You may have to travel to witness it in person, but Spinal Tap are reuniting, if briefly. The fake metal rockers — played by the heroic trio of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, who made their screen debut in 1984’s immortal mockumentary This is Spinal Tap — will be literally getting the band back together. The occasion? It’s for this spring’s Tribeca Film Festival, which will feature a 35th anniversary screening, a live musical performance, and a “conversation,” which will presumably feature them in character, alongside the film’s also fictitious director Marti Di Bergi, played by Rob Reiner.
Guest, McKean, and Shearer have teamed up with some regularity over the three and a half decades, including for a memorable early Simpsons cameo and a 2009 album (and DVD) called Back from the Dead. They three also teamed up for another, non-Spinal Tap band in Guest’s folkie 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind, as an outfit called The Folksmen. All three and Reiner are doing well for themselves outside of Tap, especially McKean, now on Better Call Saul. Meanwhile, Reiner and his dad, the also legendary Carl Reiner, are arguably Twitter’s most adorable father-and-son team.
This is Spinal Tap isn’t the only biggie getting a star-studded anniversary screening. That’s because Reality Bites is now a quarter of a century old, meaning it’s now older than the characters themselves and time is a cruel mistress.
But ignore that existential dread! Let’s roll out with one of the classic bits from This is Spinal Tap, in which they discuss all those dead drummers in their closet.
