The audience falls in love with Lips and Robb during the movie, and then they come out to play and melt everyone’s faces off. And that, Gervasi says, is the really trippy part. It’s a recipe that’s already garnered success. He has plans to tour with the movie, showing the documentary and having Anvil play afterward. When Gervasi says that the narrative isn’t over when the credits roll, he’s right for another reason. Of course, all of this is wrapped in the giant flaming spectacle of heavy distortion turned all the way up to eleven. The underlying truth is that shit happens, but we can wade through it to get to the other side. After watching two men endure and chase, mostly fruitlessly, a dream for over three decades, she figured that she could somehow get through figuring out where to come up with the rent money that month. Gervasi recounts a story of a woman who approached him after a screening saying that the film put a lot of things in perspective for her. Whether that’s the case or not, the result is undeniable. They want to hear that it’s possible to make it through these times.” People don’t want to hear about how awful America is or how terrible life is. It’s about people enduring shit and surviving it. They’re doing what they love for the right reasons – not for the money – and so really it’s a story of hope. Here we are at a point where people are getting shat on left and right, losing jobs, the economy is fucked – and here are these two guys who have persisted with this dream for nearly 35-40 years. “A part of the reason it’s resonating is the time that we’re in. Of course it’s a great documentary, but what about the story is filling Gervasi’s inbox with emails from people telling them it’s giving them the strength to live in the face of hardship? What about it is making non-metal fans want to buy CDs that they’ll never listen to? The question at this point is why exactly the film is having the kind of effect that it’s having. He thought I was doing something deeply method so that I hadn’t even told the crew what we were doing.” My crew, my actual camera man thought I was playing a joke on the crew. It was the same response when we were shooting the movie. “A lot of people have that response, and at a certain level…It’s like in the movie, you half-expect them to rip off their wigs and hats and reveal themselves as a performance art team from San Diego. Still, I have firsthand knowledge of that incredulity – watching the movie with Neil, he thought it was fake until about thirty minutes in. You could never make it up.”Ī thoughtful statement coming from a man who began the interview by doing his best Bill and Ted Wild Stallionz impression – hopefully with at least one hand on the wheel. It’s sort of this surreal, absurdist thing where people ask ‘how can this be real?’ That’s what’s freaking people out. “I don’t know if people were expecting to be moved by a couple of guys who wrote a song about the Spanish Inquisition called ‘Thumb Hang.’ I think it’s the surprise factor…That’s the thing about Anvil – it’s this crazy juxtaposition of total insanity that you can’t believe is real and extremely real stuff. It’s something striking, a little confusing, and definitely surprising. There’s a balance here at work with that explosion between the simplicity and earnestness of the subject matter and the complexity and chaos of an emerging social movement. “When the movie ends, the narrative isn’t over,” says Gervasi while driving through The Valley, his cell phone reception cutting in and out as he goes along trying to contain the madness that promotional touring has become since the movie has exploded. At this point, the momentum has stretched beyond the film. So far, the critical reaction and fan reaction has been enormous – standing ovations at all the Sundance screenings, rave reviews, a global impact that stretches from Asia to Europe to the U.S. What started as a portrait in failure might make the band succeed. ![]() It’s not a point lost on Gervasi, a guy who had the experience of his youth thanks to an Anvil concert and has grown up to get behind the camera to create something that may launch the band beyond where they could have imagined. Of course, if you watch the film, you realize that what he’s done is so much bigger than that. If you don’t think about it, it appears as if he’s made a simple documentary about a heavy metal band that never made it famous. If you don’t think about it, it doesn’t make sense. ![]() ![]() People keep coming up to Sacha Gervasi and telling him that his movie is giving them the hope that they can endure cancer or pay their mortgage this month.
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