Earlier this year we were lucky enough to catch what has become one of our favorite films of the year so far, the hilariously titled documentary, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” about seemingly washed-up Canadian ’80s heavy-metal rockers, Anvil (they had one hit in the ’80s called, “Metal On Metal“). A doc that’s comical, tragic and emotionally awe-inspiring (Michael Moore called it, “The best documentary I’ve seen in years!”).
Word has just hit from the director himself, former Anvil roadie-turned filmmaker, Sacha Gervasi (he wrote Spielberg’s “The Terminal”), who points us to an announcement that the film is finally ready to hit theaters proper in spring 2009. Even better: the film will have a book-tie-in through Random House to coincide with the doc’s release. An announcement on who will distribute the film is expected around Thanksgiving and the book will essentially be their expanded autobiography (hello, must-read, please send).
Here’s the synopsis for the book, which is pretty much the same for the film.
At fourteen, Toronto school friends Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band Anvil went on to become the “demi-gods of Canadian metal,” releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982’s”Metal on Metal. The album influenced a musical generation including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax. All those bands went on to sell millions of records but Anvil’s career would take a different path – straight to obscurity.
After getting this back story quickly out of the way, the documentary essentially picks up after wards and depicts how some 20-odd years later, Lips and Reiner are still at it for better and for worse and with few ups and a lot of downs. It’s a strange marriage with all the fractiousness of two friends who have struggled uphill to make it big for over three decades. It’s a winning tale of underachievement and persevering. Part “American Movie,” part “Spinal Tap,” the documentary is brilliant, capturing the band in all their underachieving and impossibly buffoonish ways. But it has a ton of heart and actually shows these now 50-year-old rockers as vulnerable emotional dudes (the main twosome of Anvil are such characters, the cinematographer of the film once pulled Gervasi aside and said, “look you can tell me, these guys aren’t real and are actors, right? right??”). You really can’t write characters this good.
One of our favorite modern film composers, noted atmospheric texturalist David Torn composed the moving Mogwai-like score (he also scored “The Wackness” earlier this year) .Various members of the Playlist family have seen and loved the film, here’s two of our reviews.
Here’s a great little Q&A with the director and band from Toronto. There’s still no trailer yet, but we’re sure that’ll hit shortly after the announcement too.
