Watch Page Six’s last interview with Rob Reiner ahead of his tragic death
Can you believe that this movie is still like that you’re having anniversary reissues and it’s wild, right? No, it’s crazy. And when we started this, we had no idea that it would grow with this kind of uh like a wildfire. I mean, it it started out actually slow. Uh people didn’t quite get it at first. They thought it was a real documentary about a real band. People came up to me after the first screen and said, “I don’t understand. Why would you make a movie about a band nobody’s ever heard of? One that’s so bad. Why wouldn’t you make a movie about the Beatles or or the Rolling Stones or something? But over the years, it just kind of, you know, people caught on to it and, you know, it all next thing you know, the rock musicians are, you know, they’re they’re quoting it and they’re carrying it on, you know, the videos on their tour buses and watching it over and over. I remember when I ran into Sting the first time, he says to me, “I’ve seen this movie over and over. I don’t know. Every time I watch it, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. So, I mean, you know, we’ve obviously touched a nerve and then over time it, you know, the Library of Congress puts it in the National Film Registry and the Oxford English Dictionary has the goes to 11 as part of uh a phrase that’s used not just for the loudness of rock and roll music, but for you know, anything in excess. So, you know, there it is. And now, of course, you know, we’re reissuing it in what sp in only Spinal Tap fashion, which is the golden anniversary 41st year. When when they said that uh I can’t remember if it was Chris or Michael, I’ve now forgotten the ghost to 11. It was Chris, right? Yes. Did you realize as soon as he said that this is gold? Well, I mean, we we we had the idea of amps going up to 11. Obviously, we built that prop in order to do it. Uh, but you know, we just thought it’ll be one louder. It’s, you know, it’s they’re touted as being England’s loudest band. So, this is a way to show how much how loud they are. But we had no idea that that quote was going to, you know, make it into the uh lexicon of of uh uh I’m no less the Oxford English dictionary. That’s wild. And um uh I kind of love like reading the the backstory that you couldn’t get any funding for it that it ended Norman Leah like took a chance basically. That’s right. I mean we tried for years we went around with this 20inut demo reel that we had and nobody wanted it. Everybody passed on it. Nobody understood it. And finally I got it to AFCO Embassy uh which was at the time run by a guy named I was Frank Kapper’s son. Frank Cap II and he said that he would you know Lindseay Duran was the big champion of it as she was an executive there and she said look uh you know if I can get it distributed maybe you can get some financing. So he agreed to distribute it which then made it a little easier to get financing. I went to a company and they gave me like a million dollars and I said okay here we go. And then Jerry Parentio and Norman Lear bought the company, bought Avco Embassy, turned it into embassy. And what happens often times when there’s a new owner, they dump everything that’s in development. So they dump this. And I went to Alan Horn, who was the head of business affairs, and I knew him from All in the Family. He ran Norman’s company. Of course, I knew Norman. I mean, he was like a second father to me. And I said to Allan, I said, ‘ Please, let me get in a meeting with Jerry and and and Norman and let me I’ll tell them what I think it should be. He said, ‘Okay, set up a meeting. And I went in there with all of the executives around, including Jerry and Norman and Allen. And I went to this crazy impassion plea about why I had to make it. It’s going to be a repeat business and the kids are going to like it. It’s rock and roll and you know, on and on and on. And uh I’m told after I left the room uh Norman turned to Jerry and to Allan and said, “Which one of you two is going to tell him that he can’t do this?” So basically, they let me do it. And he took a big leap of faith. And I’m listen he’s he’s been my champion. He was my champion my whole career. Um would you say I mean it’s kind of the first mockumentary. I mean, you have the like with the office and parks and wreck and everything. I feel like there’s so many things that were probably inspired by Spinal Tap. Well, interesting that you mentioned uh uh The Office because I had a conversation with Ricky J just recently and he said exactly that. He said Spinal Tap was the direct influence on the way he did the office. And then you mentioned Parks and Wreck and you see it all the time now. All of the Chris guest movies that we produced at Castle Rock, you know, uh, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, you know, Mighty Wind, all those were done the same way that we did, uh, Spinal Tap. Wait, do you have a stake in So, you’re one of the co-owners of Castle Rock. Yes. So, Effingqing because that produced Seinfeld, right? It did. And it’s funny because it was our we had a whole bunch of shows that some of them went 13 weeks, some of them was a pilot that it was nothing but deficit. We just had only piles of deficit. And then that one show Seinfeld uh became a you know monster hit. Probably the most successful sitcom of all time. And that Yeah, of course. Uh it helped a little bit. A little bit. Yeah. Oh my god. I mean that it kind of I kind of feel like if you were Joseph Pep that’s your chorus line. Well yeah I mean it was uh it was interesting because our company was owned at that time by Ted Turner. He owned our company along with, you know, CNN and the Cartoon Network and all these things. And he sold the whole company to Warner Brothers and Castle Rock was part of the sale. And at the time, Castle Rock was I mean, Seinfeld was not viewed as it was not a hit. It was only on for a little bit and was valued at very little. So, we were surprised. I mean, matter of fact, they were going to take it off the air after like nine weeks or four, I can’t remember. And I went in and I met with Brandon Tardikov, who ran NBC. And again, I made the crazy impassion speech that you’ve got to keep this is going to be the biggest show you’ve ever had and you know, you’re making a big mistake by, you know, taking this off. And eventually he said to me, “Well, I can’t have a show that has no, you know, that’s about nothing. There’s no stories. They’re just sitting waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant. You can’t do that every week. I said, “I promise you there’ll be stories. I promise there’ll be stories.” And you know, then we He put it on and we you know, and we were we got lucky and it uh it did well. Um well, going back to Spinal Tap, what’s your favorite scene in the movie? Well, I like a lot of scenes, but my favorite line is uh there’s a fine line between stupid and clever, right? As a matter of fact, um well, let me see if I have it around here. And I don’t think I have it around here. Um I I wrote a book with for for uh Simon and Schustster, which is also coming out uh right at the time that the uh that the film is coming out. And the front part of it is it says it’s a fine line between stupid and clever. And it’s written by me and the guys. And then uh if you flip the book over, it opens the other way. And on the other side it says the the title is smell the book that you open that and that’s the history of the band and that’s me as Marty Deberie interviewing them in character and about the history of the band. Marty Deber the names are brilliant. I mean the names of the the English names of the because I’m Australian the the English names are just like perfect. I don’t know how long it took you all of you to come up with the names but they’re just so spot on. Well, they did. They all I mean, Chris had his uh name from a while back. I think he helped uh Michael with his name, David St. Hubs, and I think Derek uh you know, Harry Sher came up with Derek Smalls, which if you know what Smalls are, right? They’re your underwear, you know? That’s Yeah, it’s just perfect. Um I’m not going to ask you about the second movie because I want to do another interview when the other movie comes out so we don’t ruin it. God, you just look like your dad there for a second from the when you just nodded your head. That was weird. I could just see your dad there. Um, speaking of your dad, actually, I because Dick Van Djk is in the news. What’s your favorite memory of Dick Van Djk? Well, I’m going to tell you something that I’m not telling tales out of school because uh Mary Tyler Moore did write about this in her biography, but uh when I was 14, 15, and 16 years old during the summer vacation, I literally went with my dad every single day to the Van Djk show when he was working on Van Djk. and I drove with him every day and I would watch I’d sit there and I’d watch him how he worked with the actors, him rewriting the scripts and all of that. And I soaked a lot of that stuff up. But one of the things that I’m not particularly proud of um is that uh when I was 14 and my hormones were raging, I was madly in love with Mary Tyler Moore and she was about 25 at the time and she wore these very pants tight capri pants and she looked just unbelievable and I think it was the devil uh that possessed me but I just went and grabbed her by the tush and uh she was like I think stunned by it. I didn’t hear about it or anything, but then my father called me into his office and he said, “Uh uh, did you grab Mary Tyler Moore by the tush?” And I went, “Yeah, I did.” And he said, “Don’t ever do that again.” So, but he kind of wished, you know, listen, he would be in my position. I was so young. I didn’t I was crazy. And so then here’s years later. This is the payoff to it. And it’s a great payoff if you know the Dick Van Djk show. And you know what Mary used to say? Oh, oh, Rob. She always would when she was upset. So years later now, I’ve made some movies. I’ve done All the Family. I’ve, you know, create, you know, had some success. And they’re doing a a reunion show of Van Djk. And I went to visit uh when they were shooting and I arrived just as they were finishing a scene. Mary was in a an evening gown and Dick was wearing a tuxedo. They finished the scene and I said to the cameraman, I said, “Keep keep rolling. Keep rolling like this.” I walk onto the set and I say to Mary, I said, “Look, Mary, I just want to say I I I want to apologize for what I did. It was so awful. I I shouldn’t have died. I couldn’t help it. You were so beautiful.” Uh, I said, “Not that you’re not beautiful now. I mean, if you know, if I wouldn’t get in trouble for harassment, you know, I would do it.” She then bends over, sticks her tush out at me. I grab it and she goes, “Oh, Rob.” Like that. The place went crazy. So, that was the payoff to it. That’s adorable. Um, and by the way, and popping up in the bear, like the hottest TV show ever right now. I mean, that’s crazy. Well, I I I you know, I was kind of nervous about doing it because I hadn’t acted in such a long time. I mean, I acted in, you know, in the sequel to Spinal Time, but it’s different. I’m playing this Marty De Bergie, but I’m playing this character and uh but you know, Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s a good friend, you know, she’s married to Chris, and uh she said, “You got to do it. It’s it’s it’s the greatest set. It they work.” And I go there, and he works just the way I do. this guy Chris Store who created the show and was directing. I did three episodes. I haven’t seen them all yet, but I’m on, you know, three different episodes during the season. It was the biggest the best pleasure I’ve ever had. He works exactly the way I do. He makes the the the he makes a sandbox where everybody can play nice and have fun and enjoy each other. You can improvise. You can, you know, he encourages to be whatever you want. And so I I had the best time. I had a really good time. Um, after you did Spinal Tap, which like you said, it wasn’t it but it it wasn’t maybe didn’t make as much money, but but it certainly got great reviews straight off the bat. Was it easy for you to uh line up your next gig afterwards because it got it was really critically acclaimed? Well, it’s it’s interesting that you say that because the it’s the first film I ever made and it’s, you know, there’s no script. I mean, we had a story line. We had, you know, the story kind of outlined, but all the dialogue is improvised. So people said, “Well, Wild can’t believe you, dude. A first movie. It’s with with no script. How do you do that?” I said, “Well, it felt natural to me because that’s the way I was raised and I was trained as an improvisational actor as was as the, you know, my band, you know, my my castmates. They’re all great improvisers or as Chris says, they’re great schnadlers. We know how to snadle with each other and it’s fun.” So the second movie, the only reason I got a chance to do it is because Lindseay Duran, who was the project officer on this is Spinal Tap, was the only uh uh uh production executive that was held over to the new company Embassy by, you know, Norman and Jerry and she they had this other project that we’re developing called the Shore Thing, which was a script. And the only reason she let said to asked me to do it is because she knew that I had done this other one. Otherwise, I don’t know if I would have gotten that. So, she let me do that and then I was uh on the way. I forgot about that. I love that movie. That’s a great movie. I mean, it’s insane looking at the posters behind you. It’s just crazy your career. And then I was like, “Holy I forgot about All in the Family.” Like, oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible career. Well, thanks. Thanks. I’m hoping I’m still doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen. If you go see if you go see the first movie which is coming out as you mentioned it’s coming out in you know July I guess fifth sixth fifth sixth and seventh um I introduce the film and you I talk a little bit about how we market it and so on and then after the film’s over I come back as Marty Deberie and I tease a scene from the second film which is coming out in in September. So there you go. All right. Well, I’m gonna be speaking to you in September forth. Oh, good. Good. All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Good to talk to you. Okay. Bye. Bye.
“This is Spinal Tap” director, Rob Reiner reflected on how misunderstood his mockumentary was when it first came out 41 years ago. He spoke exclusively with Page Six in July 2025, just months before his death. He also shared a story about Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. Plus, he gushed over his time working on ‘The Bear,’ and good friend Jamie Lee Curtis. Watch the full unedited interview.
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