GREAT SELECTION: This is Spinal Tap (1984)

I was deciding on which great selection to choose but after seeing Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which was funny and surprisingly good in its own right, it did not reach the hilarious mockumentary level of the fictional rock n'roll band of Spinal Tap in Rob Reiner's fantastic comedy: This is Spinal Tap. Now, I do like the genre quite a bit so it was in my wheelhouse of mixing musical genres with comedy and this movie was effective because even though this was a fictional rock band, the experience felt real when we witness behind-the-scenes of its repeated successes and failures down the road.

What was fascinating in the beginning of the film is that director Rob Reiner plays the sole documentarian, Marty Di Bergi, covering the 1982 U.S. concert tour interweaving with interviews regarding the original start of the band - the name, the history and their personalities. Childhood friends David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) started their band in the 1960s and they had to re-name their band from "The Originals" to the "New Originals" (which does not make a lick of sense, but it's funny) to "The Thamesman" but ultimately went for "Spinal Tap" to have limited success with their music and cover albums.

This is a movie relevant to pop culture today that expresses artists' flare as to trying so hard. Today, in my opinion, there's not much class regarding pop culture and customers are more focused as to foul-mouthed poetry and musical arrangement which includes remixing and changing vocal arrangements. It's a bit underwhelming nowadays. But, regarding its branding of the cover, for example, when a producer calls the band manager (Tony Hendra), he says to him that the album is not going to be released due to its sexist and offensive cover of a woman being symbolized as a dog in which the band thinks it's "sexy".

Rock n' roll. 

Ultimately, their album takes off as their heavy metal rock is a success and a bassist, Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), Viv Savage, a keyboardist (David Kaff) and a series of drummers, who died mysteriously in one way or another as both David and Nigel describe their deaths in dim-witted fashion presented in a darkly humorous description. There is a scene of that panned humor as they describe and present an amplifier that has volume knobs that go to eleven. Di Bergi asks, "Why don't you make ten be the top number and make it a little louder?" Tufnel bluntly replies, "These go to eleven."

An interesting sequence is shown to us that a cover definitely makes the difference again because earlier in the movie, stores do not want to distribute the sexist covers, so the manager releases the album with a totally black cover and that impacts Spinal Tap's sales go low. I don't know much about the music industry but an artist's name rarely sells for me because a few of my favorite artists I listen to regardless. Nowadays, I don't buy albums but I pretty much listen to their music on Spotify or on YouTube to get familiar with the artist's taste in music. That's why going back to this movie is like a throwback because we can compare what the music industry is like compared to today's from the consumer's point of view, business point of view and the musicians' point of view.

Spinal Tap. 

This is probably one of the very first mockumentaries, if not the first, to stage a fictional band and make a documentary within a movie. I think blending in the style of a comedy, especially a musical comedy, with documentary hand-held footage was perfect because it could document the allegedly real-life happenings of how the music business works and how the band is treated from both the business standards and its fans. It also sets the stage for other comic endeavors such as some of Sacha Baron Cohen's comedies like Borat and the awful Brüno and Howard Stern's movie, Private Parts.

Borat and last year's indie hit, What We Do in the Shadows, almost hit that standard of comic genius but Spinal Tap almost reaches the level of the best documentary about music ever made, The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese. But, what Rob Reiner made established his name into future projects mixing comedy with other sorts of genre whether if it is fantasy, romance, politics and maybe in the teen genre. But, also, I think this is a movie that is set for a broader audience than other mockumentaries because it's relevant and satirical in its own right that gets you to listen to more rock music from the early days of rock n'roll: Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones. It was great to revisit this movie again.