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'A Mighty Wind'

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Starring: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy
Director: Christopher Guest
MPAA rating: PG-13 for sex-related humor
Running time: 87 minutes
Release date: May 9
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'It's not an attack on the music'

Christopher Guest, center, says his films are all about trusting talented friends such as Michael McKean, left, and Harry Shearer to do what they do best.
Taylor Jones for American-Statesman

Disney's 'Tween Queen' has appeal that's squeaky-clean

By Chris Garcia
American-Statesman Film Writer

Posted: May 9, 2003

Christopher Guest sits sandwiched between his partners in satire, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. McKean has a beaming apple face with a huckster's smile. Shearer offers a crinkly elfin grin.

Arms crossed, Guest murmurs a greeting with a face slightly less expressive than Thomas Jefferson's on Mount Rushmore. He appears to scowl with impatience, as if he wants to get out of here and do something more fun, like set himself on fire.

One of the funniest men in movies makes a seriously intimidating introduction. But his frosty veneer thaws in conversation as he and his "This is Spinal Tap" co-stars spark off each other discussing "A Mighty Wind," their loving satire of the folk music world, which opens today in Austin.

With his previous directorial efforts -- the spot-on community-theater spoof "Waiting for Guffman" (which was filmed in Austin and Lockhart) and the erratic dog-show satire "Best in Show" -- Guest has cut a niche as our premier purveyor of the mockumentary -- a term, incidentally, he disdains. The ensemble comedies are fueled by an extemporaneous energy and a deadpan observational humor that can bite without ever breaking skin.

In "A Mighty Wind," the three actors are The Folksmen, a '60s folk trio reuniting for a memorial concert honoring a recently departed folk icon named Irving Steinbloom.

Guest, McKean and Shearer -- whose combined r�sum�s include gigs with National Lampoon, "Laverne and Shirley," "Saturday Night Live," "SCTV," "The Simpsons" and numerous feature films -- are perhaps best known as the shaggy, debauched rockers of metal band Spinal Tap.

They veer in an antithetical direction with The Folksmen, highlighting the physical emblems of middle-age and performing shamelessly corny ditties on acoustic instruments. The group was created in the mid-1980s, around the same time as Spinal Tap.

"We took these pictures of us as Spinal Tap and then as plain actors, and I said, 'Geez, we look like this washed-up folk trio,' " McKean recalls. "A year or so later we did The Folksmen on TV. We've just traipsed along since then."

On several occasions, The Folksmen provided the opening act for Spinal Tap. The actors play their instruments and write all their own songs. (In the '60s, Guest played folk music in nightclubs.)

Guest, McKean and Shearer were in Austin in March during South by Southwest to show "A Mighty Wind." The trio sat down at the Driskill Hotel to talk about the fine line between satire and ridicule, and why so few mockumentaries are as good as theirs.

Austin American-Statesman: As fans of folk music, it seems you approach the subject with significantly more love than derision.

Christopher Guest: Well, it has to be approached that way. It's the same way we did the Spinal Tap stuff. You have to like the genre. It's just that there's obviously a little twist in the choices these characters make musically.

Michael McKean: The tunes are competently written. It's not that they don't know how to write folk songs. It's just some of them are kind of silly.

Guest: At the same time, they have to be catchy and engaging. You can't just have a bunch of bad songs.

Some say that you're too soft on the folk world in "Mighty Wind," that you never really nail your target.

McKean: What's to nail, what's to attack?

Guest: It's not about mocking and nailing. It's observing these people. We create these characters and it's about them going through this very specific story. It's way too easy (to nail it). You can do that with anything.

That reminds me of the first time I saw "This is Spinal Tap" in the mid-'80s. The humor is often so subtle that, as a heavy metal fan, it slightly confused me. Instead of riotous satire, I thought it was kind of sad.

Guest: That's the highest compliment.

You've performed as The Folksmen for real folk crowds. Are they laughing?

Guest: Eventually. When you're immersed in your own world, it's hard to step back and take a look at it. It's not an attack on the music. There's so many different things within folk music that you couldn't get a group of folk musicians in a room and agree anyway.

Shearer: When we perform live we sort of force their hand, because usually our last number is a cover song. We do a quasi-bluegrass version of "Start Me Up." And if they haven't gotten it before that, we force them to see it.

Guest: And they see this as us having our "fingers on the pulse of what the kids like." Of course, it's this 20-year-old song.

As genre pioneers, you're essentially kings of the so-called mockumentary. Do you recognize or see this?

Shearer: Well, he (Guest) wears a crown.

McKean: It's just one of those Burger King crowns.

Shearer: More a tiara.

Guest: I don't like that term "mockumentary," because I don't think the films are mocking in any way. I've done three films in this format because it seems to be the way to tell these particular stories. I don't know if I'll do another one or not, but we're all comfortable working this way.

But do you notice your influence on wannabes?

McKean: I think "Spinal Tap" was a key film in that it was a parody of documentary films and you can't do that with a script.

Guest: Although people have tried. I get calls all the time from people saying, "I've just written this great documentary. I'd like you to read the screenplay." And I say, "What do you mean? That's not the way you do it." Not everyone can do this. These actors are the best at this you can get. It's all based on the people in the movies. You can have an idea but if you don't have the people to carry it out it's not going to happen.

Shearer: People who come in the wake of "Spinal Tap" are usually what most people in the movie business are and that's control freaks. You can't do this kind of movie and be a control freak. Chris is trusting the people on the set, the actors and the crew, to make his movie.

McKean: He gives us more passes than he does rules.

Shearer: Yeah. And when someone says "I've got a script for my new mockumentary," they've just revealed themselves to be control freaks who --

Guest: Who don't understand the entire premise, which is a paradox: Once you have a structure, you have to release and give in to the talents of the people in the movie. If I didn't trust these guys, there's no movie. There's nothing.

That puts a heavy burden on the actors.

Shearer: It doesn't feel like a burden. It's a gift.

McKean: It's the best job in the world.

Guest: It is a gift. The first thing to establish is a structure. Without that you're just sitting in a room looking for the punchline. It's extremely important to have this throughline and skeletal structure on which to hang things. You feel the comfort working with these people because you trust what they're going to do. There's no burden individually, because you know if you're not stepping up in an instance someone will be there to pick up.

Shearer: It looks from the outside like we're working with no net. Actually, everybody is everybody else's net.

Guest: It's more than classic improv. In an improvisational stage group it's really about going for those high points, the laugh. You don't have the time that we have in this format where there's real time, like people sitting in a scene going on for 10 minutes. On stage, there's that desperation. I'm working at the other speed. I'm not looking at a watch thinking someone better say something funny.

And you get a lot of your biggest laughs from the silences.

Guest: That's absolutely true. You need to have the courage to say you don't have to say anything. Someone's going to say something, but you don't feel compelled to come up with this thing and have that look in your eye. When musicians play, you hear when someone's about to start a solo. You don't start playing a solo at the same time. You back off and continue playing rhythm. It has to be this give and take.

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649

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