Mighty Funny

By Josh Tyrangiel, RICHARD CORLISS

Take away the exploding drummers and foil-wrapped cucumbers, and This Is Spinal Tap is a movie about people who take themselves seriously. Which is why it's a comedy classic. Christopher Guest used that same seriousness in three more improvised comedies: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and a new folk-music film, A Mighty Wind. Guest, who writes his movies with Eugene Levy, reunited with Tap alumni Harry Shearer and Michael McKean as the Folksmen in this film. All four sat with TIME's Richard Corliss and Josh Tyrangiel for a folksy conversation.

AFTER SPINAL TAP, WHICH WAS DIRECTED BY ROB REINER, HOW DID CHRIS TAKE OVER AS THE DIRECTOR OF THIS TROUPE?

CG: Have I? When Harry and I went to Saturday Night Live for one year in '84, I said, "I don't care what happens here; I'll direct these little films." I think I just knew that the comedy that can come from improvisation was so much funnier than other stuff I was seeing. I take my son to movies that are supposed to be comedies; you're lucky if there are five laughs in the entire 90 minutes.

HS: Maybe if you got him high he'd like it better.

CG: It occurred to me. I'm trying.

MM: Like he hadn't thought of that.

A MIGHTY WIND IS AN IMPROVISED MOVIE, YET EUGENE AND CHRIS ARE CREDITED AS WRITERS.

CG: We wrote the story. The story is very specific and has a beginning, middle and end. All the scenes are broken down--there are 120 scenes, and everyone knows what happens in every scene. And there's a backstory created for all the characters.

CAN THE ACTORS EMBELLISH THEIR BACKSTORIES?

CG: No. It's very important that everyone has the same information going into a scene, because we can't contradict one another. When jazz guys are improvising, they know what key they're starting in, and the melody they improvise off of is not just arbitrary. That's exactly what this is: you have a skeleton of something you can build on.

EL: The actors work with wardrobe and makeup and hair. They design the look that they're going to have.

CG: I say to the actors, "What do you want on the desk in this scene? What do you want to wear?" In a conventional movie, the costume designer says, "There'll be stuff hanging in your trailer. This is what you're wearing." I say to our wardrobe person, "You go with the actors to find the right sweater." It has to be comfortable...

HS: Mine was itchy.

CG: That was my idea.

MM: You should have said something, maybe when we were shooting.

HS: I've been holding it in for so long.

YOU SHOT 80 HOURS OF FOOTAGE. HOW DO YOU PULL IT ALL TOGETHER?

CG: I don't see anything until I sit down with the editor. I'll look at everything and start talking and taking notes. But unlike a real documentary, where you don't know the story until you shoot, we know what the story is. We have to pick scenes that tell the story. So maybe something is funny, but if it's off story, it's gone.

ARE YOU GUYS INVOLVED IN THE EDITING?

HS: No, but Chris is very generous in the sense that during the editing process, we're talking and he says, "Come by, look at some stuff."

MM: We don't say anything.

HS: [Imitating Guest.] "Don't say anything! But come and look."

MM: "Bring food."

HS: As an actor, especially as an improvising actor, you have an investment in all this stuff, and then you see what Chris has used, and I don't know about anybody else, but my feeling was, Wow, he did great by me. Michael hasn't seen it yet. He doesn't know how vicious Chris has been to him.

THE FOLKSMEN WERE PART OF AN SNL SKIT IN 1984. IS THAT HOW THE IDEA FOR THE MOVIE STARTED?

CG: I wanted to play music in a movie, and we knew there was no Folksmen movie--that idea doesn't have enough elements in it, obviously. I knew a lot about folk music, and I thought, I don't think this has been covered that often in movies.

DID YOU PLAY PROFESSIONALLY?

CG: I started playing in the '60s, yes, for money. I grew up in the middle of this world in Greenwich Village. I played with Arlo Guthrie in his band. We went to the same high school. I started on the mandolin, then I played the guitar.

DESPITE YOUR MUSICAL BACKGROUND, YOU OBVIOUSLY BROUGHT GREAT CARE TO THE RIDICULE OF THESE SINGERS.

CG: The ridicule aspect is not really much a part of this.

MM: Yeah, Chris is always stopping people when they use the word mockumentary, because he says that implies that it's mockery. Mockery's only good for about 10 minutes.

HS: He's also stopping people who use the word pustule, though for different reasons.

YOU MUST THINK THERE'S SOME AMUSEMENT VALUE?

CG: It's the earnestness that this kind of folk music has. Those people took themselves too seriously--way too seriously. And any group of people that takes itself seriously is fodder.

HS: The given is that every person on the set is funny, but the agenda is much more to be real and to get it right. People in these movies are trying to capture something real first, and the comedy will take care of itself.

DID ANYONE STAY IN CHARACTER THE WHOLE TIME, LIKE DANIEL DAY LEWIS DID ON THE SET OF GANGS OF NEW YORK?

MM: No. It's too much fun to hang out in the parking lot.

EL: Sometimes you just can't wait to break character, believe me.

MM: I did notice that Paul Dooley [who isn't a guitarist in the movie] refused to play the guitar, even between scenes.

YOU'VE BEEN TOURING AS THE FOLKSMEN FOR ABOUT A DECADE. WHAT'S THE LONGEST SET YOU'VE DONE?

CG: Nine minutes. [Laughter.]

DID YOU DO PATTER?

MM: Some patter, yeah, not a ton. I think if we really had to do the Folksmen as a stand-alone act, we'd have to do quite a bit of that.

CG: About an hour. We entertained the thought for a while that my character--because we were just so desperately failing--would start working blue. This guy, who is this Buddhist guy, gentle soul, comes out and says, "Well, there are two hookers walkin' down the street, and, uh, one of them's eye falls out."

HS: The other two of us were just kind of looking at our shoes and going, Ugh, this is bad.

CG: Seriously, the longest a set would have been was 15 minutes. A few songs.

MM: There was a song Harry wrote called Corn Wine, which is a very funny song.

HS: It has a "Hey ninny no nanny ninny o" point.

MM: And we did a cover of What a Feeling from Flashdance, which was a nice surprise.

DOES THAT CHORD PROGRESSION WORK AS A FOLK SONG?

CG: Yeah, it really does; it's unbelievable. The only thing that's different is the rhythm is a strum. [Starts singing in a quavering falsetto.] Fiiiiiiiirst when there's nothiiiiiing but a slooooooow glowing dreeaaam. [The others join in in harmony.] What a feeling. Bein's believin'...

MM: Works like a charm, really does.

BUT YOU LEFT THAT OFF THE SOUND-TRACK ALBUM IN FAVOR OF START ME UP.

MM: We could only do one cover. One absurd cover is really all you can afford.

CG: And the premise is, we've got our fingers on the pulse of what the young kids want, you know...

HS: Eighteen years ago.

THE FOLKSMEN HAVE PLAYED ON THE SAME BILL AS THE KINGSTON TRIO AND PETER, PAUL AND MARY, AND OPENED FOR SPINAL TAP. HOW DO THOSE EXPERIENCES COMPARE?

CG: We get paid more when we open for ourselves.

MM: Peter, Paul and Mary did give us that look, like, "Too close."

CG: Mary was my baby sitter when I was a child, and she said, "So basically, this is just us." I said, "Well ..." She laughed.

HS: The worst time we had opening for ourselves was when we were at the Beacon Theater in New York. We didn't put our real names on the bill because we figured, Everybody knows. We get up onstage, and literally about 20 seconds in, they're being really mean and trying to get us off the stage--so we can come back as Spinal Tap!

MM: To be booed off the stage in favor of yourselves...

HS: It's a show-business first.

CG: My son, when we were playing in Los Angeles as the Folksmen, said to my wife, "When are the old guys getting off and the loud guys coming on?"