Daily Dialogue — December 10, 2015
David St. Hubbins: Oh, let’s hear your suggestion.
Nigel Tufnel: Stonehenge…Stonehenge. Best production value we’ve ever had on stage.
David St. Hubbins: But we haven’t got the equipment. We haven’t got Stonehenge.
Nigel Tufnel: Not yet we don’t. let’s start…Please, please just allow me. (starts drawing on a napkin) It’s quite simple..this is it. Look.
Ian Faith: Consider it done.
Ian and Polly are looking at the Stonehenge model.
Ian Faith: It’s actually perfect. I mean it’s the right proportions. It will be this color right?
Polly Deutsch: Yeah.
Ian Faith: Yeah, that’s just terrific. Almost looks like the real thing.
Polly Deutsch: You got it.
Ian Faith: Yeah, when we get the actual set , when we get the piece, it will follow exactly these specifications, I mean even these contours and everything?
Polly Deutsch: Um, I don’t understand. What? The actual piece?
Ian Faith: Well, when you build the actual piece.
Polly Deutsch: But this is what you asked for…
Ian Faith: What?
Polly Deutsch: This is the piece.
Ian Faith: This is the piece?
Polly Deutsch: Yes.
Ian Faith: Are you telling me that this is it? This is scenery? Have you ever been to Stonehenge? The triliths are 20 feet high, you can stand four men up them.
Polly Deutsch: Ian, I was asked to build…
Ian Faith: This is insane, this isn’t a piece of scenery.
Polly Deutsch: Look, look this is what I was asked to build. (unfolds the napkin) Eighteen inches, right here it specifies eighteen inches. I was given this napkin..
Ian Faith: Forget this….
Spinal Tap is performing Stonehenge on stage.
David St. Hubbins: (singing) Stonehenge, where the demons dwell, where the banshees live and they do it well. Stonehenge, where a man’s a man and the children dance to the pipes of Pan.
Nigel Tufnel: (singing) And you my love, won’t you take my hand. We’ll go back in time to that mystic land. Where the dewdrops cry and the cats meow, I will take you there, I will show you how. (now talking) And oh how they danced, the little children of Stonehenge. (Stonehenge model is lowered) Beneath the haunted Rune for fear that daybreak might come too soon.
Back in the hotel room.
David St. Hubbins: I for one do not think the problem was that the band was down. I think 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 are making much too big a thing out of this.
Derek Smalls: Making a big thing out of it would have been a good idea.
— This is Spinal Tap (1984), written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Misunderstanding. Today’s suggestion by James Schramm
Trivia: Contrary to popular rumor, the “too small Stonehenge” disaster is not a parody of Black Sabbath’s oversized Stonehenge sets from the Born Again tour. The Stonehenge Spinal Tap scene existed as early as 1982, when the film was a 20-minute short. Black Sabbath didn’t begin using their Stonehenge sets until 1983.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by James: “One of the funniest examples of misunderstanding and a fantastic sight gag. Great scene.”
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