The Story of Spinal Tap is presented in two stories. In two-thirds of the book, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever is the account of how the film was made as told by its co-writer/director Rob Reiner with co-writers/actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. Flip it over and Smell the Book is the fictional account of Spinal Tap as told by in an oral history by their counterparts, director Marty DiBergi with band founders Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins, and bassist Derek Smalls.
Buy A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal TapA Fine Line opens with a great piece of trivia: the first appearance of Spinal Tap. It occurred on the 1979 comedy special The TV Show. Reiner and his writing partnerPhil Mishkin were the executive producers. Guest and Shearer were writers on the show, and McKean was brought in to help with the Spinal Tap sequence in a segment spoofing The Midnight Special. Reiner portrayed Wolfman Jack, and the nameless band members appeared in a music video for “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare,” although Shearer didn’t play on the track.
The book backs up to show how fate brought the quartet together. The first meeting was Guest and McKean at New York University in 1967, bonding over music. After The TV Show, Guest and McKean created a short film about two British rockers “who can’t recall whether or not they played in a band together.” Reiner and Shearer started to write a script about roadies on tour but stopped after hearing a movie called Roadies was already in the works. The four then decided to flesh out their characters from The TV Show and put them in a movie about a tour.
The reader gets good insight into the working of show business. Even with known actors like Reiner, who had wrapped up his two-time Emmy winning role as Mike Stivic on All in the Family, and McKean, co-star on the hit TV series Laverne & Shirley, it was hard to get producers interested in funding the concept, especially with just an outline and no script. “The only parts of the film that were written in advance of shooting…were the songs.” One chapter presents the stories behind the songs and the lyrics.
Obviously, they eventually got the money. Reiner and the fellas offer insight into the different stages of the production, the film’s reception, and how the band continued from appearing on the Hear ‘n Aid single, to the launch for a new Marshall amp, and the MTV Video Music Awards. They released the album Break Like the Wind and did tours, including in 2001 where they opened for themselves as the Folksmen. After a chapter where famous musicians talk about the movie, the book covers how the four obtained ownership of “all existing and future intellectual property rights to This Is Spinal Tap and any and all related products” which is how we got the sequel, which they talk about, its soundtrack, and this book.
Smell the Book reunites Marty with the band, who aren’t thrilled with him because they thought his film “had placed way too much emphasis on the [Smell the Glove] tour’s mishaps.” The oral history mainly focuses on the histories of the characters and the band before in This Is Spinal Tap, snippets of which fans will have learned from the movie.
While A Fine Line and Smell the Glove are each insightful and funny to different degrees and both are sure to please Tap fans, due to the tragic double murder of Rob and Michelle Reiner, this memoir can’t help but also being bittersweet as the two Spinal Tap films now bookend Rob’s directing filmography.
