A Mighty Wind

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Back together for the first time again.

A Mighty Wind is a 2003 Mockumentary film about a reunion of Folk Music singers, directed by Christopher Guest. The movie's comedy is comparable to that of Guest's other films, This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, and Waiting for Guffman, as well as having mostly the same cast as those films.

The plot is started by the death of Irving Steinbloom, a folk music producer, whose children plan a reunion concert with several of the bands he worked with to honor his memory. However, there are several things that make this difficult, such as the fact that folk music duet Mitch & Mickey haven't spoken for decades since their messy breakup.

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Contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Terry Bohner was subjected to a strange sort of abuse by his father--being locked in a room, made to listen to a single record on repeat, and then sent to bed with nothing but dessert.
• Affectionate Parody: of folkmusic.
• Bland-Name Product: Public Broadcasting Network (PBN) is a stand-in for the Public Broadcasting Service.
• Casting Gag: The Folksmen are played by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, AKA Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls.
• Creator Breakdown: Mitch's solo albums. One of them is the page image.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Christopher Guest does the voices of both the... enthusiastic man and woman who are in the room next to Mitch.
• Did Not Do the Research: The Folksmen and Main Street Singers songs are full of this trope, occasionally bordering on Critical Research Failure.
• The Ditz: Amber Cole.

"Thank God for model trains, you know? If they didn't have the model train they wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big trains."

• Dope Slap: Jonathan Steinbloom is on the receiving end of one of these after the stage manager gets increasingly irritated with his inane questions.
  • The slap was entirely unscripted, and it broke up the entire crew. This is why the shot cuts away so quickly afterward, due to cast laughter on the soundtrack.
• Fake Band: Several of them, in fact, but the performances are real. Much of the music was arranged by John Michael Higgins, who played Terry Bohner; and several cast members spent months learning to play their instruments, having never studied music before signing on for the movie.
  • And, in something of a Defictionalization, most of the cast performed in character for a brief concert tour after the film's release. Eugene Levy & Catherine O'Hara also sang the movie's Oscar-nominated song in character as Mitch & Mickey at the 76th Annual Academy Awards.[1]
    • The Folksmen predate the movie, and have opened for Spinal Tap from time to time.
• Gender Bender: The epilogue reveals that Mark Shubb is now living and performing as a woman.
• Genius Ditz: Mitch may be a bit empty-headed, but damn, the man can play.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: The title is basically a euphemism for flatulence.

"It's blowin' peace and freedom / It's blowin' you and me!"

• Idiosyncratic Album Naming: The Folksmen use a one-word title for their first five abums, with a missing final "g", eg. Pickin'. Their 6th album is titled Saying Something. They attribute the subsequent loss of their fanbase to that change in a scene cut from the theatrical release, but available in the DVD extras.
  • That album was also the first where they used electric instruments, instead of strictly acoustic; parodying the fan and critic controversy over Bob Dylan's move to electric instruments on 1965's Bringing It All Back Home and the 1966 world tour.
    • And, of course, two of Dylan's first four albums were The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin'.
• Improv: As with Guest, McKean, and Shearer's other mockumentaries, the movie is comprised of unscripted performances by actors who have gotten in-character.
• Insane Troll Logic: Terry's rationalization of his and Laurie's cult religion.

"This is not an occult science. This is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology. That stuff's hooey, and you've got to have a screw loose to go in for that sort of thing. Our beliefs are fairly commonplace and simple to understand. Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store."

• Mockumentary
• Musicalis Interruptus: 'The Skeletons of Quinto'. After a 20 minute (off-screen) introduction explaining the song, the Folksman are rushed off-stage before they can sing it by the arrival of Mitch and Mickey.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: All the fictional acts are Affectionate Parodies of real ones:
  • Mitch and Mickey - Ian and Sylvia; and to a lesser extent, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
    • Also traces of Mimi and Richard Farina, Richard and Linda Thompson and Sonny and Cher.
  • The Folksmen - The Kingston Trio (and possibly Peter Paul and Mary, per the closing gag!)
  • The New Main Street Singers - The New Christy Minstrels and The Rooftop Singers.
  • Irving Steinbloom seems to be based on real-life folk impresario Albert Grossman.
  • Ramblin' Jack Elliott is briefly represented with a character called Ramblin' Sandy Pitnik (mocking the fact that despite his cowboy person, Elliott was a middle class Jew).
• Rail Enthusiast: Mickey's husband, Leonard.
• Right Through the Wall: Happens to Mitch. Over and over again.
• Running Gag: Attempted by Fred Willard's character on a television sitcom called Wha' Happened? He tried to make "Wha' happened" a Catch Phrase that would sweep the nation (the show was cancelled due to "complete lack of interest").
• The Stoner: Mitch comes off as either this or a suffer of a decades-long Heroic BSOD.
• Take That:

"They're PBN viewers. I don't think they have remotes."

• Wanderlust Song: "Never Did No Wanderin'"
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Amber Cole's bizarre dialect. Lampshaded by Christopher Guest in the commentary: "You can narrow [her accent] down to a continent..."
• Where Are They Now? Epilogue: As is customary with Christopher Guest movies. (Real documentaries almost always have them.)
• Yiddish As a Second Language: Lars Olfen is the king of this trope, despite being so incredibly Swedish it hurts.

"The naches that I'm feeling right now... 'cause your dad was like mishpoche to me. When I heard I got these ticket to the Folksmen, I let out a geshreeyeh, and I'm running with my friend... running around like a vilde chaye, right into the theater, in the front row! So we've got the schpilkes, 'cause we're sittin' right there... and it's a mitzvah, what your dad did, and I want to try to give that back to you. Okeinhoreh, I say, and God bless him!"