This Is Spinal Tap (1984) - Quotes

Celebrating Curves in Music and Life

Song lyrics: * Big Bottom

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The Relationship Between Waistbands and Quicksand

Song lyrics: The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand.

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Celebrating Curves in Musical Expression

Song lyrics: * Big Bottom

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Celebrating Curves and Love in Lyrics

Song lyrics: My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo.I love to sink her with my pink torpedo!Big bottom, big bottom,Talk about bum-cakes... my girl's got em.Big bottom, drive me out of my mind.How can I leave this... behind?

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Living by the Philosophy of Enjoyment

Marty DiBergi: Do you have any sort of creed or philosophy that you live by?

Viv Savage: Have... a good... time... all the time. That's my philosophy, Marty.

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The Unusual Saint of St. Hubbins

Marty DiBergi: David St. Hubbins... I must admit I've never heard anybody with that name.

David St. Hubbins: It's an unusual name. Well, he was an unusual saint. He's not a very well-known saint.

Marty DiBergi: Oh, there actually is, uh... there was a St. Hubbins?

David St. Hubbins: That's right, yes.

Marty DiBergi: What was he the saint of?

David St. Hubbins: He was the patron saint of quality footwear.

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The Moose Metaphor in Rock Music

Marty DiBergi: Do you feel that playing rock n roll music keeps you a child? That is, keeps you in a state of arrested development?

Derek Smalls: No. No. No. I feel it's like, it's more like going, going to a, a national park or something. And there's, you know, they preserve the moose. And that's, that's my childhood up there on stage. That moose, you know.

Marty DiBergi: So when you're playing you feel like a preserved moose on stage?

Derek Smalls: Yeah.

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Miscommunication Among Band Members

Ian Faith: Nigel gave me a drawing that said 18 inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I'm told.

David St. Hubbins: But you're not as confused as him are you? I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel.

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Misunderstandings About Stage Props and Performance

David St. Hubbins: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem may have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.

Ian Faith: I really think you're just making much too big a thing out of it.

Derek Smalls: Making a big thing out of it would have been a good idea.

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Life Without Rock and Roll

Marty DiBergi: Do you have any sort of creed or philosophy that you live by?

Mick Shrimpton: [[w:Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll|sex, drugs, and rock and roll] I used to say "]." As long as there's sex and drugs, I can do without rock and roll.

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Discussion of Past Drummers in Spinal Tap

Marty DiBergi: Now, during the Flower People period, who was your drummer?

David St. Hubbins: Stumpy's replacement, Peter James Bond. He also died in mysterious circumstances. We were playing a, uh...

Nigel Tufnel: ...Festival.

David St. Hubbins: Jazz blues festival. Where was that?

Nigel Tufnel: Blues jazz, really.

Derek Smalls: Blues jazz festival. Misnamed.

Nigel Tufnel: It was in the Isle of, uh...

David St. Hubbins: Isle of Lucy. The Isle of Lucy jazz and blues festival.

Nigel Tufnel: And, uh, it was tragic, really. He exploded on stage.

Derek Smalls: Just like that.

David St. Hubbins: He just went up.

Nigel Tufnel: He just was like a flash of green light... And that was it. Nothing was left.

David St. Hubbins: [about Marty] Look at his face.

Nigel Tufnel: Well, there was...

David St. Hubbins: It's true, this really did happen.

Nigel Tufnel: It's true. There was a little green globule on his drum seat.

David St. Hubbins: Like a stain, really.

Nigel Tufnel: It was more of a stain than a globule, actually.

David St. Hubbins: You know, several, you know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

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The Emotional Impact of Musical Keys

Marty DiBergi: It's pretty.

Nigel Tufnel: Yeah, I like it. I've been fooling around with it for a few months now. Very delicate.

Marty DiBergi: It's a bit of a departure from what you normally play.

Nigel Tufnel: [plays and sings] Yeah, well, it's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy that I'm doing in D... minor, which I always find is really the saddest of all keys, really, I don't know why. It makes people weep instantly to play

Nigel Tufnel: It's a horn part.

Marty DiBergi: It's very pretty.

Nigel Tufnel: [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart; [Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach] You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like — I'm really influenced by ] and ], and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of...

Marty DiBergi: What do you call this?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, this piece is called "Lick My Love Pump.

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Customs Inquiry About Artificial Limbs

Customs Officer: Do you have any artificial plates or limbs?

Derek Smalls: Not really, no.

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The Challenge of Perspective in Life

Nigel Tufnel: It really puts perspective on things though, doesn't it?

David St. Hubbins: Too much. There's too much fucking perspective now.

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Debate on Sexism in 1980s Rock Culture

Bobbi Flekman: You put a greased naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck, and a leash, and a man's arm extended out up to here, holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it. You don't find that offensive? You don't find that sexist?

Ian Faith: This is 1982, Bobbi, c'mon!

Bobbi Flekman: That's right, it's 1982! Get out of the 60s. We don't have this mentality anymore.

Ian Faith: Well, you should have seen the cover they *wanted* to do! It wasn't a glove, believe me.

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The Line Between Stupid and Clever

David St. Hubbins: It's such a fine line between stupid, and uh...

Nigel Tufnel: Clever.

David St. Hubbins: Yeah, and clever.

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The Significance of Going to Eleven

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to 11. Look, right across the board, 11, 11, 11 and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to 10?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not 10. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at 10. You're on 10 here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 10 on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

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

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to 11.

Nigel Tufnel: 11. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi: Why don't you make 10 a little louder, make that the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel: [pauses; [w:These go to eleven|These go to 11] ].

Critique of Musical Creativity and Growth

Marty DiBergi: Let's talk about your reviews a little bit. Regarding Intravenous Di Milo: "This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth rate of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.

Nigel Tufnel: That's...that's just nitpicking, isn't it?

Mysterious Circumstances Surrounding a Tragic Death

David St. Hubbins: He died in a bizarre gardening accident...

Nigel Tufnel: Authorities said... best leave it... unsolved.

Appreciation for Rock and Roll Music

Lt. Hookstratten: May I start by saying how thrilled we are to have you here. We are such fans of your music and all of your records. I'm not speaking of yours personally, but the whole genre of the rock and roll.

Prioritizing Comfort Over Conversation

Terry Ladd: Yeah, listen, we'd love to stand around and chat, but we've gotta... sit down in the lobby and wait for the limo.

The Value of Stability in Rock Music

Ian Faith: Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful.

The Burden of a Band Manager

Ian Faith: For one thing that goes wrong, a hundred things go right. Do you know what I spend my time doing? I sleep two or three hours a night. There's no sex and drugs for Ian, David. Do you know what I do? I find lost luggage. I locate mandolin strings in the middle of Austin. I prise the rent out of the local Hebrews. That's what I do.

Confronting Delusions in a Fantasy World

Ian Faith: Whenever a single bump or a ruffle comes into this little fantasy, adolescent fantasy world that you guys, you guys have built around yourselves, you start screaming like a bunch of pansy hairdressers.

Balancing Visionaries in a Band Dynamic

Derek Smalls: [[Percy Shelley|Shelley; [Lord Byron|Byron] We're very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel, they're like poets, like ] and ]. They're two distinct types of visionaries, it's like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.

Dusting for Vomit Is Ineffective

Nigel Tufnel: You can't really dust for vomit.

The Depths of Blackness Explained

Nigel Tufnel: There's something about this that's so black, it's like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

The Nature of Endings and Infinity

David St. Hubbins: [Asked by a reporter if this is the end of Spinal Tap] Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you.

Sedation and its effects on feelings

David St. Hubbins: Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation.

The Perils of Believing Everything You Read

David St. Hubbins: I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything.

Capturing the Essence of Rock Band Life

Marty DiBergi: [introducing the film] I wanted to capture the... the sights, the sounds... the smells of a hard-working rock band, on the road. And I got that; I got more... a lot more. But hey, enough of my yakkin'; whaddaya say? Let's boogie!