Rob Reiner on the legacy of ‘Spinal Tap’

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:14Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. Last fall, actor-director Rob Reiner joined me to discuss the release of a sequel over 40 years in the making, Spinal Tap 2. The end continues. We touched on a number of things, but the conversation kept taking us back to the factor that started with Spinal Tap and was a part of all of the late director's films, music. Some of your movies are about people. It's about what it takes to stay together. Right. And I wonder where that comes from for you, because thematically, it's so much of what you've done as if it's a narrative that's drawn you back over and over again.

0:52Yeah, well, it's interesting you say that because my parents, before they both passed away, my mother passed away first, they were married for 65 years. And they went through stuff. You know, there was, you know, like every marriage, you know, you go through things. They went through things, but they stayed married for 65 years. And I remember they were celebrating their 60th anniversary. And somebody asked my mother, said, well, what is the secret? What do you, what keeps you together? And she said, you have to find someone who can stand you. Not somebody that you can put up with, but somebody who can stand you.

1:30And basically what it is, you find people that you, no matter what they do, you still like to hang out with them. That's funny you say that because so many of these films that you've made about testing these relationships, to me, even goes back to the sure thing. I mean, so about these relationships being tested, but at these stress points. Yes. It's almost like the second act break. I mean, I think about the American president. For me, that relationship is as much about Martin Sheen and Michael Douglas as it is. It's about Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. Right. And these sort of stress points.

2:02And at some point, somebody has to tell somebody the truth. Yes. And how you come back from that. Yes, and how you come back. I made a film called The Story of Us. It's that great version of classical gas, a stripped down version of that. That's right. It's interesting that you mentioned that. And I'll tell you a little story about classical gas. But that was a story about two people who had been married for 15 years. And people had always asked me, why don't you do a sequel to When Harry Met Sally? I said, no, no, I've done that. This was a look at a marriage after 15 years. And the tagline was, can a marriage of 15 years survive?

2:35And so we looked at all of the problems that they had and the things that were tearing them apart. But ultimately, they chose to fight to be together. And they did. And so I wanted to tell you this. one little story about classical gas. Eric Clapton did the score for that film, and he was great. I just wanted his guitar, and the whole score is just his guitar. He came to the studio with a gut string and a steel guitar, and he just put all the tracks down. The only temp track I had was Classical Gas by Mason Williams, and I knew that because I used to work. You grew up with him, I was one of the writers on the Smothers Brothers and Mason was the head writer.

3:19So I put I put that in for a montage that I had of their this marriage, 15 years of marriage. And Eric said, let me try. Let me see if I can come up with something that could replace that. And he tried and it was great what he did. And at the end, he said, you know, what you have in there is better. That classical gas piece is I can't top it. He was so cool because he was it was his score. It was all his music, but he was okay with classical gasping in there. Music has always been a part of your storytelling. And I wonder at what point when you're starting to sit down to do a movie, you say, I'm going to need this song and this song and this song because the needle drops.

3:57I mean, my God, you changed the title of the body to Stand By Me and gave it an emotional inner life by just choosing that song. Yes. Well, Stand By Me was my favorite song. I mean, I love Stand By Me. Benny King sang it, and it was written by Lieber and Stoller, two of the greatest rock and roll songwriters. Provisually, the Drifters are really Benny King. Yes, Benny King and the Drifters, and then Benny King sang that song. And it just, I always loved that song. And I thought, this really works. I mean, it was called The Body. Yeah, it's in that collection. It's not that. Yeah. It's in that collection.

4:29Yes, in the same collection. And I thought, The Body is going to sound like a horror movie. it's going to sound like a Stephen King thing. And it's the furthest thing from that. It's about these four boys who have this experience that brings them all together. And the idea that you stand by somebody that you care about and they bolster you, they, they give you strength to be able to find cause this little boy thinks his father doesn't love him. And then his friendship with Chris helps him, you know, get through all this. So stand by me was always my, my favorite. And what's interesting is that I hosted a thing at Carnegie Hall.

5:05It was a tribute to Lieber and Stoller. It was a fundraiser for cancer research. And they asked me if I would host it. And I said, absolutely. And they got Benny King and they got Donald Fagan from Steely Dan and Natalie Cole. They had a great group of people singing their songs. And Benny King came up to me and said, I want to thank you. I said, what? He said, you put that song in the movie. It was the exact recording. It was not a, you know, a redo or anything. It was the exact recording. And the initial recording had gone to number one 25 years earlier. And because of the film, it went to number one again on the charts.

5:51That song went to number one. version of that that version of the song went to number one and he was always so grateful and he sang it and it was great and then i told libra and stoll i said i'm not gonna do this i'm not gonna host this thing unless i get to sing so you know they did a lot of coasters songs you know you know poison ivy and yakity i i did uh i did i sang poison ivy did you yeah yeah i sang poison ivy and i had backup singers it was great you did the harmony so which part did you know i did i I played the lead. Yeah, yeah. Of course you did. You're the director. You get to do anything you want to do.

6:27Well, they said I could do it. My musical debut happened at Carnegie Hall. I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment. And a revisit to my conversation with the late actor-director, Rob Reiner. I want to ask you, what do you think Marty DeBerge's backstory is? Because I've always wanted to know. Well, I can tell you because I've read it. I've read it. we have a book coming out on the same day as the film, which is on September 12th. And the book is called, it's a two-sided book, actually. The front side is called A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, which is a line from the first film. And it's all about the making of the first film and the second.

7:10And then if you flip the book over, the other side is called Smell the Book. And in Smell the Book, it's an interview. Marty DeBerge interviews the three members, David, Nigel, and Derek. And so it's an interview. But Marty basically started out, first of all, he did a little short film that was done during the St. Gennaro's feast in the Bronx. And he caught his sister kissing behind a statue of the saint. And you could see a little bit of her breast. And that was a big thing in the neighborhood. It went all over. Everybody was playing that at parties. And so Marty tried to use that to get into film school.

7:59And he applied to USC and UCLA and NYU. Got turned down by everybody. But he did get accepted into the Ed Wood School of the Cinematic Arts. And if you know about Ed Wood, he's a brilliant filmmaker who made. I Changed My Sex. Yeah, he made Plan 9 from Outer Space, which is one of the great movies of all time. And Marty learned it, isn't he? And so when he came out, he got a job in production. He was a production assistant for industrial films and things like that. And so eventually he started making local commercials and he was the go to guy for local commercials. and then he got a real job as a commercial director for Purina, Dog Chow, where you see the dog running with a chuck wagon and trying to find the food.

8:50Chasing the chuck wagon. Yeah, trying to find the food. And then that didn't work out. But when he got the chance to do Spinal Tap, that was a big break for him because he loved Spinal Tap and it was an opportunity to make a real full-length film. He made the film, and unfortunately, even though it got good reviews, the band hated it. They thought it was a hatchet job. They said, you showed us in a bad light. You only showed us the bad things. You didn't show any of the good things. They said, there were many times we did find the stage successfully. You only showed the time when they couldn't find the stage.

9:24So they didn't like it. But Marty was able to parlay that into a studio film. He made a sequel to a great Academy Award winning film, Kramer vs. Kramer, which starred Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman. And it was called Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Godzilla. And it didn't do very well. It didn't do well. And that kind of dashed Marty's hopes. He was really devastated. He floundered around, didn't know what to do. And eventually he entered a retreat to try to find himself. He went to a retreat that was run by this guru, Baba Ram Dass Boat. And he was trying to find himself and get enlightened. And one day he was sipping on a spirulina smoothie and he happened to pick up a copy of Deadline Hollywood.

10:19And he read that Spinal Tap was back together. We're going to do a final concert. So he decided, okay, I'll put my enlightenment on hold, and I'll see if I can get that job. And luckily, he gets that job. It's the treatment, and the late actor-director Rob Reiner on his last feature film, the mockumentary Spinal Tap 2. The end continues. More with him after this.

10:46There's the story you hear, and then there's the story behind it. Who's telling it? What are their motivations? What's at stake? I'm Brian Reed, and on my show from KCRW, Question Everything, we tell stories about power and influence and the ways that people are manipulating the truth. And we do that by talking to the people living with the consequences. My feed was flooded without my consent. I was targeted by Instagram. Listen to Question Everything wherever you get your podcasts.

11:16I'm Elvis Mitchell, and welcome back to my fall 2025 interview with the late actor-director Rob Reiner for the release of his last film, Spinal Tap 2. The end continues. It's the treatment. I want to ask you, what do you remember about your first day of shooting This Is Spinal Tap? Oh, well, you know, everybody said, what are you doing? Why are you making a film that has no script? I mean, we had an outline, but all the dialogue is improvised. That's what I was saying. In the beginning, I said, you pioneered a genre. Yeah, it's all improvised to make it look like a documentary. And everybody said, what are you, crazy?

11:51And I felt totally comfortable because to me, that's why I was raised. I was raised as an improvisational actor. I had my own improvisation group. I was with the committee, which was an offshoot of Second City. And all the guys I was working with, they were all great improvisers. Which is all the guys from Spinal Tap came from there, too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, think about a great jazz combo, you know. If you can play jazz, you fall right in. It's not like, you know, some great jazz pianist or sax player or whoever. How do you do this? They know how to do it. Somebody, you know, piano or somebody lays down a rhythm track and then people fall in.

12:29And that's what we did. So it was very comfortable. I remember the first day being, hey, this is exciting. Remember the first thing you shot? Do you remember what that was? God, I think the first thing we shot was we did two things in a studio. One was a look back at an appearance they did on a 60s British show called Pop, Look, and Listen. And they did Give Me Some Money. Yeah. And if you look closely, you'll see Danny Korchmar. Great, great guitarist. And he's actually playing the bass. This is before Derek Smalls joined. And on drums is Ed Begley Jr. You know, he's there. And so that was the first thing.

13:10And we also did listen to the Flower People, which was a 60s kind of psychedelic type. You know, they were trying to, you know, basically get into the zeitgeist or whatever. And if you look at the drummer there, the drummer is Russ Kunkel. Russ Kunkel, who played for Linda Ronstad. Part of the section. Exactly. Played for Jackson Brown and was one of the great session drummers and still one great drummer of all time. It's interesting, too, about the idea, and I thought about this because Ozzy Osbourne just passed away recently, and even he developed a sense of humor in his later years. He did.

13:44But these guys, there's something playful about the early Spinal Tap songs. When they become a metal band, it's all this sort of pose of, that's when, for me, the music is the most cynical. They're better musicians than that. Well, they are good musicians, and it's interesting because they play every note in both films is played by them. It's all done live. I mean, they'll put their own tracks down. And it's interesting because Elton John is in the second one, along with Paul McCartney. But Elton John at one point says, and I asked him about why he, you know, what do you think of Spinal Light?

14:17He says, these guys are, he said, they're real musicians. He said, and they do things that most heavy metal bands can't do. And that is Chris Guest, who plays Nigel, plays the mandolin. You don't see a mandolin come out in a heavy metal concert, but Chris has some classical leanings, and so he throws mandolin in there. It was thrilling to me the moment when they started to play Stonehenge, you realize it's three guys all playing bass. Oh, no, in Big Bottom, you mean? Big Bottom, I mean. Yeah, Big Bottom, yeah, yeah, yeah. All playing bass. Yeah, everybody plays bass. You kind of go, wow, that's really about musicianship, because everybody's playing a different time.

14:53That's right. And everybody's all strung differently. That's right. So they don't sound the same. And you kind of go, oh, my God. Right. And not only that, but the keyboard player is playing only bass notes on his keyboard. And we had an interesting experience. She's also playing the bass drum. Yes. Only the kick drum and, you know, just bass. Everything's bass. It's all about the bass, isn't it? Anyway, we did a gig once at Wembley Stadium. It was for a thing called Live Earth. It was a big concert. Yeah, we see a flash in a film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they invited all of these bass players with these different bands.

15:33It was from Red Hot Chili Peppers. We had every band that was there. And there were like 15 or 18 bass players all on the stage at the same time doing Big Bottom. I want to ask you if you remember the first musician who came to you and said, Oh, my God, this is my life from the first finals. This is Spinal Tap. Okay, so it has become a staple on tour buses. Every band that's on tour watches Spinal Tap, and they all have their Spinal Tap stories. But the first time was when I was making Princess Bride. I met with Sting. He was a young guy at the time, and he was, you know, becoming successful with the police and all that.

16:14He's the thing, the biggest band in the world at that point. Yeah, they were huge. And he said, you know, I've watched this film. I've seen it over and over and over again. And every time I watch it, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. That was the first time I heard somebody respond. Looking back at your films and getting ready for this, there's so much of the films about what music does to people. The way you use music for needle drops, the way you use scoring, but also the way people listen to music and talk about music in the movies. Have you always been aware of this? Because it's clearly from the first film, it's about that.

16:48But it's been so integral to every movie that you've made. Yeah, but you see Spinal Tap and The End Continues, The New One, that's about a band. And it's about, you know, a large part is about the music. Sure. What I try to do with films that aren't specifically about music is to do what I do with the camera work, with the acting, the writing. You should not notice it. It's there. You're feeling it, but you're not saying, you're not being taken out of the film and noticing something. I'm not saying it's taking you out of the film, but I'm saying that you clearly have an ear train for the way that music affects people.

17:26And I wonder if you remember going to see a concert as a kid or seeing something and going, wow, I want to find some way to incorporate this into my life. Because you start off directing films for TV and doing TV shows and even those things. But it was before concerts. Like I said, I had a stack of 45s. I had all the Everly Brothers, all Chuck Berry. I had, you know, every. Little Richard, the Five Satins, you know, in the still of the night. I listened to all of this stuff. It all was like in my bones. And I remember, you know, dancing the Lindy Hop with my sister, you know, when I was just, you know, 10 years old or 11.

18:06You know, that was my, that was our life. And, you know, the parents, my parents were cool about it. My mother liked the music. She liked. What about your dad? She liked that. He didn't quite get it, you know. But she liked Elvis Presley. She liked all those different. But most of the parents go, what is this? This is terrible. It's sex. It's the children are going to ruin their lives and stuff. But I loved it. She probably responded to the singing. Well, I mean, listen, you listen to the Everly Brothers. Those harmonies, they're as tight as it ever can be, you know? And, you know, I saw a Little Richard play.

18:41I saw Janis Joplin play up in Fillmore. You saw Janis Joplin play? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, she used to come on stage when I was with the committee of this improv group. She would come on stage sometimes and, you know, improvise with us. So, you know, I was in Haight-Ashbury in 1967, the Summer of Love. So I have the credit of having made love on acid, and I can talk about that. But, I mean, no, it's the world that I lived in, you know? So it's interesting because when they said, how do you guys know so much about that? I said, because we live with those people. When I was working on the Smothers Brothers show as a writer, these bands came through all the time, you know, and we hung out with the Mamas and the Papas.

19:25We hung out with Steve Miller. We hung out with, you know, Neil Young was up in the Laurel Canyon, and, you know, we just hung out with everybody. It was part of our world. I think that's why, for me, and we can feel your affection for, there's a slight sort of nostalgic feel. I mean, those early Spinal Tap songs actually really work as pop pieces. I mean, certainly the craftsmanship that those guys as actors can bring to it, that Chris Guest and Michael McKeon and Harry Sher bring to that. But it's also your affection for an era that still feels a little simple in musical terms, isn't it? And you know what's interesting?

20:01All of us love rock and roll. We love it. But we also see what's silly about it. And so it was a tricky thing to be able to satirize the very thing that you love and to be able to walk that line between making fun of it and being reverential to it. And that's what we try to do. I think, well, it's also a tougher needle to thread the neck because you've got to do it and make us believe this is a real world. This isn't just a sketch. This isn't a joke. Well, a lot of people thought it was real. They didn't know. I mean, when we first screened it in Dallas, people came up to me and they said, well, I don't understand.

20:38Why would you make a movie about a band nobody's ever heard of? And one that's not as good as like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. And I said, well, it's a set. They didn't quite understand that we were bending it a little bit. My guess is who's explaining something to us about America is director Rob Reiner. His newest film as director is Spinal Tap 2. The end continues. I can't thank you enough for doing that. Oh, thank you so much, Elvis. Thank you for having me.

21:14The tragic closing of A Circle, actor-director Rob Reiner's first theatrical feature was 1984's This Is Spinal Tap, and his career also included A Few Good Men, When Harry Met Sally, and his last film, the 2025 sequel Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues. Conversations with directors who created genres and stories at the archive, kcrw.com slash the treatment. The Treat is our weekly ongoing series featuring creators on their inspirations, where you can hear Rob Reiner on his inspiration, his father, actor-director Carl Reiner. The newest installment of The Treat comes from actor Jeff Daniels on his love of music and a live album from a then-under-recognized performer The show is produced and edited by Rebecca Mooney and mixed by Katie Gilchrist To better days, everyone, I'm Elvis Mitchell It's The Treatment

22:54We'll see you next time. all from the KCRW app. Download it now or update in your app store.