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This is Spinal Tap (1984)
In this low-budget rockumentary by director Rob Reiner:
- the famous "These go to 11" scene in which
legendary bogus heavy-metal British rock group singer and lead
guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) bragged about his collection
of guitars and his very special Marshall amp to rockumentary, cinema
verite film-maker Marty Di Bergi (Rob Reiner) - boasting that
the amplifier could go "one louder"
up to a volume setting of eleven ("These go to 11") - and
his blank response to Di Bergi's query why they just didn't make
10 louder: "Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten
be the top number and make that a little louder?"
- the scene of their arrival in America to endorse
their new and controversial album/cover Smell the Glove (filled
with vulgar songs such as "Big Bottomed Woman ", "Sex
Farm Woman", and the memorable song fusing Bach and Mozart (or
M-ach)
"Lick My Love Pump" with offensive lyrics) - and attired
in complete heavy metal regalia
- the scene of bass player Derek
Small's (Harry Shearer) 'enhanced' embarrassment when caught at an
airplane security checkpoint with a cucumber wrapped in aluminum
foil stuffed in his pants, after being asked: "Do you have any
artificial plates or limbs?..."
- the scene of Nigel's guitar room where he showed off
all of his instruments to Di Bergi, and bragged: "The sustain,
listen to it"; Di Bergi responded: "I'm not hearing anything"
- when Nigel added: "You would though, if it were playing"
- the scene at the gravesite of Elvis Presley in Memphis
after their show was cancelled when they harmonized on "Heartbreak
Hotel"
- the airforce base concert where the straight audience
was disgusted by their song "Sex Farm Woman"
- and the scene backstage in North Carolina when Nigel
was angered because the meat slices for sandwiches were larger than
the "miniature bread" slices
- and the band's convoluted attempts to walk from their
basement dressing room to the stage at their Cleveland concert ("Hello
Cleveland!")
- and the disastrous Stonehenge finale in which an
undersized stage prop - an 18 inch miniature Stonehenge monolith
monument - was constructed (the specifications were doodled on a
bar napkin for the designer who claimed: "lan, I was asked to
build it 18 inches high! Look, look, look. This is what I was asked
to build. 18 inches, right here, it's specified, 18 inches. I was
given this napkin, I mean"; Ian responded: "Forget this.
F--k the napkin!"); the small monument was lowered to the stage
and dwarfed by a pair of midgets cavorting around it, and the discussion
that followed: ("I do not, for one, think that the problem was
that the band was down. I think that the problem may have been, that
there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of
being crushed by a dwarf. Alright? That tended to understate the
hugeness of the object")
- the last line of the film after the end credits -
Nigel's response when asked if he would be happy being a shoe salesman:
"Well, I don't know. What are the hours?"
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