“This is Spinal Tap” is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I swear I’ve seen it 30 or more times. I figured I knew all there was to know about it, but as always, the last time I watched it (this time with my girlfriend who’d never seen it) I caught a subtlety that made me laugh out loud and wonder if I was going crazy.
Obviously, Jeanine (David St. Hubbins’s girlfriend) was always meant to remind viewers of Yoko Ono…the essentially talentless interloper (and enormous rock cliche) who elbows her way into the band, thus disrupting whatever special chemistry made them a band in the first place.
What I’d never noticed, however, was that in several scenes, she appeared dressed up in classic 1950’s country-music attire…cowboy boots, matching skirt and calico shirt, cowboy hat, etc.
My question: was this a subtle commentary on yet another famous girlfriend/wife-cum-musical interloper, Audrey Williams?
Today my jazz band director was all hyped that he’d bought a new, expensive amplifier for the keyboard [my instrument, yay] and went off on a fifteen-minute tangent on it and I asked if the amp went to eleven.
Like, two people caught the reference.
Sad days, these, when high school musicians don’t recognize a Spinal Tap reference, even when it dances up to them wearing bright colours and a “I’m a Spinal Tap Reference” sign, screaming, “I’m a Spinal Tap reference! A goddamn reference!”
Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any commentary on the Audrey Williams angle, cause either I’m really onto something here or I’m completely full of shit. I’d like to know which one.
'Course, I’m predisposed to see Hank Williams references. I’m a huge fan of his music.
Still, I’d be a little disappointed if there was nothing to it…
I’ve read in a few places that there’s a cut of Spinal Tap that’s like 12 hours long, and all of the stuff that didn’t makie it into the theatrical release is just as funny as anything that did.
I don’t know about that, but I know it’s true of the deleted scenes included with the MGM Special Edition. (Which I’ve been told are totally different from those found on the Criterion Collection release.) My favorite is the one where they’re in this record store for a signing, and finally some kid comes in to get the album autographed only because the album cover’s black and they signed with black marker, nothing shows up! Funny, funny stuff. Almost as funny as the metal detector scene.
i tink you are in overdrive on the williams ref. turn it down to 10. i think one nigel wore a cowboy hat in that time frame in the movie iirc. it really gives one perspective.
Yeah, Fibber, they just walked around in character for several days, with film rolling. It was totally ad-libbed except for a) a few scenes they wanted a certain way, and b) general ideas of the shape of the movie (like the Yoko thing).
On some of the cast commentary (not on the DVD - it’s on a quicktime movie CD that I have), we find out that the Air Force Base fiasco with the wireless set was inspired by a real life event: There was evidently a “Shakespeare in the Park” performance where one of the actors started picking up some sort of extraneous transmissions on his wireless mic. He blew up and stormed off in a huff, just like Nigel. That’s one of the scenes they wanted to go a specific direction.
“The problem is we had a Stonehenge monument in danger of being trampled by a dwarf!”
“Well…we could work on the choreography…”
That whole Stonehenge bit was hillarious, as was Nigel’s confusion about the crackers, and them getting lost en route to the stage…could go on forever.
Actually, I think one of the funniest bits of the whole thing (aside from Jeanine playing the tambourine at the “new birth of Spinal Tap, Mark II”) is the voiceover on the menu screen of the DVD…you guys know what I’m talking about.
Here’s a good Tap story for you guys: I had just gotten the DVD and was watching it. About the time the band was explaining all the deaths of their drummers, my stepdad comes in. I’m laughing about “a bizarre gardening accident the authorities thought best left unresolved” when my stepdad explains that “there’s nothing funny about that. The Dead went through three keyboardists” and stalks away.
Good old Spinal Tap. I watched the commentary by the band and it was a riot. When he’s going on about the amp going to 11 the rest of the band is saying “He just trying to get to you”, and when Smalls gets stuck in the stage prop he says “it went right the next night, why did he have to show that night?”
Did anyone else see the second Spinal Tap movie? The best part there is when they start playing Stonehenge, the rodies are trying to bring in a Stongehenge prop that is too big to fit the door. I also miss the video for Bitch School, I have it on my VHS copy but not the DVD, figure that one out, but I like when they start crying at the end of it.