When we first previewed it, we previewed it in a theater in Dallas, Texas, and people […] they didn’t know what the heck they were looking at. […] They came up to me afterward and said, ‘I don’t understand. Why would you make a movie about a band that nobody’s ever heard of? And they’re so bad! Why would you do that?’ They said, ‘You should make a movie about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s a satire,’ I tried to explain, you know. But over the years, people got it, and they started to like it.
— Rob Reiner (Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast)
Much has been made of the reveal of pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s most recent album cover, which sees her on all fours, a collar around her neck, a man off-screen leading her around like a dog. Brave and provocative, said many, a feminist icon owning her sexuality. But I ask you, how different is this than Spinal Tap’s original Smell The Glove layout, which saw, as described by the band’s publicist Bobbi Flekman, a “greased, naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man’s arm extended out up to here holding onto the leash and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it”? Sexist and offensive, is how it was described by label management, who refused to see the boys’ sexually progressive vision through, stifling artists clearly ahead of their time.
— Sean Fennell (Paste Magazine)
Synopsis: "This Is Spinal Tap" shines a light on the self-contained universe of a metal band struggling to get back on the charts, including everything from its complicated history of ups and downs, gold albums, name changes and undersold concert dates, along with the full host of requisite groupies, promoters, hangers-on and historians, sessions, release events and those special behind-the-scenes moments that keep it all real.