Filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner is ready to crank the laughter up to 11 all over again, looking back on his classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap as it returns to theaters this weekend to celebrate its 41st anniversary (you read that right) while offering some tantalizing hints about the upcoming sequel.
Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE ahead of the film's return to theaters on July 5, remastered in 4K, Reiner, 78, still marvels as how 1984's subversive, searingly funny and entirely improvised satire of the egos, excess and touring mishaps of the fictional '80s rock 'n' roll band that he cooked up with the film's stars and co-writers -- and his close friends -- Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer -- slowly but surely evolved from a little-seen critical darling to a cult favorite to a widely influential pop cultural institution over the course of four decades.
"It's taken a while, but you never know when you're going to start shooting something if it's going to take," Reiner says. "And this certainly didn't take right away!"
Reiner remembers an early screening of the film in Dallas in which audience members emerged genuinely perplexed; the comedy was delivered so straight-faced many of them didn't realize that everything they'd just seen was fictional.
"They came up to me and said, 'Well, I don't understand: why would you make a movie about a band that nobody's ever heard of -- and one that's so bad? I mean, why wouldn't you make a movie about the Rolling Stones or The Beatles or something?' So it went over a lot of people's heads," the filmmaker says. "It's that old adage that 'satire closes on a Saturday night on Broadway,' and that looked like was going to be our fate for a long time."
But influential film critics like Roger Ebert championed the comedy, and it gradually began to permeate the culture as a sort of secret handshake for those hip enough to get it. "Over the years, it started catching fire and people caught onto it, and then it became part of the lexicon," he reveals, noting that he first got the sense that the movie was striking an ever-broadening chord with audiences when people would approach him and quote some of the film's signature lines -- including the now-familiar reference to Nigel Tufnel's modified amp with custom volume controls.
"People would come up to me and say, 'This goes to 11,' or 'There's a fine line between stupid and clever,' " Reiner recalls. Over time, he says, "People are quoting it all over the place, and it gets in the National Film Registry through the Library of Congress, and it's in the Oxford English Dictionary: 'Something that goes to 11' is not just a music thing, but anything that's an extreme."
The reactions from real-life rockstars took Reiner aback even more. "Over the years, so many rockers have come up to us and said 'It's a staple on the bus. We watch it all the time on tour,' " he says. "And when I first met Sting, he told me that he'd seen it so many times, and every time he watched it, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry."
That was because, along with biting, deliriously deadpan wit, This Is Spinal Tap was built on Reiner and his cohorts' authentic, deep love of the world of rock and roll, which during their formative years was deeply intermingled with the up-and-coming comedy scene they came of age in.
"We're the first generation that grew up on rock 'n' roll -- we love rock 'n' roll! So to find that crease between paying homage and loving rock 'n' roll and at the same time making fun of it, that was a tricky line to walk," Reiner says. "Virtually everything that happens is taken from something that we either experienced with people, because in the late '60s, the rock 'n' roll world and the improv world, which is where I come from, there was kind of a cross-pollination there, so I was very much aware of what goes on tour and what happens,[and] we got stories from people that we knew."
In one instance, John Sinclair -- a former member of the '70s heavy metal band Uriah Heep, who played keyboards for the film -- shared a true story of how that band got incongruously booked to play at a military base, which became a scene in the film. In another, Spinal Tap's quarreling over the backstage food was also rooted in real life. "That came out of an article we read in Rolling Stone, which was called 'The Endless Party,' which was all about Van Halen and their backstage rider, which called for what kind of accommodations they have backstage," Reiner says with a laugh. "So we just took liberally from experiences that we had and we knew about."
To add to the sense of realism, Reiner (Marty DiBergi), Guest (Nigel Tufnel), McKean (David St. Hubbins) and Shearer (Derek Smalls) closely studied rock documentaries, including now-classics of the genre The Last Waltz (featuring The Band), The Song Remains the Same (Led Zeppelin), The Kids Are All Right (The Who) and Don't Look Back (Bob Dylan). "I looked at all of them to get the grammar of it and to see how it worked," says Reiner, who even hired a director of photography, Peter Smokler, who'd shot several rock docs, including the Rolling Stones' infamous Gimme Shelter, in which Hell's Angels hired as security guards killed a concertgoer on camera.
One thing that Reiner didn't see coming was, less than a decade after the film's debut, Spinal Tap actually recording new albums and performing to live audiences. "The guys started getting gigs! They were playing!" he explains. "Then they played Wembley Stadium and they played Royal Albert Hall; they played Glastonbury. And so it was like a Mobius strip where the worlds kept folding into each other and they become part of this hybrid thing where they were in the real world. And so then they're part of the rock 'n' roll world; certainly with the Library of Congress and all that you realize 'Okay we've arrived!' "
Also unexpected was the profound influence of the mockumentary form that This Is Spinal Tap helped pioneer: not only would Guest continue to refine and perfect the format with his own string of improvised comedies like Waiting for Guffman and Best In Show , the roaming camera and talking head-confessional elements would soon become a common language for popular TV comedies across the board , including The Office and Modern Family .
"I did an interview recently with Ricky Gervais," says Reiner. "and he talked very specifically about how the style that he has in The Office was something he took from Spinal Tap."And then you see it in Parks and Rec and Abbott Elementary ,and Ben Stiller was telling me how it influenced him .So yeah ,I think we did influence a lot of people --but you don’t set out to do that .You just say ‘Okay ,we’re going to satirize rock and roll documentaries ,’and then it becomes a thing."
The film served as an effective springboard to eventually launch Reiner into the upper echelons of Hollywood filmmakers in the '80s and '90s, with an enviable and diverse roster of near-instant classics to his credit, including When Harry Met Sally , The Princess Bride , Misery and A Few Good Men . But now he's returning full circle with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues , a much-demanded sequel due later this year that almost never happened.
"We had been approached many, many times about doing a sequel. We said, 'No, we've done it. It's done. It's a cult classic, whatever -- leave it be,' " he explains. But after Shearer -- long miffed that the foursome's original deal for the film had, through "creative accounting on steroids," failed to yield any real profits -- reclaimed the rights after a long legal battle, suddenly the door cracked open again.
"We met and we talked about it," Reiner recalls."But then we started talking about it more,and out of the reality of where we all were and the fact that the band hadn't really played together in 15 years ...We said,'Whoa, there's been bad blood.They haven't played together.Something's going on.'And that became the basis for creating this one last concert."
One final bit of inspiration came in the form of Kate Bush's 1985 song "Running Up That Hill" seeing a phenomenal resurgence in popularity with the TikTok generation after it appeared in several 2022 episodes of Stranger Things.
"We said,'Wait a minute --that's an idea! Somebody picks up one of [Spinal Tap's] songs!' "says Reiner."I don’t want just give it away because it’s a great moment,but two famous singers are screwing around at a background check before a show and they start singing one of the songs,and somebody captures it on an iPhone ,they stick it up on TikTok and it goes viral ,and all of a sudden Spinal Tap is resurrected!"
And Reiner, who reprises his role as the documentarian Marty DiBergi, says that once he,Guest ,McKean and Shearer were back together in front of the camera riffing impromptu one-liners once again ,they all felt that their comedic magic was as potent as ever.
"It was like falling back into something that was very familiar,"says Reiner."We've all known each other even more than 40 years:you pick up where you left off;you just fall right back into it.And we don't talk as fast as we used to,but our brains are still sharp;we start making each other laugh;then you're off to the races again."