Spinal Tap Goes Folkie?

Thu., Jan. 31, 2002 2:30 PM PST by Josh Grossberg

And the answer, my friend, is, um, breaking like the wind?!

That's not exactly what Bobby D. had in mind when he wrote his classic peace anthem.

But imagine, if you will, the folk stylings of Dylan as channeled by Spinal Tap and you get an idea of what actor-writer-director Christopher Guest has in store for his next mockumentary.

Guest and his Spinal Tap cronies Harry Shearer and Michael McKean are working on a new batch of tunes for a decidedly un-Tap-like subject: '60s folk music.

The Saturday Night Live alum is looking to skewer the folk-music scene much like he and his pals poked fun at heavy metal in This Is Spinal Tap, middle-America community theater in 1996's Waiting for Guffman and canine competitions in the Y2K "dogumentary" Best in Show

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Guest and longtime collaborator Eugene Levy are working on the script. Guest will also direct the still-untitled project for Castle Rock Entertainment, which produced his last two films.

Guest says the story will be another "where-are-they-now" musical journey that will examine the lives of baby-booming folkies well past their prime who are invited out of obscurity for one last shot at the big time.

"It deals with three folk acts that get together for a memorial concert at Carnegie Hall because a famous legendary folk manager has died," Guest explains in the Reporter. "These acts were active in the '60s but have been out of business since the early '70s. They must now travel to New York to honor this man who has died and play the concert."

Guest says that most of the cast of Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show will also be returning as part of the new ensemble.

Best of all, the soundtrack will be a sort-of Spinal Tap Lite, with new tunes written by Guest, Shearer, McKean and Levy, all of whom will also act in the film.

"There'll be lots of music and we'll have original songs with everybody actually playing and singing," says Guest. "It'll be the same basic cast you saw in Guffman and Best in Show with some additional people."

After his stint on SNL, Guest (the husband of Jamie Lee Curtis) gained a cult following playing Nigel Tufnel in Rob Reiner's classic 1984 mock-rockumentary This is Spinal Tap, a hilarious send-up of early '80s heavy metal bands. He also played the 11-fingered Count Tyron Rugen in Reiner's 1987 fairy tale spoof, The Princess Bride.

But it was his parody of small-town American life in Waiting for Guffman that earned Guest critical kudos and a wider audience. He followed up on that success three years later with pretty much the same cast in Best in Show, which took a humorous bite out of the world of dog shows.

Levy, a veteran of SCTV, costarred in such '80s hit comedies as Splash and Armed and Dangerous, but is perhaps better known to contemporary audiences as Jim's wacky dad from the American Pie movies.

Their new mockumentary starts shooting in Los Angeles this spring.