The TV show Christopher Guest called “the best I’ve ever seen”
It was a genuinely shocking moment to hear about the death of Rob Reiner, especially as the director seemed to have plenty more to offer, even so many years into a stellar career that saw him responsible for some truly great comedies, not least the original This is Spinal Tap, featuring Christopher Guest.
A disappointing sequel was released this year, but then it was only ever going to be disappointing, because the 1984 movie was so influential and so good, and so much time has passed since then. Reiner wrought genuine magic from the stars of the film, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Guest, who co-wrote and starred in the rock epic, aside from displaying their musical skills on stage.
Guest probably has the lion’s share of the film’s best moments, many of which have gone down in history as some of the most quotable lines imaginable. Not only is there that immortal scene between him and Reiner in which he explains why his guitar amp goes to 11 rather than ten (“well, it’s one louder isn’t it?”) but there’s also the outrage that Guest’s character Nigel Tufnel displays at being forced to fold a sandwich twice, plus the tear-jerking piano-led rendition of ‘Lick My Love Pump’.
This is Spinal Tap was one of the very first mockumentaries, and possibly the first to go mainstream, and while it wasn’t an enormous hit at the box office on release, it was so impactful that it led to not just a series of films starring the same cast, but a whole genre of movies and TV shows. The rapport between the three main stars and the rest of the cast, which included up-and-coming actors like Billy Crystal, was so strong that while the majority of the film was written as a framework, most of what made it to the final cut was improvised dialogue.
So much quality emerged from the weeks of shooting that even the material that didn’t make it into the movie, almost two hours of it, was compiled into an offshoot film that was still funnier than most of what was around in the 1980s. While Guest acknowledges the influence the movie had on future comic writers, he classifies a mockumentary as featuring improvised lines, but that doesn’t stop him from listing one of the UK’s most famous examples at the top of his list.
Asked about Ricky Gervais’ hit BBC show from 2001 Guest said: “The Office was not improvised. It was a written show. But, yes, I happen to think – and we’re talking about the British Office – that’s the best TV show I’ve ever seen.”
Guest has every reason to highlight Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s work of genius based around a paper company in Slough, because it, like his own film, revolutionised comedy and has had a wide-reaching influence for more than 20 years since it aired. As funny, if not more so, now as when it originally aired, The Office is a masterpiece in writing for television, in characterisation, in timing, in direction and in its inherent understanding of what daily British life is like.
It’s hard to overestimate the effect that it had; the reason Ricky Gervais is a multi-millionaire stand-up comedian, the reason Martin Freeman is a Hobbit, the reason Steve Carell is so famous, the reason Mackenzie Crook has won a Bafta for being a metal detectorist, the reason John Krasinski is an action movie star and horror director, it’s all down to a low-budget comedy pilot that Gervais made with no laughter track and with regular cut-away shots of whirring photocopiers, in Slough of all places.
Of course, The Office could never have existed had This is Spinal Tap not come first, and so it’s probably no surprise that Gervais and Guest are mutual admirers of each other’s work. Gervais appeared in Guest’s film For Your Consideration in 2006, and Guest repaid the favour by taking a role in Gervais’ movie The Invention of Lying in 2009.
