Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean were given $10,000 to write a script for “This is Spinal Tap” (1984). They made a 20-minute version of the film to better demonstrate the improvisation they had in mind. Several scenes from the demo are in the finished movie.
Since the film was improvised by all the performers, the quartet went to the Writers’ Guild hoping to give proper credit to everyone. The Board of Directors voted unanimously that the credits should stay as they were, including only the four of them.
Guest, Shearer, and McKean were not only comic actors and writers, but competent musicians themselves, and had played together in various configurations for both fun and parody before the film began production. They also composed and rehearsed the bands songs, did extensive research on groups of that era, and developed extensive back-stories for the band, and for each of their characters, so that during on-screen interviews the unrehearsed, unanticipated questions they were asked could be answered in complete sincerity… and hilarity. Although they wrote and played their own songs for the film, in the concert scenes they are actually lip-syncing to their own prerecorded tracks.
The entire film was shot in Los Angeles County, over a period of about five weeks. The visit to Elvis Presley’s grave was filmed in a park in Altadena, with a mock-up of the grave site. The band sings “Heartbreak Hotel” because that was the only Elvis song for which producer Karen Murphy could obtain rights. (IMDb/Wikipedia)
Don’t tell a soul, but Grendel, Part 2 is Out
Relive the endless summer as Greg and Del continue on their paths to fame and glory. Go to the home page of http://www.SilverbackDigest.com and click on the page for “Grendel: Part 2 – Summahtime”