Jack Black Has Paid Tribute To Rob Reiner: “There Is No Tenacious D Without Spinal Tap”

Jack Black paid tribute to Rob Reiner during a recent appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, admitting that Tenacious D wouldn’t exist without the filmmaker’s famous heavy metal mockumentary, Spinal Tap.

Jack Black took a moment to pay tribute to the late legendary director Rob Reiner on Thursday (December 16) during his recent appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

News broke last week that Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found murdered in their Los Angeles home. A day later, the couple’s 32-year-old son Nick Reiner would be arrested in connection with their deaths and has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder with “special circumstances”.

Despite appearing on the show to promote his new movie Anaconda, Black would dedicate a significant portion of his interview praising Reiner, crediting the director’s work for inspiring Tenacious D and School of Rock.

“I don’t really want to talk about anything other than Rob Reiner because he was such an incredible inspiration to me,” Black said. “And if you mention Tenacious D, there is no Tenacious D without Spinal Tap. And anyone out here, any of the young millennials that haven’t seen Spinal Tap, do yourself a favour. There’s no School of Rock without Spinal Tap.”

“I love so many of his movies,” he continued. “It’s like an incredible oeuvre of films that he made. What a genius. I just wanted to really quick give a shout-out to one of the biggest inspirations of my life and send love to the universe to one of the greats. He brought so much joy.”

Spinal Tap would be Reiner’s directorial debut, and would be released in 1984. The film, which starred Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer, followed the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap as they made their attempted comeback. The film would receive significant critical acclaim and a modest box office run, and over the years would be cited as one of the seminal films that influenced the mockumentary genre.

Earlier this year, Reiner and the original Spinal Tap stars would release the sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.

Following the death of Reiner, US film distributor Bleecker Street would announce that it had delayed the upcoming Spinal Tap concert film, Spinal Tap At Stonehenge: The Final Finale. While an official release date hadn’t been announced, the distributor shared that it was eyeing a mid-2026 release date, but has put its plans on hold out of respect for Reiner and his family.