Life turned up to 11: Why I tapped into profound silliness

December 20, 2025 — 5.00am

“Hello. My name is Marty DiBergi. I’m a filmmaker … I jumped at the chance to make the documentary – the, if you will, rockumentary – that you’re about to see.”

For generations of movie-goers, these words produce a smile, a warm glow, and anticipation of a trip into “the sights, the sounds, the … smells … of a hard-working rock band on the road”. The words come from Rob Reiner’s opening monologue to 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap. As well as playing DiBergi, Reiner directed Tap and co-wrote it with its stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. It routinely tops polls as the funniest movie ever made.

Illustration by Dionne GainCredit: Dionne Gain

Last Sunday, December 14, Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead with stab wounds at their Los Angeles home. Their son Nick has been charged with murder. Reiner had been a liberal activist, and Donald Trump said some things about his death that were so lacking in self-awareness or decency, even by Trump’s non-existent standards, that even the MAGA-verse has distanced itself. A fine line between stupid and clever? Sometimes not.

Paying tribute has been one reason to retreat from the world into Reiner’s work this week. Another reason is that those of us who can take a break from the ambient grief can forgive ourselves for seeking an escape. I’ve rewatched Tap like a child chewing on my favourite teddy bear.

As well as a place for comfort, going back to Reiner’s movies offers a chance to reflect on the meaning of a life that is ended by violence and summarily exploited for gain. It’s a chance to think about what matters and what is left behind.

Spinal Tap is not the only cultural touchstone Reiner left, though if it had been, it would have been ample. As the son of the Jewish-American actor-writer Carl Reiner, who was Mel Brooks’ key collaborator and creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rob Reiner left memories and meaning for every temperament: he followed Spinal Tap, the first film he directed, with a golden run of Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally …, Misery and A Few Good Men. His long acting career stretched from All In The Family through Sleepless in Seattle to The Wolf of Wall Street.

This was Spinal Tap in its heyday: Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls, Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel, and Michael McKean as David St Hubbins.

Reiner co-founded the production company Castle Rock, which brought us Seinfeld. His filmmaking created a language that defined and outlived the ’80s and ’90s. “I’ll have what she’s having” and a “high-maintenance” partner come to us from Reiner and Nora Ephron in When Harry Met Sally … And although Reiner didn’t coin the term “shit sandwich”, we wouldn’t be using it today if it wasn’t a two-word review of Spinal Tap’s album Shark Sandwich.

Reiner’s humanitarian work was immense and included Being Charlie, a film he made with son Nick about a young man’s mental health struggles. In an interview, Reiner said he wanted to be remembered as someone “who didn’t just take up space”. His comic genius and humility could also be expressed by one of the dozens of lines from Spinal Tap that have migrated into our language, when McKean’s lead singer David Saint Hubbins (“There was a Saint Hubbins … he’s not a very well-known saint … the patron saint of quality footwear”) says he’d like his epitaph to be: “Here lies David Saint Hubbins. And why not?”

For millions, including me, Reiner’s legacy would have been complete with Spinal Tap. The opening monologue is followed by him reading album reviews to the band. “‘What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?’” Guest’s guitarist Nigel Tufnel replies, “That’s, that’s nitpicking, isn’t it?”

The film’s most enduring scene is where Tufnel is showing DiBergi his collection of guitars and amps.

NT: It’s very special, because if you can see, the numbers all go to 11. Look, right across the board: 11, 11, 11.

MDB: And most amps go up to 10.

NT: Exactly.

MDB: Does that mean it’s louder? Is it any louder?

NT: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not 10. Most blokes will be playing at 10, all the way up, on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

MDB: I don’t know.

NT: Nowhere! Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

MDB: Put it up to 11.

NT: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

MDB: Why don’t you just make 10 louder, and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder?

NT: (Pauses, chews gum) These go to 11.

Director Rob Reiner, playing Marty DiBergi, with Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap.

In a world where pretty much everything has to go to 11, Reiner and his collaborators gave us a form of words to express and laugh at it. As writers, they surrendered to chance and chemistry: while inventing the mockumentary, they improvised their dialogue. Why, they were asked, did they make the movie? “To make each other laugh,” Guest said in an interview. What were they trying to say about rock and roll? “We don’t know.” (Or, for Tap-heads, “Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing.”) The comedy was heavy-metal but the process was jazz and the effect was laughter in the dark.

Reiner’s last film was the 2025 Spinal Tap sequel, The End Continues. The Tap diaspora is wide, from Shearer’s work in The Simpsons to McKean’s on Better Call Saul to the entire genre that Guest perfected in movies like Best In Show, A Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman.

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Endings do matter, as Reiner discovered when he and Ephron decided to have Harry marry Sally – a change prompted by Reiner’s marriage to Singer – but they’re not everything. We can retreat into the violent blackness of the Reiners’ end and the political moment it generated, or into the other kind, what Nigel Tufnel described as “None more black”.

Reiner had David Saint Hubbins ask, “Why does anyone do anything?” Long after anyone’s forgotten about how the Reiners died or what Trump said, they’ll still be getting something out of Rob Reiner’s movies.

In a collective statement, a group including Larry David, Billy Crystal and Martin Short said audiences trusted Rob Reiner like a friend. Reiner might have been an over-achiever, but for anyone slain anywhere in the world on that Sunday, the meaning they leave is how they lived. Whether they left work like Reiner’s or simple acts, it’s the life that matters: how they didn’t just take up space.

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