True story: when "this is spinal tap" premiered in 1984, audiences thought it was a straightforward rock documentary about a real band. Mind you, that would be a band that customizes the volume knob on an amp to go to 11, on the logic that 11 must be louder than 10. A band that copies Stonehenge for a stage set but mixes up inches and feet in the specifications and winds up with a doll-size replica. Who could believe such silliness? A lot of people, according to Rob Reiner, the film's director. "When 'Spinal Tap' initially came out," he says, "everybody thought it was a real band. Everyone said, 'Why would you make a movie about a band that no one has heard of?' The reason it did go over everybody's head was it was very close to the bone." Reiner modeled his film, about an over-the-hill hair-metal band attempting a comeback, on straight-faced rock docs such as the Maysles brothers' "Gimme Shelter," about the Rolling Stones, and D. A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back," about Bob Dylan. In doing so, he blurred the lines between fiction and reality (a line further blurred, if not erased altogether, by the fact that Spinal Tap, originally conceived by actors Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer for a TV special, was, and continues to be, a marginally proficient band that tours and puts out albums). What Reiner did not foresee was that in its 25-year existence, "Spinal Tap" has influenced both the way we tell stories-Michael Schur, creator of "The Office," recently said the mockumentary is his preferred storytelling format-and the way we understand them.
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