Christopher Guest Goes to 11

I just finally got around to watching For Your Consideration, Christopher Guest’s send-up of the film awards industry, and while I feel he hit his high water mark with Best in Show, his latest film was certainly entertaining. Guest, who along with his cohorts is pretty much responsible the whole mocumentary genre (including films like This is Spinal Tap, Waiting For Guffman, Best in Show, etc.), and probably gets quoted about 100 times a day in music shops far for his role as Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap .

Now he’s getting some real honors. On November 30th the Berklee School of Music will honor Guest by performing a number of his songs featured in his films, and will conclude by awarding him an honorary doctorate in music.

The program will include Spinal Tap classics “Big Bottom,” “Stonehenge,” and “Hell Hole,” and favorites from Guest’s more recent films like “Nothing Ever Happens In Blaine” (Waiting For Guffman) and “A Mighty Wind,” with some of the material being performed in diverse styles, such as big band, swing, Latin, and Bossa Nova.
Says Berklee President Roger Brown, “Talk to any rock, blues, or jazz musician and you are likely to find that they can quote This Is Spinal Tap chapter and verse. “Turning it up to eleven,” harmonizing “Heartbreak Hotel” at Graceland, or playing absolutely inappropriate music at a US Air Force base capture the highs and lows of the musician’s life like no other film. Guest not only starred in the film, and others like Waiting For Guffman and A Mighty Wind, he is also a very talented guitarist and mandolin player who wrote many of the hits from these seminal films.”

Plus, Guest was The Six Fingered Man in The Princess Bride. Too much cred.