Tony Hendra - Rock and Roll Parody Saved My Life

 

And it seemed to me somehow appropriate that I was in California, [audience laughter] because California is the end. [audience laughter] It's the end of America. You can't go any further, right? It was also appropriate that somehow this magnificent sunset was sliding gradually underneath the horizon into stygian darkness. And for the first time in my life, I just wondered, what the hell was the pointing going on? Now, whoever owned this house was kind enough to have left a quart of vodka in it. I also had with me my very first prescription for Valium. So, these two things taken together seemed to me to present a perfect opportunity. 

 

So, I laid out 10 Valium. I figured that's how many it would take. I took a big, big slug of vodka, and took my first Valium ever and then took another slug of vodka. Nothing much seemed to happen. And so, I took a really big hit of vodka, picked up the Valium, and I looked at them in my hand for a long time and I fell asleep. [audience laughter] 

 

And about 14 hours later, I woke. [audience laughter] I remember through the fog, that I was supposed to be on a movie set. To be precise, about four hours earlier. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, was be on a movie set, and especially a movie about rock and roll, which at this point I hated. It didn't have a script, this movie. It had to be totally improvised. I'd never improvised in my life either. But I was a professional. 

 

So, I jumped in my car and sped across the Malibu Hills to the location. They rushed me into hair and wardrobe and so forth and so on and rushed me to the set. And there were the three stars of the movie, looking absolutely hilarious in their fright wigs. And the set was actually a limo and I was placed in the limo with them and somebody yelled action and we were underway. [audience laughter] They were brilliant. None of them was British, but they all had perfect British accents. They were being incredibly funny in character, intimidatingly funny. I knew that very soon one of them would turn to me and say something and I would have to answer. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, I'd done a little homework. I'd read up on improvisation and I'd talked to all my friends who'd been in improv groups. And the consensus seemed to be there was one basic rule you had to follow. Listen. Can't bring anything preconceived to improvisation. You must just listen not just to what people are saying, the other people are saying, but to what their faces are saying, what their bodies and their movements are saying. And if you do that, just simply answer what you hear, it will work. 

 

And now the moment came. The character called David was turning to me, and he was saying something to me. I could see in his face that his character thought my character was pretty sleazy, that this character, whose name was Ian, lied a lot. And out of my mouth came this voice that wasn't really mine. It was evasive and slimily ingratiating, and it had that kind of nasal whine that was beginning to creep into everyday English. And it worked. It was amazing. 

 

The scene was enabled to continue being funny. I wasn't funny, but I helped them be funny. And my friend, the director was very happy with the scene. So, we did another take of it and he was even happier with that. And then, we did another scene and another scene, and pretty soon the day was over. I had completely forgotten all thoughts offing myself. [audience laughter] But more importantly, something quite wonderful was happening, which was these stars and the extended cast and myself too, we were all in some way on the same emotional page.

 

We had all arrived at this deep disillusion and disappointment with this wonderful music that when we were younger, we had such high hopes for that. We actually thought some of us would change things, would bring peace and rationality into life, would end racism and war. You remember? And it had betrayed us. It had been betrayed for us. It had been a source of failures, and disappointments, and vulgarity, and stupidity, and absurdity and pretension and so on. And this whole cast was just coming into that and devising and finding all these wonderful ways in which venality and cynicism and so forth had poisoned this whole area of the art world. 

 

I would actually venture to say that This Is Spinal Tap actually isn't a mockumentary. Because of this wonderful cinematographer we had, Peter Smokler, it was actually a documentary record of a really fascinating collective comedic experiment that took place at a certain point in time and couldn't have been at any other point in time. And that was a success. I think that's why it works, that's where it gets its edge in authenticity. 

 

I have one little epitaph to this. I haven't the foggiest idea what it means, but I'm going to throw it in anyway. This was about five years later, and Spinal Tap had been out for about three years and was on its way to becoming the minor classic that it became. I got into a cab in New York, and my driver was a quintessential acid casualty. [audience laughter] I mean, he had one of those beribboned ponytails down to his ass crack. He peered in the rearview mirror and he said, “Hey, man, weren't you in Spinal Tap?” And I said, “Yeah, I played the manager. Yeah.” And he said, "Oh, man, I really dig their music so far out.” [audience laughter] He said, “Man, I was into tap before they made that movie.” [audience laughter]