"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.
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)
