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This Is Spinal Tap (also known as This Is Spın̈al Tap: A Rockumentary by Martin Di Bergi) is a 1984 American mockumentary film co-written and directed by Rob Reiner (in his feature directorial debut). The film stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer as members of the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap, who are characterized as "one of England's loudest bands". Reiner plays Martin "Marty" Di Bergi, a documentary filmmaker who follows them on their American tour. The film satirizes the behavior and musical pretensions of rock bands and the perceived hagiographic tendencies of rock documentaries such as The Song Remains the Same (1976) and The Last Waltz (1978), and follows the similar All You Need Is Cash (1978) by the Rutles. Most of its dialogue was improvised and dozens of hours were filmed.

This Is Spinal Tap was released to critical acclaim, but its initial release found only modest commercial success. Its later VHS release, however, brought it greater success and a cult following. In 2002, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress, and was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. It has been credited with "effectively" launching the mockumentary genre.

Filmmaker Martin "Marty" Di Bergi is creating a documentary that follows English rock group Spinal Tap on their 1982 United States concert tour to promote their new album Smell the Glove. The band comprises talented but immature and dimwitted childhood friends David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel on vocals and guitar, bassist Derek Smalls, keyboardist Viv Savage, and drummer Mick Shrimpton. The documentary shows their early days as the skiffle group The Originals; they renamed themselves the New Originals when it was discovered another band was already The Originals, only to change it back when the original Originals broke up. They later had a hit as the Thamesmen, "Gimme Some Money", before changing their name to Spinal Tap and achieving a minor hit with the flower power anthem "Listen to the Flower People" before transitioning to heavy metal. Several of their previous drummers died in strange circumstances: Peter "James" Bond explodes on stage; John "Stumpy" Pepys dies in a "bizarre gardening accident" that police said was better left unsolved; and finally, Eric "Stumpy Joe" Childs perishes choking on someone else's vomit. Nigel shows Marty his extensive guitar collection, as well as a custom-made amplifier that has volume knobs that go up to eleven, as he believes this makes them "one louder" than other amps.

Nigel's amplifier dials that go up to eleven; this scene is the origin of the term up to eleven.

Tensions rise between the band and their manager, Ian Faith, as several shows are canceled due to low ticket sales, and major retailers refuse to sell Smell the Glove because of its sexist cover art. David's girlfriend Jeanine, a yoga and astrology devotee, joins the group on tour and participates in band meetings, influencing their costumes and stage presentation, much to Nigel's and Ian's dismay. The band's record label opts to release Smell the Glove with an entirely black cover without consulting the band. Despite Ian arguing that it would have a similar appeal to the Beatles' White Album, the album fails to sell.

Nigel suggests staging a lavish, Druid-themed glam rock show and asks Ian to order a Stonehenge megalith. However, Nigel mislabels its dimensions, and the resulting prop is only 18 inches (46 cm) high rather than 18 feet (5.5 m), making the group a laughingstock. The group blames Ian, and when David suggests Jeanine should co-manage the group, Ian quits. The tour continues, rescheduled into smaller and smaller venues, and Nigel is increasingly marginalized by Jeanine and David. At a gig at a United States Air Force base, Nigel is upset by an equipment malfunction and quits mid-performance. At their next gig, in an amphitheater at an amusement park where the band is billed below a puppet show, the band finds their repertoire is severely limited without Nigel and improvise an experimental "Jazz Odyssey", which is poorly received.

At the last show of the tour, David and Derek consider ending Spinal Tap and exploring other projects, such as a musical about Jack the Ripper called Saucy Jack. Before they go on stage, Nigel arrives to sheepishly tell them that their song "Sex Farm" has become a major hit in Japan, and that Ian wants to arrange a tour there. David bitterly refuses, but later, as Nigel watches the band performing from the wings, David relents and invites him to join the band onstage, delighting the crowd but infuriating Jeanine. With Ian reinstalled as manager, Spinal Tap performs a series of sold-out shows in Japan, despite the loss of drummer Mick, who explodes onstage.

Michael McKean and Christopher Guest met while in college in New York City in the late 1960s, and they played music together. They worked with Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner on a TV pilot in 1978 for a sketch comedy show called The TV Show, which featured a parody rock band called Spinal Tap. During production of that sketch (while being burned with oil from an on-stage effect) McKean and Guest began to improvise, inventing characters that became David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel.

Guest had previously played guitar under the name "Nigel Tufnel" on Michael McKean and David Lander's album Lenny and the Squigtones.

The entire film was shot in Los Angeles over a period of about five weeks on handheld 16mm cameras. The visit to Elvis Presley's grave was filmed in a park in Altadena, with a mock-up of the grave site. The band sings " Heartbreak Hotel" because that was the only Elvis song for which producer Karen Murphy could obtain rights.

Rob Reiner procured $60,000 from Marble Arch Productions to write a screenplay with McKean, Guest and Shearer, based on the Spinal Tap characters. They realized after a few days of writing that no script could capture the kind of movie they wanted to make, so they decided instead to shoot a short demo of the proposed film. They shopped the demo around to various studios but had no takers, until television writer-producer Norman Lear decided to back the project.

Virtually all dialogue in the film is improvised. Actors were given outlines indicating where scenes would begin and end and character information necessary to avoid contradictions, but everything else came from the actors. As often as possible, the first take was used in the film, to capture natural reactions. Reiner wanted to list the entire cast as writers on the film to acknowledge their contributions, but the Writers' Guild objected, and so only he, Guest, McKean, and Shearer received writing credit.

Veteran documentary cameraman Peter Smokler worked as cinematographer on the film. Smokler had great instincts for camera placement on set, according to Reiner, and is responsible for the film's handheld cinéma vérité style-although the cinematographer did not understand what was supposed to be funny about the movie. With Smokler behind the camera, the film was shot not as a feature film, but as a documentary, without a script or traditional shooting schedule. So much footage was filmed (over 100 hours) that it eventually required three editors to complete the film.

Inspirations for the film included the documentaries Dont Look Back (1967), which was made about Bob Dylan, and The Last Waltz (1978), which was about The Band. The scene where Spinal Tap becomes lost backstage was inspired by a video of Tom Petty at a venue in Germany, walking through a series of doors trying to find the stage, but ending up on an indoor tennis court. Rob Reiner also went to see the English heavy metal band Judas Priest in concert as part of his preparation for the film. He later said, "It physically hurt my chest. The reverberation in the hall was so strong that I couldn't stay there any longer." According to Harry Shearer in the Criterion edition DVD commentary, keyboard player John Sinclair had just returned from touring with Uriah Heep when principal photography was about to begin, and told them how they had been booked to play an Air Force base. They subsequently used the story in the film.

In post-production, Christopher Guest was very concerned with the verisimilitude of the finger positions on the band's instruments during the concert scenes, and even re-shot some footage after the movie was edited to ensure their hands appeared in sync with the music.

The character of Jeanine, David's disruptive girlfriend, was added during the production to provide a storyline to the material-in part to mollify studio executives who worried the movie would be plotless. Actress Victoria Tennant was briefly considered for the role, but June Chadwick won the part, thanks to her chemistry with the cast and her improvisation skills.

Robert Bauer played the same character, Moke, in another Rob Reiner movie, The Sure Thing (1985).

Since its release, This Is Spinal Tap has received acclaim from critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1984. The film holds a 96% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 8.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Smartly directed, brilliantly acted, and packed with endlessly quotable moments, This Is Spinal Tap is an all-time comedy classic." On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 92 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and wrote " This Is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest, most intelligent, most original films of the year. The satire has a deft, wicked touch. Spinal Tap is not that much worse than, not that much different from, some successful rock bands." Ebert later placed the film on his ten best list of 1984 and would later include it in his Great Movies list in 2001 where he called it "one of the funniest movies ever made". Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also awarded 4 out of 4 stars, writing, "It is so well done, in fact, that unless you are clued in beforehand, it might take you a while to realize that the rock group under dissection in This Is Spinal Tap does not really exist." Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised it as "a witty, mischievous satire, and it's obviously a labor of love." In 2002, This Is Spinal Tap was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Critics praised the film not only for its satire of the rollercoaster lifestyles of rock stars but also for its take on the non-fiction film genre. David Ansen from called the film "a satire of the documentary form itself, complete with perfectly faded clips from old TV shows of the band in its mod and flower-child incarnations".

Even with cameos from Angelica Huston, Billy Crystal and Patrick Macnee, Spinal Tap still managed to trick many of its moviegoers into believing the band existed. Reiner observed that "when Spinal Tap initially came out, everybody thought it was a real band... the reason it did go over everybody's head was that it was very close to home".

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Cover for Shark Sandwich, one of the band's fictional albums

The film resonated with many musicians. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Jerry Cantrell, Dee Snider and Ozzy Osbourne all reported that, like Spinal Tap, they had become lost in confusing arena backstage hallways trying to make their way to the stage. When Dokken's George Lynch saw the film he is said to have exclaimed, "That's us! How'd they make a movie about us?" Glenn Danzig had a similar reaction when comparing Spinal Tap to his former band the Misfits saying, "When I first saw Spinal Tap, I was like, 'Hey, this is my old band.'"

Lars Ulrich told a press conference crowd that the 1992 Guns N' Roses/Metallica Stadium Tour seemed "so Spinal Tap." This tour was in support of Metallica's own " black album". Shortly after the tour started, Metallica's James Hetfield suffered third-degree burns on his arms after he stood too close to a pyrotechnic device. Earlier in that tour, backstage at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, Metallica met with Spinal Tap and discussed how their "black album" was a homage to Spinal Tap's Smell the Glove. This was captured on the Metallica DVD A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica.

In a 1992 interview, Nirvana explained declining an offer to be part of the film Singles. Kurt Cobain goes on to say, "There's never really been a good documentary on rock and roll bands." Dave Grohl then cuts in saying, "Except for Spinal Tap, [that] was the only rock movie worth watching," which Cobain agreed with, as well as mentioning Dont Look Back, by D.A. Pennebaker.

According to a 1997 interview in magazine with Aerosmith rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford, "The first time Steven [Tyler] saw it he didn't see any humor in it." When the film was released, Aerosmith's then-latest album, Rock in a Hard Place, depicted Stonehenge prominently on the cover.

U2 guitarist The Edge said in the documentary It Might Get Loud that when he first saw Spinal Tap, "I didn't laugh: I wept," because it summed up what a brainless swamp big-label rock music had become.

In a 2023 interview Chris Frantz of Talking Heads said "we watched Spinal Tap and I thought, ohh, I can never take myself seriously again."

Use of Spinal Tap as a descriptive term

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It became a common insult for a pretentious band to be told they were funnier than Spinal Tap. As George Lynch put it, the more seriously a band took themselves, the more they resembled Spinal Tap. After seeing a 1986 performance by metal band Venom, singer Henry Rollins compared them to Spinal Tap. In their respective Behind the Music episodes, Quiet Riot's Rudy Sarzo and Ratt's Robbin Crosby compared their own bands to Spinal Tap to some extent. For example, as a parallel to the "Shit Sandwich" incident, Quiet Riot's fourth album Condition Critical was given the two-word review of "Prognosis: Terminal" by J. D. Considine in Musician magazine. His review of the short-lived band GTR's eponymous debut LP in the same magazine was "SHT". R.E.M.'s Mike Mills described the band's early tours as "very Spinal Tap", citing, among other things, they had played at a United States Air Force base.

Judas Priest, the heavy metal band that Rob Reiner saw in preparation for the film, has had many drummers in its career (eight in total), which the website Ultimate Classic Rock described as "positively Spinal Tap-worthy". Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery later described the run of five drummers in a year between his band's first two albums as "like Spinal Tap". In the Pearl Jam documentary Pearl Jam Twenty, the members jokingly refer to the fact that while the core lineup of the group has remained unchanged (singer Eddie Vedder, guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard, and bassist Jeff Ament), the band has had five drummers. They describe this as "very Spinal Tap of us". In the documentary, a mock silent film called The Drummer Story is shown explaining what happened to their previous drummers. In it, one of them is almost eaten by a sea monster, only to be rescued by Eddie Vedder, playing a lifeguard.

The Canadian heavy metal band Anvil, whose drummer is named Robb Reiner, have been called "the real Spinal Tap" based on the misadventures depicted in their documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil.

In 2008, magazine ranked This Is Spinal Tap #48 on its list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. The New York Times placed the film on their list of The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. In January 2010, placed This Is Spinal Tap on its list of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. When Entertainment Weekly compiled their list of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, the publication included the film as "just too beloved to ignore". In 2011, Time Out London named it the best comedy film of all time. In November 2015, the film was ranked the 11th funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of 101 Funniest Screenplays. Stephen Sondheim listed it among his favorite films of all time.

This Is Spinal Tap at 35: Tribeca Film Festival (The Guardian)

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in this list:

On October 17, 2016, actor Harry Shearer filed a $125 million fraud and breach of contract lawsuit against both StudioCanal, who owns the film's rights, and Vivendi, which owns the studio. Shearer claimed that he and the other co-stars of the film received only $179 for sales of merchandise and music over the prior three decades. Shearer's lawsuit was specifically directed at StudioCanal by ordering the studio to terminate the copyright to This Is Spinal Tap. In February 2017, Shearer's co-stars Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, as well as the film's director Rob Reiner, joined the lawsuit against StudioCanal and Vivendi, seeking $400 million in damages. In the same month, Vivendi made an attempt to move the court to dismiss the case.[failed verification ] In September 2017, a judge dismissed Shearer, Reiner and McKean from the case. In October 2017, Spinal Tap revised their case by adding Universal Music Group (UMG, another division of Vivendi, whose Polydor label released the film's soundtrack) as a defendant, as well as the right to reclaim their copyrights to the film, its songs and characters.

In August 2018, another judge ruled that Guest, Reiner, McKean and Shearer could pursue the fraud claim against Vivendi.

The case related to sales of the soundtrack was settled out of court by November 2019, with UMG retaining the distribution rights but with the music rights eventually returning to Shearer, Guest, and McKean in the future. A settlement between Vivendi, StudioCanal, and the cast on the merchandising aspect was reached in September 2020 with final details to be resolved in the following months.

This Is Spinal Tap was first released on VHS in 1984 by Embassy Home Entertainment, and in 1994 as part of the Criterion Collection on LaserDisc under the title This Is Spinal Tap: Special Edition. It has also been released twice on DVD.

The first DVD release was a 1998 Criterion edition in letterbox format which used supplemental material from the 1994 Criterion LaserDisc release. It is the only double sided DVD in their catalogue, and it is now out of print. It included an audio commentary track with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer; a second audio commentary track with Rob Reiner, Karen Murphy, Robert Leighton and Kent Beyda; 79 minutes of deleted scenes; Spinal Tap: The Final Tour, the original twenty-minute short they shot to pitch the film; two trailers that feature Rob Reiner showing a film about cheese rolling (because "Spinal Tap" itself was still in the editing room); a TV promo, Heavy Metal Memories; and a music video for "Hell Hole". Sales of this edition were discontinued after only two years and the DVD has become a valuable collector's item. Much of this material had appeared on a 1994 CD-ROM by The Voyager Company that included the entire film in QuickTime format.

In 2000, MGM Home Entertainment released a special edition with more or less the same extras from the Criterion edition, plus a new audio commentary track with Guest, McKean and Shearer performing in character throughout, commenting on the film entirely in their fictional alter-egos, and often disapproving of how the film presents them; 70 minutes of deleted scenes (some of which were not on the Criterion DVD); a new short, Catching Up with Marty Di Bergi (where it is revealed that the members of Spinal Tap were very disappointed in Di Bergi for making a "hatchet job" of their film); the Heavy Metal Memories promo and six additional TV promos; music videos for "Gimme Some Money", "Listen to the Flower People" and "Big Bottom"; and segments of Spinal Tap appearing on The Joe Franklin Show. The special features were produced by Automat Pictures. However, this version of the film was missing the subtitles that appear throughout the film (for example, introducing band members, other personnel, and location names) and did not include the commentaries from the Criterion edition. The MGM DVD is missing the subtitles burned into the film; they have been replaced with player generated subtitles.

A 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray Disc release was released on July 28, 2009. It includes all bonus features from the MGM DVD, plus an interview with Nigel about Stonehenge, as well as the performance of "Stonehenge" from the band's Live Earth performance. It does not include the commentaries from the Criterion Collection DVD, even though MGM had stated that they would be included in the earliest press release for the Blu-ray version (most likely due to legal issues), and does not feature a "create your own avatars" element teased in publicity. However, this version does restore the subtitles that introduce band members/locales/events/etc. that were missing from MGM's DVD. The alternative, Region B, UK edition of this version additionally features a new hour-long documentary featuring famous fans, the "Bitch School" promo, the EPK for the "Back From The Dead" album, an interview with the late Reg Presley discussing the influence of the Troggs tapes on the film, and the first hour (ending with an abrupt edit) of The Return Of Spinal Tap. It does however lose the Di Bergi short and the Joe Franklin clip.

Sometime in the 2000s a workprint version of the film was uploaded online. This version is 270 minutes long. It includes many scenes never released in any home media release

Harry Shearer, who played Derek Smalls, went on to become one of the main voice artists on The Simpsons, providing voices for Principal Skinner, Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders and many others. The members of Spinal Tap reprised their roles in " The Otto Show", first playing on a concert attended by Bart and Milhouse which escalates into a riot after the band's early exit, then having their tour bus run off the road by Otto in the school bus.

The Internet Movie Database normally only allows users to rate films up to ten stars, but specifically for Spinal Tap, the site allows users to rate the film eleven stars, referencing the " Up to eleven" scene. On IGN, This Is Spinal Tap was the only DVD-and seemingly the only thing reviewed on IGN-to get 11 out of 10. This scene was also used in some news reports on the death of James Charles "Jim" Marshall, founder of the famous amplifier company whose equipment is featured in the scene.[citation needed ] Richard D. Titus, UX&D Controller for the BBC, adopted a Spinal Tap-inspired suggestion from a colleague that the BBC iPlayer should have a volume control that goes to eleven. The term has entered the vernacular, as with an autistic's description of sensory overload vis-à-vis a neurotypical's routine filtering.

Fran Drescher reprised the role of Bobbi Flekman during the fifth season of her hit television sitcom ; it was the season's third episode, titled "The Bobbi Flekman Story". In the episode, Flekman is now a record label producer for The Brian Setzer Orchestra, and an ex-business partner of character Maxwell Sheffield ( Charles Shaughnessy). Drescher's regular character Fran Fine believes Flekman is attempting to seduce Sheffield, and impersonates her to stop it.

Outside the world of music, J. K. Rowling cited Spinal Tap's series of drummers as an inspiration for the Harry Potter series, in which something bad happens to every teacher of Defence against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts, causing them to leave the job without completing a full school year.

A biographical comic book was released in 2018, That Was Spinal Tap, telling both the fictional story of the band and the real-life tale of the actors and others who created the characters and music. It was scripted by Rock 'N' Roll Comics co-creator Jay Allen Sanford.

A sequel, The Return of Spinal Tap, was broadcast and released on video in 1992 to promote Break Like the Wind. It consisted mostly of footage from an actual Spinal Tap concert at the Royal Albert Hall. In it the "Stonehenge" joke from the original movie is referenced, as the new, large prop is instead too big to get into the venue.

In May 2022, director Rob Reiner announced that he is working on a sequel to the film, which will include him returning to play DiBergi, and McKean, Shearer, and Guest as the members of Spinal Tap. The film will be Castle Rock Entertainment's first film following its revival in 2021. Filming is scheduled to start in February 2024.

"Christmas with the Devil", 1984 follow-up single.

Inside Spinal Tap (1985), a rare companion book by Peter Occhiogrosso. In 1992 this was revised and expanded exclusively for the UK market.

Both Michael McKean and Harry Shearer appeared in character as David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls as part of the all-star charity group Hear 'n Aid. The group issued the single "Stars" in early 1986 which charted in the UK, hitting #26. St. Hubbins and Smalls were two of the dozens of well-known heavy metal artists who participated and were credited on the record, and can be seen in the video.

Break Like the Wind (1992), album.

"The Otto Show", a 1992 episode of The Simpsons which features Spinal Tap.

This Is Spinal Tap: The Official Companion (ISBN 0-7475-4218-X) was published in 2000. It featured a "Tapistory", full transcript of the film (including outtakes), a discography, lyrics and an A-Z of the band. This book largely recycles material from the Peter Occhiogrosso book and Criterion DVD commentaries.

Back from the Dead, 2009 album and DVD.

Unplugged and Unwigged, 2009 live DVD of Guest, McKean, and Shearer performing songs from their various works.

Smalls Change (Meditations on Ageing), 2018 solo album by Shearer as Derek Smalls.

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This Is Spinal Tap (also known as This Is Spın̈al Tap: A Rockumentary by Martin Di Bergi ) is a 1984 American mockumentary film co-written and directed by Rob Reiner (in his feature directorial debut). The film stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer as members of the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap, who are characterized as "one of England's loudest bands".

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My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 American comedy-drama film directed by Louis Malle, and written by and starring Andre Gregory (Andre) and Wallace Shawn (Wally). The actors play fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan. The film's dialogue covers topics such as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of life, and contrasts Wally's modest humanism with Andre's spiritual experiences.

Andre Gregory is the focus of the first hour of the film, when he describes some of his experiences since giving up his career as a theatre director in 1975. These include working with his friend, director Jerzy Grotowski, and a group of Polish actors in a forest in Poland, his visit to Findhorn in Scotland, and his trip to the Sahara to try to create a play based on The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry. He worked with a group in a small piece of performance art on Long Island, which resulted in Andre's being (briefly) buried alive on Halloween night.

The rest of the film is a conversation as Wally Shawn tries to argue that living life as Andre has done for the past five years is simply not possible for most people. He relates ordinary pleasures, like having a cup of coffee. Andre responds that what passes for normal life in New York in the late 1970s, is more akin to living in a dream than it is to real life. The movie ends without a clear resolution to the conflict in worldviews articulated by the two men. Wally reminisces during a taxi ride about his childhood and mentions that when he arrives at home, he tells his girlfriend Debbie about his dinner with Andre. Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 plays in the background.

The idea for the film arose from Gregory's effort to work with a biographer on his life story, and Shawn's simultaneously coming up with an idea for a story about two people having a conversation. Gregory and Shawn, who had become friends through theatre work, decided to collaborate on the project. They agreed that it should be filmed rather than produced as a play. Although the film was based on events in the actors' lives, Shawn and Gregory denied (in an interview by film critic Roger Ebert) that they were playing themselves. They said that if they remade the film, they would swap the two characters to prove their point. In an interview with Noah Baumbach in 2009, Shawn said:

I actually had a purpose as I was writing this: I wanted to destroy that guy that I played, to the extent that there was any of me there. I wanted to kill that side of myself by making the film, because that guy is totally motivated by fear.

The screenplay went through numerous developmental changes in location; in the final version, it was set during a dinner at a restaurant. While Shawn was trying to find someone to direct the film, he received a phone call from French director Louis Malle. He had read a copy of the screenplay via a mutual friend and insisted that he work on the project, saying he wanted to direct, produce the film, or work on it in any capacity. Shawn initially thought that the call was a prank, due to Malle's stature in film. Malle later suggested that the dinner setup would not work, based on a rehearsal where Gregory was talking while eating. Shawn argued throughout screenplay development for more scenes, which would have resulted in a three-hour film. Malle won many script cuts, but lost two arguments over scenes that were kept in the film.

My Dinner with Andre was filmed in the Jefferson Hotel, which was then vacant, in Richmond, Virginia. (The hotel has since been restored and reopened as a luxury venue.) Lloyd Kaufman was the production manager on the film, and Troma Entertainment provided production support. The filming was done over a period of two weeks, and edited to appear as if occurring in real time. The set was created to look like the iconic Café des Artistes in New York City.

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes rated it 91% "fresh" based on 23 reviews with average rating of 7.3 out of 10. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel gave high praise to the film on Sneak Previews; the producers told Ebert that their praise helped keep the film in theaters for a year. Ebert chose it as the best film of the year, and both he and Siskel would later rank it as the fifth-best and fourth-best film, respectively, of the entire 1980s. In 1999, Ebert added it to his Great Movies essay series. He said, "Someone asked me the other day if I could name a movie that was entirely devoid of clichés. I thought for a moment, and then answered, My Dinner with Andre." The Boston Society of Film Critics Awards ranked it as the "Best American Film" in 1982, and awarded Gregory and Shawn its prize for Best Screenplay.

Throughout the film, Andre refers to his wife "Chiquita;" in real life he was married to Mercedes "Chiquita" Nebelthau, who died in 1992. Nebelthau was a documentary filmmaker whose credits include three films about Jerzy Grotowski, whom Wally and Andre talk about in this film.

Throughout the film, Wally refers to his "girlfriend Debbie." Though not actually identified, Debbie is the acclaimed short story writer Deborah Eisenberg, although she had not begun publishing stories at the time of the film. Eisenberg is also an extra in the film, a dark-haired diner Shawn glances at as he scans the restaurant while standing at the bar waiting for Andre.

In the 1993 episode of The Simpsons "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood", Martin Prince plays an arcade game based on the film.

In 1994, the first season of the sitcom Frasier concluded with an episode loosely based on the film's premise and structure, titled "My Coffee with Niles."

In 2017, in the Nirvanna the Band the Show first-season episode "The Buffet", the opening scene shows the main character mimicking Wally's actions from the beginning of the film, walking on the city streets, waiting for a subway, and putting on a tie before entering a restaurant.

The television series pays homage to the film in the episode Critical Film Studies.

In the 1996 film Waiting for Guffman,[better source needed ] Corky St. Clair is shown in the end credits displaying his action figures based on the film's characters.

The film is parodied in the 1983 film My Breakfast with Blassie, in which Andy Kaufman has a discussion over breakfast at a diner with professional wrestling manager "Classy" Freddie Blassie.

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My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 American comedy-drama film directed by Louis Malle, and written by and starring Andre Gregory (Andre) and Wallace Shawn (Wally). The actors play fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan.

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Run Lola Run ( German: is a 1998 German thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer, and starring Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni. The story follows a woman who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutsche Mark in twenty minutes to save her boyfriend's life.

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Wings of Desire ( German: Der Himmel über Berlin, 'The Heaven Over Berlin / The Sky Over Berlin') is a 1987 romantic fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its human inhabitants, comforting the distressed. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated or estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist, played by Solveig Dommartin. The angel chooses to become mortal so that he can experience human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can discover human love with the trapeze artist.

Inspired by art depicting angels visible around West Berlin, at the time enclaved by the Berlin Wall, Wenders and author Peter Handke conceived of the story and continued to develop the screenplay throughout the French and German co-production. The film was shot by Henri Alekan in both colour and a sepia-toned black-and-white, the latter being used to represent the world as seen by the angels. The cast includes Otto Sander, Curt Bois and Peter Falk.

For Wings of Desire, Wenders won awards for Best Director at both the Cannes Film Festival and European Film Awards. The film was a critical and financial success, and academics have interpreted it as a statement of the importance of cinema, libraries, the circus, or German unity, containing New Age, religious, secular or other themes.

It was followed by a sequel, Faraway, So Close!, released in 1993. City of Angels, a U.S. remake, was released in 1998. In 1990, numerous critics named Wings of Desire as one of the best films of the 1980s.

In a Berlin divided by the Berlin Wall, two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, watch the city, unseen and unheard by its human inhabitants. They observe and listen to the thoughts of Berliners, including a pregnant woman in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, a young prostitute standing by a busy road, and a broken man who feels betrayed by his wife. Their raison d'être is, as Cassiel says, to "assemble, testify, preserve" reality. Damiel and Cassiel have always existed as angels; they were in Berlin before it was a city, and before there were any humans.

Among the Berliners they encounter in their wanderings is an old man named Homer, who dreams of an "epic of peace". Cassiel follows the old man as he looks for the then-demolished Potsdamer Platz in an open field, and finds only the graffiti-covered Wall. Although Damiel and Cassiel are pure observers, visible only to children, and incapable of any interaction with the physical world, Damiel begins to fall in love with a profoundly lonely circus trapeze artist named Marion. She lives by herself in a caravan in West Berlin, until she receives the news that her group, the Circus Alekan, will be closing down. Depressed, she dances alone to the music of Crime & the City Solution, and drifts through the city.

Meanwhile, actor Peter Falk arrives in West Berlin to make a film about the city's Nazi past. Falk was once an angel, who, having grown tired of always observing and never experiencing, renounced his immortality to become a participant in the world. Also growing weary of infinity, Damiel's longing is for the genuineness and limits of human existence. He meets Marion in a dream, and is surprised when Falk senses his presence and tells him about the pleasures of human life.

Damiel is finally persuaded to shed his immortality. He experiences life for the first time: he bleeds, sees colours, tastes food and drinks coffee. Meanwhile, Cassiel taps into the mind of a young man just about to commit suicide by jumping off a building. Cassiel tries to save the young man but is unable to do so, and is left tormented by the experience. Sensing Cassiel's presence, Falk reaches out to him as he had Damiel, but Cassiel is unwilling to follow their example. Eventually, Damiel meets the trapeze artist Marion at a bar during a concert by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and she greets him and speaks about finally finding a love that is serious and can make her feel complete. The next day, Damiel considers how his time with Marion taught him to feel amazed, and how he has gained knowledge no angel is capable of achieving.

After living and working in the United States for eight years, director Wim Wenders returned to his native West Germany and wished to reconnect to it with a film about his favourite part of it, West Berlin. Planning to make Until the End of the World in 1985, he realised the project would not be ready for two years, and wishing to return to photography as soon as possible, he considered another project.

Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry partially inspired the story. Wenders claimed angels seemed to dwell in Rilke's poetry, and the director had also jotted "angels" in his notes one day, and noted angel-themed artwork in cemeteries and around Berlin. In his treatment, Wenders also considered a backstory in which God exiled his angels to Berlin as punishment for defending humans after 1945, when God had decided to forsake them.

Wenders employed Peter Handke, who wrote much of the dialogue, the poetic narrations, and the film's recurring poem "Song of Childhood". Wenders found the names Damiel and Cassiel in an encyclopedia about angels, and also had photographs of Solveig Dommartin, Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander that served as muses. The idea that angels could read minds led to Wenders considering personal dialogue no one would say aloud. Wenders did not view the angel protagonist as representative of himself, instead deciding the angel could be an embodiment of film, and that the purpose of film could be to help people by opening their eyes to possibilities. Handke did not feel able to write a single coherent story, but promised to regularly send notes on ideas during production. Screenwriter Richard Reitinger also assisted Wenders in scripting scenes around Handke's contributions.

Given the nature of this arrangement, Wenders would hold daily meetings with his crew, frequently at late hours, to plan the logistics for the following day. French producer Anatole Dauman did not see a large budget as necessary, and the project was funded with 5 million DM.

Wenders believed it would be important for the actors playing the two main angel characters to be familiar and friendly with each other. Ganz and Sander had performed in some of the same stage productions for 20 years. Sander and Ganz also recommended Curt Bois to Wenders and asked Bois to perform. Bois' performance as Homer marked his final feature film in an 80-year career, beginning as a child actor.

Peter Falk's role was not planned until photography had already begun, with Wenders planning an artist or political official to have an analogous role until assistant Claire Denis suggested the star would be familiar to everyone. Falk described the part as "the craziest thing that I've ever been offered", but quickly agreed. He was accustomed to the improvisation the newly created role required, and when Wenders and Falk met, they conceived ideas of the character sketching and searching for a hat. Nick Cave and his band were based in West Berlin, with Wenders calling him "a real Berlin hero" and deciding "It was inconceivable for me to make a film in Berlin without showing one of his concerts".

The film was shot by Henri Alekan, whose cinematography represents the angels' point of view in monochrome, as they cannot see colours, and switches to colour to show the human point of view. During filming, Alekan used a very old and fragile silk stocking that had belonged to his grandmother as a filter for the monochromatic sequences, adding a touch of sepia to the black and white. Wenders felt it was natural that angels without experience of the physical world would not see colour, and also thought black-and-white cinematography by Alekan would provide a novel view of Berlin.

A challenge in the cinematography was posed by using the camera for the perception of angels, as angels are not restrained in how far they can observe, in any dimension. The story's Circus Alekan is named in the cinematographer's honour.

Filming took place at actual locations in West Berlin, such as Hans Scharoun's Berlin State Library, though the Wall was recreated in studio, due to shooting the true Wall being outlawed. Some pieces of the recreation were made from inexpensive wood, with one being destroyed by rain during production.

With little idea of how to portray the angels and no costume design, Wenders said the filmmakers consulted artwork, experimented, and found the idea of armor during production, and told U.S. filmmaker Brad Silberling they did not decide on overcoats until later. The hairstyle was loosely inspired by a photograph of a Japanese warrior.

Although the circus scenes required extensive and risky acrobatics, Dommartin was able to learn the trapeze and rope moves in a mere eight weeks, and did all the work herself, without a stunt double. During production, the filmmakers called German police after Falk went missing. Falk had been spending hours exploring West Berlin and was discovered in a café.

Peter Handke arrived in West Berlin during the editing process, led by Peter Przygodda. Handke believed it bordered on a silent film, aside from some music, and lacked much of the notes he had sent to Wenders during filming. Handke thus proposed adding his writings via voice-over. After Falk left Berlin, he recorded much of his voice-over in a sound studio in Los Angeles. Much of this was improvised, though Wenders still supervised by telephone.

With the filming performed in lengthy takes, and the camera used as "the eye of the angel", much of the movement was conveyed in the camerawork rather than in editing effects. There was five hours of footage to edit down to the final cut. A pie fight between the stars was filmed for the final scene, but later edited out.

Composer Jürgen Knieper assumed harps and violins would suffice for a score for a film about angels, until he saw a cut of the film. Seeing the angels were discontent, he wrote a different score employing a choir, voices and whistling. Laurent Petitgand contributed the circus music, an ensemble work performed with accordions, saxophones and keyboards.

The concept of angels, spirits or ghosts who help humans on Earth had been common in cinema, from Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) to the 1946 works It's a Wonderful Life and A Matter of Life and Death. Many earlier U.S. and U.K. films demonstrate high amounts of reverence, while others allow reasonable amounts of fun. Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death presents an early example of spirits being jealous of the lives of humans. The shift from monochrome to colour, to distinguish the angels' reality from that of the mortals, was also used in Powell and Pressburger's film. While Wings of Desire does not portray Berliners as living in a utopia, academic Roger Cook wrote that the fact that people have pleasure "gives, as the English title suggests, wings to desire".

God is not mentioned in the film, and is only referred to in the sequel Faraway, So Close! when the angels state a purpose to connect humans with "Him". Scholars Robert Phillip Kolker and Peter Beickene attributed the apparent lack of God to New Age beliefs, remarking Damiel's " fall" is similar to the story of Lucifer, though not related to evil. Reviewer Jeffrey Overstreet concurred that "Wenders had left his church upbringing behind", and the cinematic angels are "inventions he could craft to his specifications", with little regard for biblical beliefs. Overstreet characterized them as "whimsical metaphors, characters who have lost the joy of sensual human experience". Nevertheless, Professor Craig Detweiler believed the sky-level view of Berlin and the idea of guardian angels evoke God. Authors Martin Brady and Joanne Leal added that even if Damiel is tempted by seemingly profane things, the atmosphere of Berlin means the human Damiel is still in "a place of poetry, myth and religion".

In one scene, Damiel and Cassiel meet to share stories in their observations, with their function revealed to be one of preserving the past. Professor Alexander Graf wrote this connects them to cinema, with Wenders noting Wings of Desire itself depicts or shows places in Berlin that have since been destroyed or altered, including a bridge, Potsdamer Platz and the Wall.

The closing titles state: "Dedicated to all the former angels, but especially to Yasujiro, François and Andrej" (all references to Wenders' fellow filmmakers Yasujirō Ozu, François Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky). These directors had all died before the release of the film, with Kolker and Beickene arguing they were an influence on Wenders: Ozu had taught Wenders order; Truffaut the observation of people, especially youth; and Tarkovsky, a less clear influence on Wenders, consideration of morality and beauty. Identifying directors as angels could tie in with the film characters' function to record.

Academic Laura Marcus believed a connection between cinema and print is also established in the angels' affinity for libraries, as Wenders portrays the library as a tool of "memory, and public space", making it a miraculous place. The depiction of Damiel, by using a pen or an immaterial pen, to write "Song of Childhood", is also tribute to print and literacy, introducing, or as Marcus hypothesized, "perhaps even releasing, the visual images that follow". Kolker and Beickene interpreted the use of poetry as part of screenwriter Peter Handke's efforts to elevate language above common rhetoric to the spiritual. Reviewing the poetry, Detweiler remarked that Handke's "Song of Childhood" bears parallels to St. Paul's 1 Corinthians 13 (" When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ... "). Professor Terrie Waddell added that the poem established "centrality of childhood" as a key theme, noting that the children can see angels and accept them without question, tying them in with the phenomenon of imaginary friends.

The film has also been read as a call for German reunification, which followed in 1990. Essayists David Caldwell and Paul Rea saw it as presenting a series of two opposites: East and West, angel and human, male and female. Wenders' angels are not bound by the Wall, reflecting East and West Berlin's shared space, though East Berlin remains primarily black and white. Scholar Martin Jesinghausen believed the film presumed reunification would never happen, and contemplated its statements on divides, including territorial and "higher" divides, "physicality and spirituality, art and reality, black and white and colour".

Researcher Helen Stoddart, in discussing the depiction of the circus and trapeze artist Marion in particular, submitted that Marion is the classic circus character, creating an image of danger and then potential. Stoddart argued that Homer and Marion may find the future in what remains of history found in Berlin. Stoddart considered the circular nature of the story, including a parallel between the angel who cannot see the physical (Damiel), and the faux angel (Marion) who can "see the faces". Marion also observes that all directions lead to the Wall, and the final French dialogue "We have embarked" while the screen states " To be continued", suggests "final movement to a new beginning".

Writing in the journal Film and Philosophy, Nathan Wolfson cites Roland Barthes's work -- especially S/Z -- as a model to argue that "This 'angelic' portion of Wings of Desire deliberately invokes in the viewer a set of specific responses. These responses provide the foundation for the transformation that Damiel and Marion participate in. The film prepares the viewer for an analogous transformation, and invites the viewer to participate in this process, through an exploration of authorship and agency."

British Film Institute writer Leigh Singer assessed the cinematic style as "bold" and artistic in its use of colour, "existential voiceover" and "languorous pacing". Singer also commented on the use of symbolism and the combinations of diverse pieces of culture, from the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke to the music of Nick Cave. In Singer's estimation, the cinematography is able to communicate the angels' "invisible intimacy and empathy". Professor Terrie Waddell described the "dialogue and monologue" as "lyrical", in the mold of Rilke's poetry. Scholar Alexander Graf considered how these voice-overs and verbal exchanges are frequently combined with background radio and television sounds, and concluded the "image and soundtrack" that comprise the style convey a point of "blindness": "men and women are plagued by their everyday problems; children are, like the angels, in their own dreamy world".

Professor Russell J.A. Kilbourn judged the style as opposed to realism and "emphatically German" in looking at particular situations of human life. Authors Martin Brady and Joanne Leal remarked the storytelling shies away from an entirely narrative format, and the film's writing style is embodied in the Homer character as "the angel of story-telling". Perception of people becomes key to the storytelling, with Brady and Leal quoting Handke's vision for a new narrative: "You have only interpreted and changed the world; what matters is to describe it". Psychologist Ryan Niemiec wrote that, by focusing on "the beauty of each moment", Wings of Desire conveys "awe and wonder".

As Singer observed, Wings of Desire serves as a "Symphony of a city" in capturing a "wintry, pre-unification Berlin". Kilbourn said that the place highlighted in the German title Der Himmel über Berlin, like the desire referenced in the English title, is of great importance, and that the "frequent angel's-eye-view shots of East and West Berlin" allows for "quasi-objective voyeuristic surveillance". Observing the angels' trench-coat fashion, sociologist Andrew Greeley wrote it fit the "wet, blustery, cold northern Germany" setting. Looking at the coats and ponytails, Dr. Detweiler found the visualization of the angels "so cool and stylish".

Music is used in differing ways throughout the story. Musicologist Annette Davison argued Knieper's score in angel scenes is artistic, with elements of Eastern European and Orthodox Christian music, and Petitgand's music displays a "slippery" harmony frequently heard in circus entertainment. When Marion leaves the Circus Alekan, there is an increase in rock music, particularly by Cave and Crime & the City Solution. Davison submitted this symbolizes "utopian promise of the sensual mortal world", and that lyrics echo the plot: Cave's " The Carny" suggests a disappearing carnival worker as the Circus Alekan closes, and " From Her to Eternity" suggests a desire for a woman's love. Professor Adrian Danks wrote that Cave's rock music symbolized "the physical, worldly reality of Berlin", with "The Carny" adding a feel of sorrow in the background, while Marion gives "breathy accompaniment".

The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 1987. Der Himmel über Berlin subsequently opened in West Germany late in October 1987. With Orion Classics as its U.S. distributor, it opened in New York City as Wings of Desire on 29 April 1988 with a PG-13 rating. Sander said that it had a release in Japan, and that while angels do not appear in Japanese mythology, Tokyo audiences would approach him after and share their impressions about the characters.

After a videotape printing in Germany in 1988, Kinowelt released a DVD in Germany and Region 2 in 2005. In 2009, The Criterion Collection released the film in Region 1 on DVD and Blu-ray. It later screened at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015, to mark Wenders' Honorary Golden Bear.

The Wim Wenders Foundation produced a digital 4K restoration using the original black-and-white and colour film stock. This new version of the film premiered on 16 February 2018 during the 68th Berlin International Film Festival at Kino International, as part of the "Berlinale Classics" programme.

Der Himmel über Berlin had 922,718 admissions in Germany. Under the title Les Ailes du désir, it had a further 1,079,432 admissions in France.

The film finished its run in North America on 11 May 1989, having grossed $3.2 million, or possibly nearly $4 million, a beneficial investment for Orion. Critic James Monaco assessed the financial performance as above that of typical art films. In 2000, calculated that it was 48th in the top 50 highest-grossing foreign language films ever released in the U.S., and one of only three in German, along with and Run Lola Run.

Wings of Desire received "Two Thumbs Up" from Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on Siskel & Ebert & The Movies, where Siskel credited Wenders for a story that "praises life as it is lived yet making sense of life's confusions". In , David Denby hailed it as "extraordinary", and possibly "the ultimate German movie". Desson Howe cited it for "a soaring vision that appeals to the senses and the spirit." Janet Maslin, writing for The New York Times, called it "enchanting" in its concept, but "damagingly overloaded" in execution. In , David Stratton embraced the visuals, the performances and Knieper's score, adding the film also showcased Wenders' taste for rock music. The Washington Post's Rita Kempley credited Wenders and Handke for crafting a "whimsical realm of myth and philosophical pretense, dense with imagery and sweetened by Ganz's performance". Dissenting, Pauline Kael remarked, "It's enough to make moviegoers feel impotent". According to online film resource They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, Wings of Desire is the most acclaimed film of 1987.

By 1990, Wings of Desire was placed in the top 10 best films of the 1980s by critics David Denby (first), the Los Angeles Times's Sheila Benson (fourth), The Orange County Register's Jim Emerson (fifth) and Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss (tenth). voted it the second greatest film of the 1980s, after Raging Bull. James Monaco awarded it four and a half stars in his 1992 Movie Guide, praising it as "A rich, mystical near-masterpiece". In 1998, Ebert added it to his Great Movies list, championing it for a "a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation". critic Ian Nathan gave it five stars in his 2006 review, hailing it for its poetry, themes of loneliness, and Ganz's acting style. In 2004, The New York Times included the film on its list of "the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made". On reflecting on Solveig Dommartin's death in 2007, Der Spiegel recalled the film as a poetic masterpiece. Reviewing the Criterion DVD in 2009, critic Joshua Rothkopf called it an introduction to the art film, but also a product of its time, mentioning the songs.

It was later ranked 64th in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. In 2011, The Guardian placed it in the 10 best films ever set in Berlin. The next year, it received 10 votes in the 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made. Les Inrockuptibles's 2014 review declared it a great film, timeless, and poetic. That year, French critics at aVoir-aLire also praised its poetry, and said Berlin becomes one of the characters, crediting Alekan, Handke, Cave and Knieper for important contributions. German journalist Michael Sontheimer recommended seeing it to understand how radically Berlin has been altered since the 1980s, particularly looking at the somber images when the human Damiel walks through Berlin. In his 2015 Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin awarded it three and a half stars, describing it as "Haunting" and "lyrical". Jonathan Rosenbaum declared the bulk of the film before Damiel becomes human as "one of Wenders's most stunning achievements". In 2017, rated it four stars out of five, citing the aesthetics of its black-and-white photography, poetry and contemplation of history. The German news publication Der Tagesspiegel recounted the film's memorable imagery in 2016, listing Damiel as an angel and the library scenes. On the 30th anniversary of the Cannes screening, Jessica Ritchey posted on Rogerebert.com that she found it odd to be an atheist and love the film, expressing admiration for the black-and-white photography and the overall message that when the world seems terrible, desire is powerful. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes records that 98% of its cited critics gave the film a positive review.

The film competed for the Palme d'Or and won for Best Director at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. In 1988, it won the prestigious Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.

It was submitted by West Germany for consideration for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a bid supported by its distribution company. It was not nominated, with the Academy traditionally not recognizing West German cinema.

In 1993, Wenders made a sequel, Faraway, So Close!, which he found desirable to explore Berlin post- reunification, more so than for the sake of a sequel. In 1998, a U.S. remake directed by Brad Silberling called City of Angels was released. The setting was moved to Los Angeles and Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage starred. In Prague, Czech Republic, Jean Nouvel designed Angel, a building that features an angel from the film observing the people of the Smíchov district.

A stage adaptation of Wings of Desire was created by the Northern Stage theatre company in Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. in 2003. This particular adaptation, which used film footage of the city and stories from the community, was adapted and directed by Alan Lyddiard. In 2006, the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Toneelgroep Amsterdam presented another stage adaptation, created by Gideon Lester and Dirkje Houtman and directed by Ola Mafaalani.

Wenders' story was also an influence on the play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, in which angels intermingle with troubled mortals. R.E.M.'s music video for " Everybody Hurts" also takes cues from the film. Wings of Desire was possibly Ganz's most remembered role before in 2004.

Billingham, Peter (2013). "'Into My Arms': Themes of Desire and Spirituality in The Boatman's Call". The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books. ISBN 1841506273.

Cook, Roger F. (1997). "Angels, Fiction, and History in Berlin: Wings of Desire". The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0814325785.

Hasenberg, Peter (1997). "The 'Religious' in Film: From King of Kings to The Fisher King". New Image of Religious Film. Franklin, Wisconsin: Sheed & Ward. ISBN 1556127618.

Jesinghausen, Martin (2000). "The Sky over Berlin as Transcendental Space: Wenders, Doblin and the 'Angel of History'". Spaces in European Cinema. Exeter, England and Portland, Oregon: Intellect Books. ISBN 1841500046.

Overstreet, Jeffrey (2007). Through a Screen Darkly: Looking Closer at Beauty, Truth and Evil in the Movies. Gospel Light Publications. ISBN 0830743154.

Wenders, Wim (1997). "Excerpts from Interviews with Wenders". The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0814325785.

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Wings of Desire ( German: Der Himmel über Berlin , 'The Heaven Over Berlin / The Sky Over Berlin') is a 1987 romantic fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its human inhabitants, comforting the distressed.