Taking a Walk.

I'm Buzzsnight and this is the Taking a Walk Podcast.

We are going to replay an episode with Rob Reiner.

Now, like you, we are shocked at the loss of Rob and his wife Michelle.

And it was a couple months back.

Rob was promoting the Spinal Tap reboot.

It was amazing clicking on the zoom and there he was, right before my eyes, willing to talk about his past, his influences, his father, what his father meant to him.

He was heartwarming, he was engaging.

It was wonderful having him on.

He has such an incredible body of work that he has left us that we are grateful for and I'm grateful that he took the time to be on the Taking a Walk Podcast.

Here's a replay.

Rest in peace, Rob Reiner.

Rob Reiner, welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast.

Thanks for having me.

So your life, you know, intersects everybody.

So before we dig into Spinal Tap too, the end continues, I have to ask you, if you could take a walk with someone living or dead, who would it be and where would you take a walk with him?

That's a great question.

You know, I think about my dad all the time and he's you know, he's in my head at every move I make.

And there's a story that they tell.

I don't remember because I was little.

I think I was eight years old, and I went up to that Mike folks and I said, you know, I want to change my name.

And they thought, oh, this poor kid, he's worried about, you know, being Carl Reiner's son and you know, living in the shadow and you know, living up to and all that.

And they said, well, what do you want to change your name to?

And I said Carl because I loved him so much and I wanted to be just like him, and I looked up to him, so I think I would take a walk with him if I could.

Ah, that's the incredible.

Now what did he think of spinal tap?

He loved it.

He loved it.

I mean, you know, listen he you know, he was on the show of shows, said Caesar during the fifties, and they did satire they may you know, they were doing satire of movies and television.

And one of the things they did was the satire of a rock and roll act called the Three Haircuts.

And there would he had these big, you know, kind of pompadour hairdoes and so he was always into that kind of stuff.

And you know, we this is a long time ago, and uh I was I've said before, but we you know, he was on television before we owned a television and actually bought one so we could watch him on television.

Anyway, he loved satire.

I mean, he know, if you listen to the stuff he did with the mel Brooks and the two thousand year Old Man and a lot of this stuff saying, I know he loved he loved Spinal Tap, and he was very you know, very complimentary me.

He even actually said because I was always trying to live up to him and I never thought I could do it, and I don't know that I have or I still do.

But he told me at one point, he says, you're a better director than I am.

And I thought, wow, that's that's pretty cool for him to say that.

And I remember there was one year, the year that Spinal Tap came out, in nineteen eighty four, he had done a movie called All of Me with Steve Martin, and you know, they had these top ten lists at the end of every year they put the you know, top ten films, and Spinal Tap, and you know, this is Spinal Tap and all of me were on a ton of lists together, and I thought, Wow, that's amazing.

I don't think there's ever been in the history of the movie business that a father and son have had two films that they've directed that were in the top ten.

So and I don't think it's ever happened.

So I was very proud of that outstanding.

So bands evolve over time, they get more mature, they find new creative outlets.

So if I was speaking to this guy, what was his name, Marty de Burghiy.

Marty de Burgh.

Yeah, he was the director of the first film and the second one, the new one, The End Continues.

He directed that as well.

What would he say about this band's evolution over time?

Well, I think you know, first of all, Marty's a huge fan of Spinal Tap.

I mean, he goes way back to when he first saw them in Brantwich Village and you know, he was like, couldn't be more thrilled to be able to get the chance to document this.

At the time was supposed to be their final tour.

Turns out that, you know, they have life after that, and Marty was very hopeful that it would trigger a bigger film career for him that he would get a chance to make a studio movie, and in fact he did.

He got to do was a It was a sequel to a film that won a lot of Oscars, was with Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman.

It was called Kramer Versus Kramer, and Marty did the sequel, which was Kramer Versus Kramer versus Godzilla.

Didn't do too well.

No, no, it bombed, It bombed, so, oh my god.

You know, he's been floundering since then, and he got the opportunity to do the new one, and he was like thrilled, beyond belief.

Do you think when he evaluates though the band's growth as artists, that he's seen them grow as artists.

I think the beauty of a spinal tap is that they have not grown at all.

They have not grown emotionally or musically, and I think that's their charm.

Now they have grown age wise, and they are quite a bit older.

But if you look around, you know, you see you see Paul McCartney's still out there doing it, rolling stones.

Mick Jagger's still running around the stage in his eighties.

You know, these bands want to keep going, They want to keep going and as a matter of fact, in the second film, Derek Small's, their bass player, wrote, I had an idea for a song called Rocking in the Urn, which is all about what happens in the afterlife.

And his contention was that you're still rocking.

You know, wherever you are, you're still playing music.

I love the book A fine line between clever and stupid.

And between stupid and clever.

Actually the line was from the first film.

Uh you know they that that was a line that was my favorite line in the first film was the there's a fine line between stupid and clever.

I love the various takes from the artist.

I don't want to give it away, but I do want to less if with your permission.

Sure.

Look at how Don Henley weighs in on the spinal Tap drummer Stu as we would call it, and he says being a drummer alive as a victory I haven't exploded.

I mean he he's one of the few drummers that has survived.

I mean we you know spinal Tap went through.

I think it was eleven or twelve drummers.

I'm not sure, twelve I think.

And they actually have to have an audition to you know, find a new drummer because the last drummer they had, Skippy Scuffleton, died from sneezing.

He had a sneezing fit and he couldn't stop sneezing and he sneezed himself to death.

And you know, so they have to find a new drummer, and they put out, you know, a wide net.

They're trying to, you know, see if there's anybody would come in and and fill the bill.

And they go to Questlove you know, it's Jimmy Fallon's drummer and eat you know, from the Roots.

They go to Chad Smith from the Red Hot Jelly Peppers, and I also go to Lars Alert from from Metallica, and they all they turn him down because none of them want to die.

They all would rather survive than than play rock and roll.

So they all turn them down and they have to hold auditions and they wind up with a new drummer.

Who will see whether or not that drummer survives it did go.

To a friend of ours, Ed Begley Junior.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I know you have some history with him as John Stumpy.

Yeah, John Swompy Peeps.

He was there drummer when they were the Thames Men and they had their first moderate hit called give Me Some Money and we show that it's interesting.

But Ed just did a little part in a film, in a short film that my daughter Romy wrote and directed and acted in, and so it was funny.

Romy was trying to figure out what he should wear and they did a FaceTime and they looked in his closet and she said, I want that sweater.

There was a specific sweater and Ed said, oh, that's my favorite sweater.

I love that.

I've had it for over fifty years and was knitted for him by Annette O'Toole, who was married to Michael McKeon.

So you know they had so when we all got together, then Annette and Romi they bond over knitting because Romi loves to knit too.

So I asked that.

I said, if if Stumpy had been interviewed by Rob rein or, what do you think the conversation would be like?

And he said, and I quote, I knew that was one dangerous hoe.

I never thought it would end like this.

And I asked him too, I said, so what do you think of the masters of tap these days?

And he says, as for the masters of TAP, I'm laying low as I owe each of them a great deal of money.

But if they're willing to forgive and forget, I'm available for grip work or craft service.

And he says, for the record, doing craft service on their next project is a sincere offer.

Grip work is a euphemism that's probably frowned upon by HR these days.

And Ed is so funny, you know, we're talking about him, and I'm going to show you something.

Show you.

Because we're on a podcast, you can't see it.

But I have a book here that Ed wrote, and it's sitting right there on my desk that you know, and it's sitting there right there, Ed's book.

He's the best for sure.

Yep.

So as a master of directing people and giving them space.

Can you describe the joy of collaboration in this process for the new spinal Tap?

Well, to me, that's the most fun for us is that we had, first of all, the sequel.

It's like forty one years after the first one, so I mean there's a time has gone by and we you know, we've worked together in different iterations, you know, over the years, but we hadn't really worked in like fifteen in the last fifteen years, none of us.

But the minute we got back together, it's like old friends.

You know, you pick up right where you left off.

And Chris Guests used to call it schnadling, which is this byplay back and forth that you do.

And we fell right back into it.

It's like you know, jazz musicians that just know how each other moves, and we all can, you know, schnadle with each other.

And they fell back right into their musical connection and it was fun.

That was the most fun is to be able to, you know, do with people who are on the same level as you are and have the same frames of reference and know how to lay out, know when to come in.

All of that.

It's effortless, isn't it.

It is it is.

And when we did the first one and the second one, all the dialogue is improvised and that's comfortable for us.

We enjoy doing that.

I mean, you know, people said, oh my god, the first film you made and it was no script and it was improvised.

I said, yeah, because that's my training, and that's the training of the guys I'm working with.

We're all that's what we do.

It's like, like I say, it's like jazz musicians.

You pick up a bass, you pick up the sacks, a guy plays piano, somebody's playing drums, and you just fall in and start doing it.

And it was to me it was a lot easier to do that than to do a scripted film where I had to figure out camera angles and you know, is this tracking, is the continuity and all that stuff.

This was easy for me.

Do you remember the first point in your life that music had an impact on you?

Oh?

Yeah, yeah, No, I mean I'm the first.

I'm the first generation that grew up on rock and roll, and that was in the fifties, and you know, it's why it exploded, because young people connected immediately.

Going back to Bill Haley and the comments or any of them, but little Richard, Chuck Berry, you know, Fast Domina, I don't you know, the Everly Brothers.

I don't care who you listen, Jerry Lee Lewis, all these people spoke to us and we loved.

I had stacks and stacks of forty five's records that you played, and I right, like in diner, I could tell you what was on the flip side of a song, you know, And so that was the stuff that got to me right.

And then of course in the sixties there was another real explosion that happened in Great Britain and also in the West Coast and San Francisco and in Los Angeles, and I was part of that scene too, So I you know, I grew up on this stuff.

And there's been a lot of cross pollination between the improv world and the rock world.

And that's why people said, well, how could you be so aware of what happens to rock musicians and tour because first of all, those guys are musicians, they've been on tours and stuff.

But I hung out with these people.

I hung out with Janice Joplin, I hung out with Mama cass Elliott.

You know, these are the people that you know, David Crosby from Crosby Silsan Nash, and these are the people that we hung out with, and so it was just natural.

Janis Joplin would come on stage a number of times when I was working at The Committee, which is an improv group from San Francisco.

So this was part of our world and and I'll you know, I you know, to me, that was that's my background, you know, first generation to grow up on television and rock and roll.

We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk Podcast.

Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.

Do you mind if we share favorite protests songs?

Sure, go ahead.

Mine is the version of Blowing in the Wind by Jim Nabors.

Oh my god, you're talking about an episode that I did of Gomer Pyle where I sang Blown in the Wind with Lee French who was also in the committee, and Chris Ross, who was also in the committee.

Of the three of us as hippies were singing Blown in the Wind with It's one of my proudest moments in television.

All right, I'm cheating.

That was not my favorite protest song.

I know, I know what was it?

Though?

Mine was by phil Oaks and it was called Here's to the State of Richard Nixon.

Phillips did some great protest ones, you know, Country Jone, the Fish have one, two, three, for what are we fighting for?

You know, don't give a damn next stop Vietnam.

And you know one of my favorites is for what It's Worth, which is you know the Buffalo Springfield, is something happening in here?

What it is?

And exactly clear.

That was to me, is like an anthem.

So were there new challenges in directing a monumentary in today's comedy and media landscape versus back in the eighties.

Well, it's different.

I mean, you know, I used the sixteen millimeter camera.

I had one sixteen millimeter camera and that's all I had.

Now I'm used, you know, with the you know, I've had a couple of digital cameras and so you know, I had a lot of more coverage that I could get, and I try to not mirror what I'm you know, we set a certain standard of documentary type entertainment and you see it in parks and rec and have it elementary the Office.

Even Ricky Gervai talks about how he took from Spinal Tap and created The Office with that kind of documentary field.

But it is evolved.

It's evolved with all these supposedly reality shows, they're not reality at all.

I would argue that Spinal Tap is more reality than some of these reality shows.

So there's a tendency to try to mirror how they do these documentary things now.

But my gut feeling was to Marty is not very much like Spinal Tap.

Not making a lot of growth.

I'm thinking that Marty didn't grow all that much either, and so I try to keep it sort of in the vein of what he did the first time.

What is so incredible is so many of the storylines, when you really dig into them in you know, spinal tap, are actually you know, true to life extensions of the rock and roll world.

Yes, I mean that was the That was the thing that people were so stunned by.

You know.

There were things that we took from experiences we had, There were things we took from articles from the newspaper.

One of the things we had was an original the original, not the original, but the one of the keyboard players we have is a guy named Johnson Claire, which we had in this twenty minute demo reel that I put together to try to sell the film, and he had to make a choice we were going to start shooting the film or he was gonna he got a real gig with a group called They were doing an album called Abamba Knock and it was oh God, I can't oh yah Heap that was the name of the band, Orya Heap, And he went and show.

He said, that's a real gig.

So he went and did that.

But during the tour he came back and talked to us, well time about this weird booking they got in a military base, and so he said, oh great, we put that right in the film.

So anything that would that seemed interesting.

Getting lost backstage was something that happened to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

The whole idea of the backstage writer, what's provided backstage, That's something we took out of an article we read in Rolling Stone about Van Halen called the Endless Party.

And in their case they they said no brown m and ms.

They didn't want any brown m and ms backstage.

So we had that whole thing.

So we took from what we were presented with.

And you went out and did some research on bands such as Judas Priest.

I think the other one was Saxon, and.

Well, yeah, Harry, Harry spent some time with Saxon.

We wall into a concert with Judas Priest.

The guys also went and saw a C.

D.

C At another concert, and we just took from what we I mean, the one thing that I got from, you know, going to see Judus Priest is I thought I was having a heart attack.

The sound was so loud and intense, and the drum and the bass were so heavy that it would like it was pounding on my chest.

So I thought, okay, that's the that you know, England's loudest bands, final pet.

Breaking the low, breaking the low.

Yeah, that's oh my god.

Now did some artists when the first spinal tap came out?

They did not get the joke?

Is that correct?

That's true?

Uh?

You know Ozzy, Ozzy Osbourne, God Rest his soul.

I mean, he was a little bit upset.

He said, this is not nice.

They're they're making fun of us.

I mean, the you know, what are they doing?

You know?

And Axel Rose, I mean we got a story from Slash, you know, played with guns and roses and he said.

Axel Rose was very upset because he thought, that's not that's not the way we are.

We have real music and we're you know, we we really were important.

We should you know, we shouldn't be talking about and I think old Steven Tyler also from Aerosmith, didn't like what we did.

But I think over the years they've come to understand it.

You know, it was fun and like I said, we grew up on rock and roll.

We all love rock and roll, and we're all satirists.

So it's you try to find the way that you can blend satire with you know, and make make fun of the thing that you love.

Yeah, Spinal TAP's always been about, you know, a poking fun at fame and excess.

What does the Rock Rock monumentary say about celebrity culture now?

Well, I mean, you know, because of social media and you know, TikTok and Instagram and all that stuff, everybody's a star.

I mean, everybody wants to be a star, and they put themselves out there in some kind of semi document to reform in some realistic cinema verite style to connect with people.

That's what they try to do.

It is one of the best ways to connect because it feels real.

It feels like you're you know, you're really experiencing something and everybody's doing it, you know.

I remember seeing a documentary years ago called We Live in Public.

I don't know if you ever saw that, but it's it was done by the guy who initially created before Facebook, there was what was it called, It was called MySpace, MySpace MySpace.

He had created MySpace, and he talked he had you know, left that world and he was talking.

He says, everybody says, you know, like you know, Marshall McCluin.

You know, everybody wants their fifteen minutes of fame.

But we've come to a point where everybody wants their fifteen minutes of fame every day.

You know it.

That's what we've evolved to is.

And I think, you know, it's this documentary style that lets us in on supposedly who we are, but you never you don't really get to know who people are.

Are you fascinated how cult movies like Spinal Tap ultimately turned into not only cult movies but into classics.

It's shocking to me.

It's stunning because when we first came out, nobody people didn't get it.

They didn't know what we were doing.

It's a classic line you hear from the theater, you know, satires were closes on Saturday night and we have just almost closed.

People thought it was a real band.

They thought, why would I make a movie about a band nobody's ever heard of?

And why wouldn't I do something about the rolling stones of the Beatles or something.

So they didn't get it, and it took many, many years.

I think it was the you know, it was home entertainment, it was videotapes and CDs, and people started, you know, catching wind of it.

And then over the years, over many years, it became this thing where the Library of Congress puts it in the National Film Registry, and you know, it's in the Oxford English Dictionary, goes to eleven and all this stuff becomes part of the culture.

And there's no way in a million years that you'd think that you'd have this kind of impact.

There's just no way.

You're just making a film that you think is funny and you know, you think we'll have a few laughs and maybe somebody will like it.

There's no way you think it's going to be what it turned out to be.

What are your some of your favorite cult classics?

Well, I there's a lot that I mean, I like a lot of you know, give me the give me what you consider a cult classic, and I'll tell you because to me, if I like a film, I don't think of it as cult classic.

You know, I'm just like I like a film.

But what would you consider a cult classic.

I know you say rocky horror show and stuff, like, I'm not a big rocky horror show fan.

But well, give me another example of a cold classic and I'll tell you.

If I'll mention it because you referred to it earlier.

Diner.

Oh yeah, I know.

I love Diner.

And it's funny because Diner and Spinal Flap came out the same year.

And I remember being on a plane with Barry Levinson is a good friend, and we were talking about these films that we had made and we were trying to get, you know, get somebody to promote it and all this stuff, and we had no idea that you know, to him, it was a very personal film about growing up in Baltimore.

To me, it was this personal thing of this integration between rock and roll and improvisation.

So it was just things that we thought, I like this.

I don't know if anybody else will like it, but yeah, Diner's great.

I love Diner.

So I know the theaters are important to you as a creator.

The fact that you know this COVID kind of obviously knocked everybody off kilter.

It knocked that business off.

It's kilter.

Talk to those listening about for you, as a creator, as an artist, how important it is to go to the theater and see any movie this movie in particular.

Well, I think that you know, if when you're looking at comedies or horror movies, horror thrillers, those you want to share with people because it intensifies the experience.

There's nothing better than being with a group of people and laughing at something, and that's infectious.

And the same thing with a with a you know, thriller or a horror movie.

You can't experience that at home.

People watch it at home, they put it on pause, they go to the bathroom, they go get something to eat, and it's not that same experience.

I can tell you something that it really bugs me, and that is when I was doing All in the Family.

This is back in the you know, in the seventies.

And by the way, a lot of young people never even heard of All the Family.

They don't even know what it is.

But for those who don't, it was the number one show in America for five years straight.

Every single week was number one.

And we were a country of about two hundred million at the time, and every single week, forty to forty five million people watched the show.

And they watched it at the same time.

They had to because there was no DVR, there was no TVO.

There was no video cassettes.

You had to watch it when it was on.

That meant that there was forty to forty five million people having a shared experience and being able to talk about it, and it had an impact on the way people, you know, have viewed it and the way they talked about it.

Now, we're a country of about three hundred and forty million people, and if you have a show that's seen by ten million people, that's considered a big hit, and they don't even watch it at the same time they're streaming it, they're watching idea.

Don't tell me what happened.

I didn't see that episode yet.

I'm still on season two, whatever it is, And so you don't have that communal, shared experience.

I think that's important.

It's important for theater and it's important for movies to have that.

And you're right, COVID had a big impact on it, and so did streaming.

Streaming has had a tremendous impact on it.

So you know, I'm hoping people will have it.

They'll enjoy it.

I know they'll have a better experience and they'll enjoy it if they go that they go to the theater.

So two more questions.

Rob.

First of all, how do you want fans, both longtime followers and new audiences to walk away after seeing the sequel.

I want them to say, I had a great time, and here's it's something interesting.

We screen both.

You know, we screened the sequel for an audience recruited, you know people regularly.

Half the audience had seen the first film, the other had never seen the first film, and the reaction was exactly the same.

The cards came back and said exactly, they enjoyed it equally.

And so hopefully I'm making a film that stands on its own, even if you haven't seen the first one.

If you have seen the first one, there are some references you'll get that you wouldn't get if you didn't.

But I want, I feel obligated to put something out there that's a piece of entertainment that stands on its own.

I read this book by Frank Capra many years ago, where you know, in the days when that's when you went you went to the theater, and he said, you're asking people to pay money to sit in a darkened room with strangers, and you're asking them to pay attention for two hours.

You better have something to show them, and so I'm hoping that people come away saying, yeah, I had a great experience.

I liked the first one, I liked the second one, and if you hadn't seen the first one, you'll still like the second one.

So inclosing beyond spinal tap, are there stories you're excited about additionally that you're working on now that you can share.

I have one story that I've been playing around with.

It's going to sound crazy, but I've been playing around with it for over fifty years, about fifty five years as it is, because it came out of a sketch that I worked on when I was writing for the Smothers Brothers.

This was back in the sixties and sixty eight sixty nine and I was writing.

Steve Martin was a writing partner with me.

We were together and Carl Gottlieb, who wrote Jaws.

We wrote this sketch was a Christmas sketch, and Tom and Dick's mothers and brothers they came out and they said, you know, they say he's falling in love.

Is wonderful, wonderful.

So they say, who are they?

Who are these people that say these things?

They say this, they said, So we had a thing where it was an office and on the office door it said us and you'll walk, you know.

You go in there and there's Tom and Dickett typewriters, manual typewriters typing out.

Look before you leap, and he rips it out.

He goes ding ding, He hits a bell, you know, a messenger comes in.

He says, take it down.

Hayes makes waste ding ding ding, take it down.

Absence makes the heart grow reader a fonder fonder.

Yeah, they take it down and they keep, you know, giving it to the messenger.

And then he says, do unto others as you would have them doing to you.

And he starts to hit the bell and the other guy stops him and says, no, what He says, what are you doing?

Says we can't send that down.

He says why not?

He says, remember the last guy we sent that down with, Remember what happened to him.

They're not ready for it yet.

And that was the end of the sketch.

And I always thought, what if there was some kind of modern in this modern world that message came down, what would happen?

What would happen?

And so this is the basis of something I've been working on for a while.

I haven't gotten a script that I like.

But the trick is to find a way to do it that's that's real, that has humor in it and also is emotional and has this philosophical thing to it.

So I'm gonna see if I can pull that one off.

Well, if I'm fortunate enough to talk to you again, I'll ask you about the famous fart choke that you guys created.

Oh yeah, no, we were the first one.

We were the first one.

Steve Martin and I wrote a sketch for the Smothers Brothers where Pat Paulson it was an actor on the show was he was the president of the Acme Novelty Company, and he was demonstrating all these little gadgets and gimmicks, and you know, there was you know, the pucker gum and the dribbled glass and the and the thing where your finger gets stuck in the thing.

And then at one point he sits down and you hear a big like this, and he goes, oh gee, they slipped a whoopee cushion in under me when I wasn't looking.

And he gets up and there was no whoopee cushion there, so it was the You know, we're very proud of the fact that we wrote the first fart joke that was ever on national television.

See the movie, Get the book.

I'm grateful beyond belief Rob Reiner to speak with you on Taking a Walk.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

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