I loved A Mighty Wind from the moment I saw it and the DVD extras simply make it better.   It differs from Spinal Tap (which wasn't directed by Guest but by Rob Reiner)in that it goes for the gentle incision of the stiletto rather than the broader piss take of Spinal Tap.

However one of the underlying intents behind the film which has not been fully appreciated on the various threads here (and I've just been through them all) is that Guest's subjects are not the genuinely talented and ground breaking artists who arose during the sixties, but those who *weren't* especially talented but thought that they were and took themselves way too seriously both when they were 'active' and when they are given a second chance at the limelight. A bit like reading Mudcat really.

There was a second point in Guest's mind.   He traveled from London to Greenwich Village in the sixties looking to play bluegrass and was not comfortable with what he found. He has said "Those kind of people were trying to make money at it. For someone who played bluegrass it couldn't have been worse: it was taking something that I thought was good to begin with and ruining it. It became smarmy and unpleasant; it's how jazz became muzak. There's nothing particularly wholesome about real folk music - all the songs are about people getting their throats slashed and being dumped in a river, and hung and shot. But those songs were then homogenised and pasteurised".

Hence the New Main Street Singers, weird religion, ex pornstars and and all were carefully constructed "They're bubbling over with something that is almost psychotic...I wanted to have this group that was collectively kind of mentally ill"

Ian