Rob Reiner, “This is Spinal Tap” and rock clichés

Unfortunately, we are not faced with fake news or an ironic construction worthy of one of his films. Yesterday, December 14th, Rob Reiner and wife Michele were found lifeless in their home in Los Angeles, in circumstances that the authorities are still trying to clarify. Reiner’s passing closes a central trajectory of American cinema of the last forty years, but also forces us to return to one of his most radical and influential gestures: “This is Spinal Tap“, the film that used the documentary form to dismantle, from the inside, the language, rituals and self-narrations of rock.

Released in 1984 and initially welcomed with more curiosity than success, “This Is Spinal Tap” presents itself as the story of an American tour of a fictional English heavy metal bandformed by guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest), singer David St. Hubbins (role entrusted to Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (played by Harry Shearer). In the film the group is followed step by step by the journalist-director Marty DiBergi, played by Reiner himself. The device is simple and, precisely for this reason, definitive: everything we see is filmed as if it were realwithout ever signaling to the viewer the boundary between reality and invention. It is in this ambiguous area that the film builds its strength, because it doesn’t target rock as a genre musical, but the system of behaviorsnarratives and automatisms that surround it.

The clichés put on stage they’re the ones that anyone familiar with rock recognizes without needing explanation. There is decline disguised as relaunch, scenic grandeur that collides with logistical reality, the obsession with volume, the sacralization of instruments, the cult of the ego, the rhetoric of the misunderstood artist. The amplifier that “turns to 11”to have a “slightly higher” volume, is not a technical gag, but a poetic declaration created in an iconic line on the absurd logic of rock, which today has also become a way of saying to indicate the maximum possible intensity. The idea is that excess is always a solution, even when it serves no purpose.

Likewise, the curse of the drummerswho die one after another in increasingly absurd accidents, becomes a perfect summary of the way rock turns every tragedy into an anecdote. At the start of “This Is Spinal Tap”, the band is rounded out on drums by Mick Shrimpton, who ends up exploding on stage during one performance, before being replaced by Joe “Mama” Besser. Several of the band’s previous drummers also died in bizarre and often grotesque circumstances, including John “Stumpy” Pepys, who died in a “freak gardening accident” that police said was best left unsolved, and Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs, who choked to death on someone else’s vomit. Also the sequel “Spinal Tap II: The end continues” (in Italian: “Spinal Tap II: The end is only the beginning”, released on September 12, 2025, finds Spinal Tap together again about forty years after the first film and, obviously, looking for a drummeras all the previous ones have mysteriously died.

Reiner observes all this with a gaze that is never external or judgmental. The disastrous concerts, the censored covers, the downsized tours, the empty dressing rooms, the smaller than expected number on the bill are not tools of demolition, but elements of a coherent story. Spinal Tap are not stupid, nor caricaturesbut they are prisoners of a mythology that they have learned to repeat. It is here that the film goes beyond parody and becomes a portrait, because it recognizes in rock a narrative form even before a musical one, made up of symbols, ritual phrases, obligatory postures.

Time has transformed “This is Spinal Tap” into an even more precise object than it was upon its release. Having been able to capture all the absurdities of the world of rock with precision and affection, the film has earned absolute cult status among musicians and fans. It’s one of those films that, despite deliberately exaggerating, ended up being far too realistic. Over the years, many artists – from Ozzy Osbourne to Metallica – have admitted they have recognized in some of the surreal situations of the feature film. Last September, the aforementioned sequel arrived, in which numerous rock stars directly took part. Initially scheduled for March 2024, the second chapter “Spinal Tap II: The end continues“, had been postponed due to the writers’ and actors’ strike that paralyzed Hollywood for months in 2023.

Thanks to the distribution handled by the independent production company “Bleecker Street”, the return of Spinal Tap has therefore become official. The return of the “most absurd band in rock” saw Rob Reiner once again behind the camera and in the role of the film’s fictional director, Marty DiBergi. Obviously there is no shortage of the band of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, who reprized their roles as members of the elusive metal formation. The cast was then enriched by Paul McCartney and Elton Johnadd an extra layer of metafictional play to the comedy, along with Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lars Ulrich of Metallica. I due batteristi compaiono nel film quando i riuniti Spinal Tap sono alla ricerca di un nuovo addetto ai tamburi, ed entrambi rifiutano l’offerta di far parte della band, che accoglie poi tra le fila la musicista Didi Crockett interpretata da Valerie Franco.

The former Beatle also appears as himselfintervening during Spinal Tap rehearsals for provide advice and observations on their repertoire, while Pinner’s musician takes part in the final phase of the story, first singing “Flower People” and then participating in the staging of “Stonehenge”, on the piano, in a sequence that leads to yet another scenographic disaster for the band.