Because I didn’t use This Is Spinal Tap for 1984 and have regretted it for months.
I’ve come to prize movies where everyone involved seems to be enjoying themselves. Chemistry has become one of many traits of a movie that can keep me engaged despite otherwise fatal flaws. (Conversely, lack of chemistry can wreck a movie.) I do not refer solely to sexual or romantic chemistry, although that obviously rules when it is captured on screen (Body Heat; Point Break; Unfaithful; In the Mood for Love). Watching actors vibe with each other or the material, and watching a camera really know when to capture the smallest gesture, it is dynamite.
There has been a strain of improvisation throughout comedy films for a long time. And there is a point at which the movie ceases to be “everyone is smiling and loose” and instead becomes “we don’t actually have a script so we’ll just let Will Ferrell riff for 10 minutes and maybe we’ll get some ideas in the editing room.” And even then, there is a lot to like about the post-Apatow post-McKay riff-heavy comedies (…other than runtime. woof).
Category A (good times): Halloween; Coming to America; Bowfinger
Category B (long-winded, farty): The League; MASH*; Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
But what I loved about This Is Spinal Tap and the Christopher Guest movies was that everyone seemed to trust each other and trust that they’d steer their characters toward some revelatory joke. And the feeling of discovery is palpable even to the audience. Watch Michael McKean and Harry Shearer light up as Guest says “there is a thin line between clever and stupid.” It is a beautiful thing.
But I’m not doing This Is Spinal Tap. I know, I know.
Fast forward from 1984 through the rest of the 20th century. The director of Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner, went on to a massively successful career with romantic comedies (your mileage may vary on his last two decades of output). Harry Shearer and Michael McKean went on to be pillars of television comedy. Christopher Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis and is a British nobleman. So everyone is doing great. And various combinations of these folks get together for other projects, such as Guest’s directorial efforts Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. Those movies, despite some cringe moments, are fantastic because they feel loose but still get their story across and get to the credits fairly quickly. With Guffman, Guest adds other mainstays to his hang-out improv movies, such as Parker Posey (a patron saint of Alleged Beef ) and Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy (you know them from, at minimum, Schitt’s Creek).
But do you know what is missing? Lots of music (there are songs in Guffman but not the same quality or quantity). McKean and Harry Shearer (and David Lander) had a musical background, which absolutely was part of why Spinal Tap kicks so much ass. And here in 2003, they are rejoining Guest in a trio, this time a folk band called The Folksmen. Buddy, let me tell ya, if you haven’t watched A Mighty Wind, you should. The movie also has a teen folk duo named Mitch and Mickey (now in their 60s) played by Levy and O’Hara (their song, which is awesome, was nominated for an Oscar).
The conceit of A Mighty Wind is that a famous folk music producer has died and his son wants to put on a retrospective in memorial of the departed. So he must gather up folk musicians from 40 years back, with varying levels of success. And then the folk musicians put on a live performance of their biggest hits. Everyone looks like they are having a ball (even the always flustered Bob Balaban). It just wafts from the screen like incense.
Just inject it right into my veins, please and thank you.
Other 2003 candidates: Lost in Translation; Cradle 2 The Grave; L’Auberge Espagnole; Dirty Pretty Things; School of Rock; Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
*MASH fully commits to overlapping dialogue, non sequiturs, missed punchlines, and organic dialogue to create a cacophony, which is different than “we let Will do five jokes about tortilla chips and we’ll use three of them in the scene and the other two in the unrated director’s cut blu ray.” Also, MASH‘s loose structure and lack of narrative famously drove Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland to beg the producers to fire Bob Altman, so even its stars would not vibing.
I turn 40 in December. To commemorate the milestone, I’m writing 40 short biographical essays pertaining to a movie per year of my life.