Marty DiBergi Quotes in This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

[Nigel is playing a soft piece on the piano]

Marty DiBergi: It's very pretty.

Nigel Tufnel: Yeah, I've been fooling around with it for a few months.

Marty DiBergi: It's a bit of a departure from what you normally play.

Nigel Tufnel: It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why.

Marty DiBergi: It's very nice.

Nigel Tufnel: You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like - I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of...

Marty DiBergi: What do you call this?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, this piece is called "Lick My Love Pump".

Marty DiBergi: David St. Hubbins... I must admit I've never heard anybody with that name.

David St. Hubbins: It's an unusual name, well, he was an unusual saint, he's not a very well known saint.

Marty DiBergi: Oh, there actually is, uh... there was a Saint Hubbins?

David St. Hubbins: That's right, yes.

Marty DiBergi: What was he the saint of?

David St. Hubbins: He was the patron saint of quality footwear.

[Reading a review of Spinal Tap's latest album]

Marty DiBergi: "This pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, 'What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn't he have rested on that day too?'"

Marty DiBergi: "This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry."

Nigel Tufnel: That's just nitpicking, isn't it?

Marty DiBergi: Now, during the Flower People period, who was your drummer?

David St. Hubbins: Stumpy's replacement, Peter James Bond. He also died in mysterious circumstances. We were playing a, uh...

Nigel Tufnel: ...Festival.

David St. Hubbins: Jazz blues festival. Where was that?

Nigel Tufnel: Blues jazz, really.

Derek Smalls: Blues jazz festival. Misnamed.

Nigel Tufnel: It was in the Isle of, uh...

David St. Hubbins: Isle of Lucy. The Isle of Lucy jazz and blues festival.

Nigel Tufnel: And, uh, it was tragic, really. He exploded on stage.

Derek Smalls: Just like that.

David St. Hubbins: He just went up.

Nigel Tufnel: He just was like a flash of green light... And that was it. Nothing was left.

David St. Hubbins: Look at his face.

Nigel Tufnel: Well, there was...

David St. Hubbins: It's true, this really did happen.

Nigel Tufnel: It's true. There was a little green globule on his drum seat.

David St. Hubbins: Like a stain, really.

Nigel Tufnel: It was more of a stain than a globule, actually.

David St. Hubbins: You know, several, you know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

[discussing Nigel's Guitar collection]

Nigel Tufnel: Look... still has the old tag on, never even played it.

Marty DiBergi: [points his finger] You've never played...?

Nigel Tufnel: Don't touch it!

Marty DiBergi: We'll I wasn't going to touch it, I was just pointing at it.

Nigel Tufnel: Well... don't point! It can't be played.

Marty DiBergi: Don't point, okay. Can I look at it?

Nigel Tufnel: No. no. That's it, you've seen enough of that one.

[last lines]

Nigel Tufnel: [on what he would do if he couldn't be a rock star] Well, I suppose I could, uh, work in a shop of some kind, or... or do, uh, freelance, uh, selling of some sort of, uh, product. You know...

Marty DiBergi: A salesman?

Nigel Tufnel: A salesman, like maybe in a, uh, haberdasher, or maybe like a, uh, um... a chapeau shop or something. You know, like, "Would you... what size do you wear, sir?" And then you answer me.

Marty DiBergi: Uh... seven and a quarter.

Nigel Tufnel: "I think we have that." See, something like that I could do.

Marty DiBergi: Yeah... you think you'd be happy doing something like-...

Nigel Tufnel: "No; we're all out. Do you wear black?" See, that sort of thing I think I could probably... muster up.

Marty DiBergi: Do you think you'd be happy doing that?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, I don't know - wh-wh-... what're the hours?

[reading a review of the album "Shark Sandwich"]

Marty DiBergi: The review you had on "Shark Sandwich", which was merely a two word review, just said "Shit Sandwich".

[first lines]

Marty DiBergi: Hello; my name is Marty DiBergi. I'm a filmmaker. I make a lot of commercials. That little dog that chases the covered wagon underneath the sink? That was mine. In 1966, I went down to Greenwich Village, New York City to a rock club called Electric Banana. Don't look for it; it's not there anymore. But that night, I heard a band that for me redefined the word "rock and roll". I remember being knocked out by their... their exuberance, their raw power - and their punctuality. That band was Britain's now-legendary Spinal Tap. Seventeen years and fifteen albums later, Spinal Tap is still going strong. And they've earned a distinguished place in rock history as one of England's loudest bands. So in the late fall of 1982, when I heard that Tap was releasing a new album called "Smell the Glove", and was planning their first tour of the United States in almost six years to promote that album, well needless to say I jumped at the chance to make the documentary - the, if you will, "rockumentary" - that you're about to see. I wanted to capture the... the sights, the sounds... the smells of a hard-working rock band, on the road. And I got that; I got more... a lot more. But hey, enough of my yakkin'; whaddaya say? Let's boogie!

[Nigel Tufnel is showing Marty DiBergi one of his favorite guitars]

Nigel Tufnel: The sustain, listen to it.

Marty DiBergi: I don't hear anything.

Nigel Tufnel: Well you would though, if it were playing.

[Marty compliments Nigel on his tee shirt]

Nigel Tufnel: You like this?

Marty DiBergi: It's very nice. It looks like hollow wood.

Nigel Tufnel: This is my exact inner structure, done in a tee shirt. Exactly medically accurate. See?

Marty DiBergi: So in other words if we were to take all your flesh and blood...

Nigel Tufnel: Take them off. This is what you'd see.

Marty DiBergi: It wouldn't be green though.

[Nigel points at Marty]

Nigel Tufnel: It is green. You see how your blood looks blue.

Marty DiBergi: Yeah, well that's just the vein. That's the color of the vein. The blood is actually red.

Nigel Tufnel: Oh then, maybe it's not green. Anyway this is what I sleep in sometimes.

Marty DiBergi: Do you feel that playing rock 'n' roll music keeps you a child? That is, keeps you in a state of arrested development?

Derek Smalls: No. No. No. I feel it's like, it's more like going, going to a, a national park or something. And there's, you know, they preserve the moose. And that's, that's my childhood up there on stage. That moose, you know.

Marty DiBergi: So when you're playing you feel like a preserved moose on stage?

Derek Smalls: Yeah.

Derek Smalls: That's not to say I haven't had my visionary moments. I've taken acid seventy... five, seventy-six times.

Marty DiBergi: 76?

Derek Smalls: Yeah, so I've had my moments in the sky.

Marty DiBergi: You two were at school together?

Nigel Tufnel: We're not university material.

David St. Hubbins: What's that on your finger?

Nigel Tufnel: It's my gum.

David St. Hubbins: What are you doing with it on your finger?

Nigel Tufnel: I might need it later.

David St. Hubbins: Put it on the table, that's terrible.

Nigel Tufnel: No, I might forget it on the table.

David St. Hubbins: [to Marty] Fucking awful, you can't take him anywhere.

[at the pre-tour party, the waiters are mime artists]

Marty DiBergi: It's such an interesting concept, mixing mime and food.

Morty the Mime: It's a kick isn't it? Well, I used to be an actor but I could never remember my lines, so I thought "just shut up", you know? Don't say nothing. And my father used to say the same thing to me every dinner time, he used to say to me "shut up and eat", so that's what we do and that's the name of the company "shut up and eat".

Tommy Pischedda: Excuse me... are you reading "Yes I Can"?

Limo Groupie: Yeah, have you read it?

Tommy Pischedda: Yeah, by Sammy Davis, Jr.?

Limo Groupie: Yeah.

Tommy Pischedda: You know what the title of that book should be? "Yes, I Can If Frank Sinatra Says It's OK". 'Cause Frank calls the shots for all of those guys. Did you get to the part yet where uh... Sammy is coming out of the Copa... it's about 3 o'clock in the morning and, uh, he sees Frank? Frank's walking down Broadway by himself...

[Nigel raises the limo partition]

Tommy Pischedda: Fuckin' limeys.

Marty DiBergi: Well, you know, they're not, uh, used to that world.

Tommy Pischedda: Yeah, yeah.

Marty DiBergi: You know, Frank Sinatra, it's a different world that they're in.

Tommy Pischedda: You know, it's just that people like this... you know... they get all they want so they really don't understand, you know... about a life like Frank's. I mean, when you've loved and lost the way Frank has, then you, uh, you know what life's about.

Derek Smalls: We're taking a sophisticated view of sex...

Marty DiBergi: Down on a farm.

Derek Smalls: Yeah.

Marty DiBergi: What would you do if you couldn't play music anymore?

Mick Shrimpton: Well, as long as there's, y'know, sex and drugs, I could do without the rock & roll.

Marty DiBergi: Given the history of Spinal Tap drummers, uh, in the past, do you have any fears, uh, for your life?

Mick Shrimpton: When I did join, you know, they did tell me - they kind of took me aside and said, "Well, Mick. It's, you know, it's like this..." And it did kind of freak me out a bit. But it can't always happen to every, can it? I mean, really...

Marty DiBergi: Because the law of averages...

Mick Shrimpton: ...The law of averages...

Marty DiBergi: ...Says you will survive.

Mick Shrimpton: Yeh.

Marty DiBergi: Do you have any sort of creed or philosophy that you live by?

Viv Savage: Have... a good... time... all the time. That's my philosophy, Marty.