Mighty Wind, the latest mockumentary from filmmaker Christopher Guest and his cast of improvisational geniuses, centers around a folk music reunion show. Tribute spoke to Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, the trio who make up The Folksmen.

You guys have known each other for more than 20 years. Does the improvisation process get any easier or is it still scary?
M.M. Chris keeps hiring new people and that's only scary for the first nanosecond. But the answer is, no. The three of us have been improvising together for a long time but as this cast has grown it's just getting better and better and easier.

Harry, what was it like working with these guys again?
H.S. We had performed as The Folksmen fairly recently. In 2001, we opened for Spinal Tap as The Folksmen, so we've been working together fairly consistently. This was the first time that I have worked for Christopher as a director. I didn't appear in his first two movies so that was a different relationship, yet I was also acting with Chris and Michael as these guys.

So how was Christopher as your director?
H.S. Christopher establishes such a feeling of trust on the set. To be able to go out on a limb and improvise, that's the first thing you need to feel safe. It extends all the way through to the cast and crew and into the audience. You also have to trust the audience to get the joke, too.

Chris, when you made Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show you had over 60 hours of footage to cut down to 90-minute films and I'm sure it was not any different for A Mighty Wind.
C.G. You figure out pretty quickly what you need to tell the story. Even in a conventional script things are written where you are looking at the movie and you say we don't need a certain scene. We can go right from one to another. Doing this, it's 10 times that because I had 80 hours to look at. But if a scene hits the cutting room floor it's about something that doesn't get us to where we need to get to and it's gone, even if it's funny. It'll eventually be on the DVD if it's a good scene.

What makes folk music such great material for parody?
C.G. I think any backdrop where people take themselves seriously…
M.M. Earnestness is the key!
C.G. is going to work. Truthfully, we happen to like music and it's fun to play this kind of music and because they take themselves so seriously it immediately lends itself to this kind of comedy.

- Bonnie Laufer-Krebs