The “mockumentary,” This Is Spinal Tap, is considered to be one of the funniest movies ever made. While it’s about a lot of obscure, abstract things, the main thing is the way the real story is not in the questions or the answers, but what is continuously and hilariously occurring in the background.
The movie stars Michael McKean as David St. Hubbins. Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel, and Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls. Drummer Mick Shrimpton (R.J. Parnell) supplies percussion on borrowed time as both the previous drummers died mysteriously. One spontaneously combusted, and another choked to death on vomit, “but not his own vomit.”
I think we feel such affection for the...