Key Takeaways

• Christopher Guest is recognized as a leading comic talent, recently revisiting his role in Spinal Tap.
• He shared an anecdote about his early acting experience in Death Wish and a challenging interaction with director Michael Winner.
• Guest’s response to Winner’s demands showcased his resilience and humor, earning unexpected respect from the director.
• The interview reveals Guest’s gratitude for the creative freedom he enjoyed while working with director Rob Reiner.

For my money, Christopher Guest ranks as one of the finest comic minds of our time. Although long retired (since his Netflix movie, Mascots), Guest recently came out of his self-imposed hiatus to reprise his iconic role as Nigel Tufnel, the lead guitarist of Spinal Tap, in the sequel which is now in theaters (check out our own Tyler Nichols’ hilarious interview with Tap in character). Guest isn’t one to sit for a lot of in-depth interviews – at least not out of character – but he sat for a terrific one with Marc Maron recently, in which he opened up about some memorable episodes from his early career.

In one such tale, Guest remembers one of his first jobs – a one-line role in the Charles Bronson vigilante classic Death Wish. In it, he played an NYPD uniformed officer and did not have fond memories of the movie’s director, Michael Winner. While never referring to him by name, he said the director was known for being horrible (indeed, there are many nasty Michael Winner stories in the Cannon documentary Electric Boogaloo), and he remembers a bad thing the director did to him. You see, at the time Guest was appearing on-stage in Lemmings, the off-Broadway National Lampoon revue, and sported long hair. Winner ordered Guest to cut his hair for the role in Death Wish. Guest pushed back, as, due to him playing a uniformed cop, he asked whether or not he could just keep his hat on, hiding the hair. Winner assured him that in the scene he planned for Guest to remove his hat. Accepting that reason, Guest got a haircut, only to realize that when he came to the set, Winner had no intention of ever having him remove his hat. It was simply a power move.

In response, Guest, whose father was a member of the English House of Lords (Guest himself is a Baron, which is an inherited title), mercilessly mocked Winner’s plummy English accent in front of the whole crew. “I hope he fires me on the spot,” Guest remembered thinking. Alas, not only did Winner not fire him, but he seemed to respect the stones on the young actor to hit back at him. “A box of Cuban cigars arrived at my house the next week. It was the perfect thing of a bully coming up against that (the f*ck you as Maron called it) and going nah.”

The interview is really worth listening to. Guest, who is reserved in comparison to his characters, says he’s been really fortunate in his career as all of his improvisational movies were greenlit by his friend and This is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner, who ran Castle Rock and financed all his films while allowing Guest a free hand. How free? Guest remembered spending a year and a half, eight hours a day editing Waiting for Guffman into its final form.

Check out the whole interview HERE.