be in the movie or not, we would say
does this merit a Grimsby? In other words, should we
commit this to a Grimsby? And so if it did,
if it got on the board, it was a Grimsy.
(43:36):
When we did the sequel, Michael goes, where did you
get those pictures? Michael you got.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
I just grabbed it off the internet. He got off
the internet. There was a picture Roger Grimsey and he
had an old.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
Stack of Grimsby's made up, so we, you know, keep
the tradition alive.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Oh that's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I feel like somebody needs to sell Grimsby cards to screenwriters.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
Oh my god, the money will come rolling in. Yeah,
I mean, what a million dollar idea.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yes, Oh guys, this is our next adventure, this is
our next step. Here we go all right, Well, you
know it's it is such a fun, clever creative technique.
Do you have either of you have an unexpected or
unusual method in your own creative process.
Speaker 4 (44:22):
God, I don't know. I wouldn't even know how to
begin to describe where things come from.
Speaker 5 (44:27):
I just have to keep remembering to breathe, you know,
because sometimes if you're kind of waiting for something to happen,
you kind of lose the reality because a real person
is going to be breathing. I've just sometimes I got
to remind myself okay, and it just helps you stay
with them. I don't know, I don't have any other style.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
That's a hell of a good answer.
Speaker 5 (44:47):
I've always liked making these guys laugh and and they
they know I'm a soft.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Touch when it and he does all the time. I mean,
that's the thing about Michael and his brain. Will you know,
all three of them, their brains work in different ways,
but very fast, and they come at comedy in different ways,
and you just never know how it's gonna work. I'm
you know, I'm George Burns. I'm you know, I'm my
dad to mel Brooks. I tried to you know, I'm
(45:13):
the straight guy to hopefully get the best out of them.
And it's pretty easy when you're working with them, I'm
telling you, it's pretty easy. They come prepared to get
goodwood on the ball every time.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
You guys have incredible chemistry. And it is so fun
to see it still, just to see those sparks flying
forty years later, it's just it's just as alive as
it ever was. It's it's so so great.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Now.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Last question, what are you listening to or reading right now?
And and or what's next on your list?
Speaker 5 (45:49):
I'm reading the new Mark Twain autobiography, which is this
thick and amazing. I'm sorry, the new He just put
out a new one. No, no, not the new and
it's not an autobiography. It's ron Cherno was biography. Oh fabulous,
and it is. It's it's amazing. And what am I
listening to? I'm listening to a couple of things. I
(46:10):
got a book called Consciousness. What is consciousness? So this
is fascinating and so I listened to it at night.
It puts me right to sleep.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
I can tell. It's a really good book. But I
lose consciousness. It should be called unconsciousness. Unconsciousness, yes, yeah,
but it's it's a cool book. And yeah, I.
Speaker 5 (46:29):
Listened to I listened to a lot of different kinds
of things. I'll tell you my favorite guy. There's a
guy named Bill Homewood, like home h O.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
M E.
Speaker 5 (46:38):
Wood Homewood, British guy. And he did a fifty two
hour unabridged reading of The Counter of Monte Cristo.
Speaker 4 (46:49):
It's one of the greatest things I've ever heard. It was.
Speaker 5 (46:52):
It's like, I can't wait to get in the car
and just drive nowhere just so I can listen to
this and do nothing but this.
Speaker 4 (46:58):
He's brilliant.
Speaker 5 (46:59):
He also did The Three Musketeers and Tom Jones and
a couple of other things like that.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Wait, how long did that take you to listen to
fifty two hours?
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Michael? Do you listen to books more than you read them,
or do you read more than you listen.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
I'm starting to listen more than I read, but I
still love to just park myself with a book. But
at night, you know, if I'm kind of trying to
chill out, I'll plug into something like that. And there's
a woman named Shanade Dixon who does most of Dickens
and it's amazing. Shaneed Dickens, you should call herself amazing.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
And Maria Margley's also does a great There's a lot
of great Dixon stuff.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
I love blues music, I love country music, I love bluegrass.
I like to watch Instagram and what I like about
it because I'm old. They you know, in TikTok, he'll
give you two seconds, they'll give you a full performance
of somebody. So if like Billy Strings comes on, I'm like,
(47:58):
ooh good, there a whole Billy String's number. Or if
it's Linda Ronstat harmonizing with Dolly Parton and Emmilu Harris,
you know, I'll listen to all that or Christaple, whoever
it is. And I love I will just listen to
those kind of things. That's what I love listening to.
And any blues guitarist go from one to the other.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Yeah, we're in the same sort of musical loops there.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
I love it. Any audio books or.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
Books, well books right now, you see, I'm in the
midst of finishing up a book based on this podcast
that I did last year about the jeffk assassinations called
Who Killed jeffk We did it on iHeartRadio with sold
with solo Dad O'Brien. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it got
to like ten million downloads and people like this. So
(48:53):
Simon and Schuster asked us if we would write a book,
so we started working on it, the two guys that
are work with on the podcast. So I've been writing
on that. So I still I'm reading. There's a book
that came out about what happened to Dorothy cl Gallan,
and so I just keep reading more and more stuff
about that. Right now, I'm kind of still immersed in
(49:14):
that world.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Wow, that's a good one. That's a juicy one.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Well, Rob Reiner, Michael McKeon, it was truly excellent having
you on Earsay.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
Thanks for having us Yeah, thank you, Ed, thanks for
having us on. Yeah, absolutely anytime.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, I wish we could.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Wish we'd just be hanging out having a beer right now.
Speaker 5 (49:36):
We're allowed to you. I'm going to continue hanging out.
You just might not be there.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
You'll just keep.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Talking into your microphone for the next forty five minutes.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Well, truly a pleasure, guys.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
Thanks a lot, Ed, thanks a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Well, that was awesome.
Speaker 4 (49:57):
This was like such a.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Dream for me to just pick their brain and hear
so many of the stories. As a person that works
in comedy, I just love to hear how other people's
brains work. Yeah, like and how their process works, and
especially material that I've appreciated so deeply for so many years.
Just to get under the hood and just see.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
How that sausage is made. It's really a.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Privilege, especially when it makes you laugh.
Speaker 4 (50:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
I just find such joy in being able to go
into the brains of other weirdos in the best way possible.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
As a weirdo.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
It's fun to learn about other weirdos totally.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
And you and I are very proud to be weird.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Of Yes, of course, it's a badge.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Of honor.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
All right, well you can find the new audiobook A
fine line between stupid and clever, the story of Spinal
Tap at Audible. Thank you for tuning into this episode
of ear Saying the Audible and iHeart Audio book Club.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
On the next episode, we're diving into a supernatural romance
co authored by Nicholas Sparks and m Night Shamalan. There's
a haunted house, a ghost love story, a mystery that
must be solved. You don't want to miss this.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah, that sounds quite saucy.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Yeah, extremely Yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
Well we'll see you then and if you had fun
with us today, consider following the show wherever you listen. Hearsay,
the Audible and iHeart Audio book Club is a production
of Iheart's Ruby Studio.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
We're your hosts Ed Helms and Kelpin. Our executive producer
is Matt Schultz, with theme music and post production by
Marcus Bagala.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
For Ruby Studio.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
Our managing EP is Matt Romano. Our EP of post
production is Matt Stillo. Our production coordinator is Abby Aguilar.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
And of course, a big thank you to our friends
at Audible. Don't forget you can listen to what we're
listening to. On the Audible app or at audible dot com.
Sign up for free day Audible trial in Your first
audiobook is free. Visit audible dot com slash year say
until next time, Thanks for listening.
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