Why ‘This is Spinal Tap’ Bombed at the Box Office, According to Rob Reiner
These days, This Is Spinal Tap is widely considered to be a genuine comedy classic, hence why we’re getting a belated sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, later this year. Not to mention the fact that it’s the rare mockumentary to get its very own pinball game (suck it, Waiting for Guffman).
But when it first hit theaters back in 1984, the movie wasn’t exactly a hit. Although critically-acclaimed, This Is Spinal Tap, which cost $2 million to make, earned less than $5 million at the box office. To put that in perspective, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo made $6.7 million that same year.
In a new interview with the AARP, director Rob Reiner explained that part of the problem was that hardly anyone in 1984 grasped the basic concept of the movie. “People thought it was a real documentary,” Reiner explained. “We were making fun of rock stars and documentaries. People didn’t understand it. We screened it in Dallas for the first time. People said to me, ‘Well, I don’t get this. Why would you make a movie about a band that nobody’s ever heard of? And one that’s this bad? Why don’t you make a movie about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?’ I tried to explain, ‘Well, it’s satire.’”
Early screenings of This Is Spinal Tap were famously terrible. According to The New York Times, audiences “hated” the movie because they didn’t understand that it was fake and intended to be comedic. And to be fair, there were very few mockumentaries at the time for moviegoers to compare it to. Although Reiner has acknowledged that his close friend Albert Brooks “was the first guy to do a mock documentary,” 1979’s Real Life.
Now things have changed; the recent theatrical re-release of This Is Spinal Tap was a surprise box office hit earlier this month, making over a million dollars in just a “three-day special engagement with limited showtimes.” And Reiner still seems somewhat shocked by the movie’s success.
“I mean, we made this little film, and it didn’t do very well. Then it came out on videotape, then DVD, and it got played over and over, and it became this cult classic,” the All in the Family star explained. “And then people started quoting it. It got put in the Library of Congress and in the National Film Registry. We got approached by rock stars all the time saying it’s a staple on their tour bus. The quote ‘This one goes to 11’ is now in the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning something in excess. It’s part of the lexicon. I was blown away.”
Of course it doesn’t hurt that the viewing public is far more familiar with the mockumentary format today, unlike those folks in the ‘80s who thought it was all 100 percent real. At least Oasis’ Liam Gallagher doesn’t have to feel quite so stupid.
