Listen to the flower people

STREAM OF STORIES

- RAJA SEN

A still from Rob Reiner's 'This is Spinal Tap'.

The 1984 masterpiece This is Spinal Tap—available to rent on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video—is the best rock movie.

In the film documenting the misadventures of fictional band Spinal Tap, when frontman and rhythm guitarist David St Hubbins is asked what he would like engraved on his tombstone when he dies, the blond rocker has a think. “Here lies David St Hubbins,” he begins, grandly, as if about to deliver a line of spectacular import, a serving of accidental philosophy, an aphorism, something witty and quotable. Then, almost immediately, his blond eyebrows sag. “And why not?”

Why not, indeed? I have always loved that line from an exhausted old rocker, and I find it elegant, even poignant, in its casual existentialism. Let sleeping Davids lie. With the world struggling now to come to grips with the tragic and violent death of the film’s director Rob Reiner earlier this week, there is no better time to immerse oneself in the rock and roll mayhem of his first fantastic film.

Spinal Tap is a groundbreaking mockumentary that birthed a genre—eventually leading to television shows like The Office and Modern Family, where the fourth wall exists only so characters can look wearily at it.