Rob Reiner’s life-changing film wasn’t the acclaimed When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, or the Oscar-winning Misery. Surprisingly, it was his directorial debut, produced on a shoestring budget with hand-held cameras and largely improvised dialogue, that left a lasting impact.

This film might have vanished into obscurity if not for a legion of fans who catapulted it to cult status, far exceeding Reiner’s expectations. Released in 1984, This Is Spinal Tap is a mockumentary chronicling a fictitious British rock band, Spinal Tap, as they embark on a U.S. tour to promote their latest album. Its influence on the genre was profound, paving the way for hits like The Office, and becoming arguably more quotable than The Godfather.

In a revealing excerpt from his memoir, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, published in September just three months before his untimely passing on December 14, Reiner reflects on how the film reshaped his career and its remarkable legacy.

In 2002, Reiner received the news that the National Film Registry, managed by the Library of Congress, had included This Is Spinal Tap in its esteemed collection of films deemed ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ in America.

In this exclusive extract of Reiner’s memoir, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, published in September just three months before his tragic death on December 14, he describes in his own words how the film transformed his life, and the astonishing legacy it left behind.

In 2002, I was notified that the National Film Registry, which is administered by the Library of Congress, had added This Is Spinal Tap to its collection of ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films’ made in America.

The Registry did not specify which boxes of significance we checked, but we were thrilled. I mean, we were now on a list of films that included Citizen Kane, Casablanca, On the Waterfront, and Lawrence of Arabia. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we got more laughs than all those films combined.

A spokesman for the National Film Preservation Board praised our movie as ‘very deft’ and went on to make this peculiar observation: ‘The phrase “Spinal Tap” has almost become synonymous for something that isn’t as it appears to be. I’ve heard it used in politics. Legislation that isn’t what it seems to be is called a Spinal Tap.’ 

The film that changed Rob Reiner’s life was not When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, or even the Oscar-winning Misery

This Is Spinal Tap followed a fake British rock band on a US tour to promote their new album

I myself have never heard the words ‘Spinal Tap’ used in this manner. ‘These go to eleven’ and ‘a fine line between stupid and clever,’ yes, but not this. Whatever. We were sincerely, unironically flattered that our low-budget film had earned such status.

That same year, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, as the abridged, two-volume version of that reference book is known, added the phrase ‘(up) to eleven’ and defined its meaning as ‘up to maximum volume.’

Sixteen years later, in 2018, popular usage of ‘(up) to eleven’ had become ubiquitous and ever more liberally interpreted. Volkswagen used the words: ‘This one goes to eleven’ to promote its Turbo Beetle. A California vintner released a line of premium ‘Eleven’ wines. This all warranted a more expansive definition in the longer-form version of the Oxford English Dictionary, which reads:

colloquial (usually humorous) (up) to eleven: so as to reach or surpass the maximum level or limit; to an extreme or intense degree. Esp in to turn (something) up to eleven and variants. [With allusion to a scene in the rock-music mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984), featuring an amplifier with control knobs having 11 rather than 10 as the highest setting].

So not only did Spinal Tap play Carnegie f***ing Hall. Now the band was in the Oxford f***ing English Dictionary.

The film is also cited in the dictionary’s definition of the word ‘rockumentary.’ The infiltration of This Is Spinal Tap into culture and popular discourse is mind-boggling, even to us.

In 2006, American Express licensed the song ‘Gimme Some Money’ for use in a commercial for its SimplyCash business card.

The title Smell the Glove has been appropriated by at least a dozen microbreweries as the name of a craft beer.

The phrase ‘Spinal Tap moment’ is so entrenched in the rock lexicon as a term for any incident involving band misfortune, equipment malfunctions, or public humiliation that NPR, Guitar World, and Ultimate Classic Rock have all run features in which real-life rockers describe their Spinal Tap moments.

As I learned firsthand from Max Bernstein, the son of my late friend Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, Tap’s appeal has spanned generations. When Max was barely into his teens, he saw Tap at the Beacon Theatre during the Break Like the Wind tour and became a fan.

Now a successful rock guitarist, Max has toured with Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Ke$ha.

Reiner and Christopher Guest in This is Spinal Tap in 1984

Reiner and his family in September 2025 at the Los Angeles premiere of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

At a gathering to celebrate his stepfather Nick Pileggi’s 90th birthday, Max pulled down his shirt and revealed to me, on the back of his left shoulder, a tattoo that was a perfect depiction of the graphic on the cover of Tap’s fictional album Shark Sandwich.

Even my USS OORAL SEA baseball cap has become a totem of sorts.

The cap became my character, filmmaker Marty DiBergi’s signature look in the movie. But the clearances company we were working with couldn’t get permission from the US military for me to wear it. We were not allowed to use the name of the actual Navy vessel USS Coral Sea.

So, crafty producer that she was, Karen Murphy came up with a solution. She got out a needle and thread and personally altered the C in Coral to make it an O.

In 1986, my good friend Bobby Colomby, the drummer for Blood, Sweat & Tears, suggested his friend Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits to compose the music for The Princess Bride. Mark said he would do it, but only on one condition: that Marty’s cap appear somewhere in the movie.

I told him I didn’t think it would fit it into a period film set in a mythical land of swashbucklers. Then I realized that I could place the cap in the framing scenes, where Peter Falk reads the book version of The Princess Bride to his grandson.

So, if you look closely, you can see the uss ooral sea cap hanging on a lamp in the grandson’s bedroom.

Somewhere, and I really hope I’m wrong about this, there might be a film student at some $80,000-a-year liberal arts college majoring in Spinal Tap.

In 2007, I was approached by Kevin Wall, a man who had considerable experience organizing benefit concerts. He was putting together an event with Al Gore called Live Earth. It was to be a series of mega-concerts around the globe whose proceeds would be dedicated to initiatives to fight climate change.

Reiner writes: ‘Even my USS OORAL SEA baseball cap has become a totem of sorts’

The hat can be seen in the background of The Princess Bride

Kevin wanted Tap for the London concert, whose bill also included Metallica, Madonna, the Beastie Boys, the Foo Fighters, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The guys said yes, so it was back to Wembley Stadium, this time with Tap friend and fan Ricky Gervais introducing me as Marty, and Marty introducing the band.

The highlight of Tap’s Live Earth set, and possibly of the whole event, was an epic version of ‘Big Bottom’ featuring a total of 19 bassists, among them Rob Trujillo of Metallica, Nate Mendel of the Foo Fighters, and Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.

Live Earth whetted the guys’ appetite for another album and tour. In the summer of 2009, Tap’s third album, Back from the Dead, was released.

As in 1992, the plan was to do a series of dates in outdoor sheds. But just as the tour arrangements were falling into place, the 2008 economic crash happened.

Out of these pinched circumstances was born a series of acoustic dates, 2009’s Unwigged & Unplugged tour.

But the wigged-and-plugged-in Spinal Tap was not done. There were two last hurrahs for the band that year, both fittingly in their ‘native’ England.

First, they played the Pyramid Stage of the country’s biggest summer festival, Glastonbury, to a crowd of more than 100,000 people. Then, four days later, they headlined at the 12,500-seat Wembley Arena.

At Glastonbury, for their last live performance of ‘Big Bottom,’ the guys were joined by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp on bass.

A parade of local women filed out to strut their stuff onstage.

A fan in the audience held aloft a homemade banner that read SPANIEL TAP. Perfect.

Excerpted from A FINE LINE BETWEEN STUPID AND CLEVER: The Story of Spinal Tap by Rob Reiner with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. Copyright © 2026 [Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer]. Published by Gallery Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC. Printed by permission.