Heavy Hitter

Anvil! director Sacha Gervasi talks about his favorite band from high school.

by Sam Adams

[ movie interview ]

"I need a recharge," Anvil singer Steve "Lips" Kudlow informed the crowd at the Trocadero Friday night, pressing the end of his guitar lead to his tongue and miming an electric shock. The few hundred people in the room, some of whom looked as if they hadn't changed their coiffures since the heyday of hair metal, had just watched Anvil! The Story of Anvil (see Shaun Brady's review), which profiles the decades-old but virtually unknown Canadian heavy-metal act's nth attempt to stage a commercial breakthrough, and were now enjoying a taste of the real deal. With longtime cohort Robb Reiner flailing at his double bass drums behind him, Lips coaxed speedy runs from his V-shaped guitar, flashing a grin that, along with his curly hair, made him look like a deranged Muppet.

Anvil, which shared festival stages with Bon Jovi and the Scorpions in the '80s, had long since been reduced to playing dive bars when Sacha Gervasi caught up with them. Gervasi, who served as Anvil's roadie when he was a teenage metalhead, had since become a Hollywood script doctor with a story credit on The Terminal. Four years ago, he wondered what happened to his old favorite band and discovered they were still going at it.

Anvil!'s chronicle of the indignities of touring has led to Spinal Tap comparisons, which Gervasi embraces. "Given that the drummer's name is Robb Reiner, we knew we were fucked out the gate," he says. "I knew this would be a frame of reference the audience would bring in. But by 40 minutes in, you realize it isn't that."

While there's plenty of Tap-like humor, Anvil! packs a surprising emotional wallop, due largely to the stormy but strong relationship between Lips and Robb, who manage to maintain faith in their joint enterprise. "The reason the movie's playing is the surprise factor," Gervasi says. "If I'd started by saying, 'By the way, this is kind of a serious movie about friends, perseverance and family, and it's about a heavy metal band,' people would have laughed in my face. They have to laugh first, and then move on to other things."

In a sense, Gervasi has performed the ultimate fan's service, giving Anvil the chance they never had. Consider it a debt repaid from a 16-year-old roadie turned 40-year-old-filmmaker. "It was the '80s," Gervasi recalls. "It was the height of heavy metal. Most of the kids I knew went on their summer holidays, and they went on, like, a geological dig with their parents in southern Italy. I got my first blowjob in the parking lot of a Quebec hockey arena from the manageress of a French bakery. It was fucking awesome."

(s_adams@citypaper.net)