The Story Archive

This Is Spinal Tap

Rob Reiner · 1984 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A documentary crew follows an English heavy metal band across an American tour on which the venues keep shrinking, an album cover is rejected as offensive, and drummers die in circumstances nobody can account for. Backstage the two songwriters fall out over a girlfriend, and a stage prop arrives built to the wrong scale. Almost wholly improvised, it invented the mockumentary and is still quoted by the musicians it mocks.

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