Although he didn't invent the bogus documentary, Christopher Guest as good as branded the so-called "mockumentary" with a succession of wry behind-the-scenes satires that began with This Is Spinal Tap (1984). While that film was signed by actor/writer Rob Reiner making his directorial debut, Spinal Tap is more of a piece with Guest's subsequent career than Reiner's.

The project began as a one-off sketch written for the failed ABC pilot The T.V. Show in the summer of 1979. At that time, Guest, his former NYU classmate Michael McKean (a star of the hit sitcom Laverne and Shirley) and Harry Shearer (a former child actor and the original Eddie Haskell in the Leave It to Beaver pilot) wrote themselves into a fleet-footed spoof of rock and roll excess titled "Rock and Roll Nightmare." While the pilot stiffed, that one bit stuck in the minds of all involved and a production team was formed to secure financing for a feature film. Five years later, This Is Spinal Tap was a surprise success with both critics and moviegoers, before either had developed a taste for mockumentary. In the Chicago Sun Times, Roger Ebert praised Reiner et al for the way their film "simply, slyly destroys one level of rock pomposity after another" while New York Times critic Janet Maslin praised "a witty, mischievous satire...so wickedly close to the subject that it is very nearly indistinguishable from the real thing."

In fact, there were those who sat through This Is Spinal Tap from end to end and walked away believing it to be a genuine piece of documentary filmmaking; one fan allegedly buttonholed Rob Reiner to lament how unfortunate it was that he hadn't chosen a more accomplished band to follow. The film's straight-faced sense of topical satire has its roots in the faux news segments of the radio comedy troupe The Credibility Gap (so named for the notorious disconnect discerned by journalists between statements released by the Johnson administration pertaining to the Vietnam War and provable fact). The brainchild of KRLA news director Lew Irwin, the Credibility Gap was staffed initially by radio professionals who, as they moved on, were replaced by comedians – among them Michael McKean and Harry Shearer (who helped the Gap transition from KRLA, with whom they had lost favor by 1970, to the Pasadena station KPPC, where he worked as an FM disk jockey). When McKean and Gap member David Lander moved on to costar in Laverne and Shirley, Shearer cast about as a writer-for-hire, teaming with Carl Gottlieb and Rob Reiner on a stillborn historical satire timed for the American Bicentennial and helping to write Albert Brooks' Real Life (1979), which lampooned the groundbreaking 1973 documentary series (and reality TV progenitor) An American Family.

A not inconsiderable addition to the Tap team was former National Lampoon editor Tony Hendra, who had produced the Off-Broadway Woodstock spoof Lemmings (which provided early paychecks for Chevy Chase and John Belushi), co-founded the baldly bogus Not the New York Times during the city-wide newspaper strike of 1978 and went on to parody such sacred tomes as The National Enquirer, Playboy and The Bible.

As roommates at NYU in the 1960s, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean wrote songs together while McKean and Shearer were pelted with oranges when The Credibility Gap opened for folk singer Richie Havens. Clearly, the material for a merciless exposé (albeit with the names changed to protect innocent and guilty alike) of the sad and pathetic side of the American rock-and-roll dream had been percolating for quite some time when This Is Spinal Tap became a go project. While Guest and Shearer were nobody's idea of famous celebrities in 1984, McKean added some much-need star wattage to the project, as did the casting of a host of well-situated industry friends, including Billy Crystal (then of the hit ABC sitcom Soap), Howard Hesseman (late of CBS's popular WKRP in Cincinnati), Paul Shaffer (near the beginning of a long run as bandleader for late night talk show host David Letterman) and Paul Benedict (a legitimate stage and film actor who was at the time enjoying a lucrative costarring gig on the All in the Family spin-off The Jeffersons). Of far more interest (and entertainment value) than as a time capsule of the mid-80s comedy scene, This Is Spinal Tap does capture a host of budding comedians at or near the start of long and fruitful careers, among them Fred Willard, Fran Drescher (whose claxon-voiced Bobbi Flekman is a pencil sketch for The Nanny, still a decade off), Ed Begley, Jr. and Anjelica Huston, cast in a bit as the designer of the film's infamous nine inch scale model of Stonehenge.

As a director, Christopher Guest has strayed occasionally from the put-on path blazed by This Is Spinal Tap, with those sidebars including the Hollywood-basher The Big Picture (1989), the cable TV remake of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1993) and the seemingly (for him) incongruous frontier spoof Almost Heroes (1998), but the mockumentary remains his métier. Waiting for Guffman (1996) poked fun at small town theatrics, Best in Show (2000) at the eccentricities of dog show contestants, A Mighty Wind (2003) at aging American folk musicians in the iPod age and For Your Consideration (2006) at the destructive ambition that ankles the cast of an independent film due to Oscar® buzz.

Working with more or less the same repertory of actors (Shearer, McKean, Ed Begley, Jr., Fred Willard, Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, John Michael Higgins), Guest has achieved a sense of cinematic continuity usually reserved for such "serious" filmmakers as Robert Altman and John Cassavetes, although a comparison to the charming, efficient comedies crafted by England's Ealing Studios would not be out of place. Guest's extracurricular plans to take Waiting for Guffman to Broadway have fueled rumors that he may be done with the mockumentary. With Guest mum on the subject, it bears remembering that the deadpan satirist is a master in nothing so much as keeping his audiences waiting for that other shoe to drop.

Producer: Karen Murphy
Director: Rob Reiner
Screenplay: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner
Cinematography: Peter Smokler
Music: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer
Film Editing: Kent Beyda, Kim Secrist
Cast: Rob Reiner (Marty DiBergi), David Kaff (Viv Savage), Tony Hendra (Ian Faith), Michael McKean (David St. Hubbins), Christopher Guest (Nigel Tufnel), Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls), Bruno Kirby (Tommy Pischedda), Ed Begley, Jr. (John 'Stumpy' Pepys), Danny Kortchmar (Ronnie Pudding), Fran Drescher (Bobbi Flekman), Dana Carvey (Mime Waiter), Sandy Helberg (Angelo DiMentibelio), Billy Crystal (Morty the Mime).
C-82m. Letterboxed

by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:

Rob Reiner biography by Tonya Horek, Contemporary North American Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide, 2nd edition, 2002
Christopher Guest biography by Douglas Hildebrand, Contemporary North American Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide, 2nd edition, 2002
Harry Shearer interview by Kenneth Plume, www.IGN.com, 2000
Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, David Lander interview by Robert Lloyd, LA Weekly, 1999