At the first sign of light after a night lost in a Romanian forest, director and UCLA alumnus Sacha Gervasi discovered his crew’s van had stopped 10 feet short of a sheer drop. After having followed the 32-year-old Canadian heavy metal band Anvil on its tumultuous European tour, Gervasi took that moment to reflect on his passion project, the documentary film “Anvil! The Story of Anvil!”
“We realized how close we came to dying for Anvil,” Gervasi said. “It was just insane.”
For Gervasi, this moment became just another labor of love in his endeavor to capture the current state of, what the documentary refers to as, the obscure godfathers of speed metal and the heroes of his teenage self. He was recently rewarded with a nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentaries for the Directors Guild of America Awards taking place Jan. 30.
It all began in 1983 when Gervasi was asked to join Anvil as a roadie for its U.S. tour after meeting lead singer Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner at a club in London. At the age of 16, Gervasi ran away from home to spend his summer on the road with the band. Twenty years after falling out of touch, he caught up with Kudlow for a weekend in Los Angeles. According to Gervasi, Kudlow and Reiner were still actively pursuing their dreams of becoming rock stars.
“(“˜Lips’) told me the story of the past 20 years. They had had some really intense ups and downs, and they weren’t quitting,” Gervasi said. “They had this insane dedication to what they were doing. I really respected that.”
Gervasi and his crew began filming in November 2005 and continued for the next year and a half. They followed childhood friends Kudlow and Reiner as they continued to perform the music that, according to Lars Ulrich of the band Metallica, Scott Ian of Anthrax and Slash of Guns N’ Roses, revolutionized and inspired heavy metal music.
“In 20 years apart, a lot had happened, but on the other hand nothing had changed,” Gervasi said. “It was like having my own personal time machine. (“˜Lips’) was even wearing the same T-shirt he had worn back then.”
The documentary film opened at the 2008 Sundance Festival to six packed screenings and went on to other festivals including the Los Angeles Film Festival where it won the Audience Award. The film has been well-received by people who have never even heard of Anvil and who are unfamiliar with heavy metal music in general.
The wide acceptance of the film could be due to the universal theme explored by Gervasi of two men that never give up on each other or their dream to rock into their old age. Despite the reality of their day-to-day lives spent catering school lunches, raising families and paying their mortgages, the band members’ unwavering idealism and devotion to each other brings an unexpected degree of levity to the film.
“When people start to see this, they start to think it’s like “˜Spinal Tap,'” said Hal Ackerman, professor of screenwriting and Gervasi’s personal mentor since his time at UCLA. “But it’s not. because one, it’s real, and two, it’s not a satire. It’s full of love and pain and the stamina of friendship.”
Howard Suber, UCLA film professor and another mentor of Gervasi, attributed Gervasi’s initiative to go out and make the movies he wants to rather than waiting for someone else to find the money and the crew as one of the reasons for the film’s success.
“One of the reasons he’s so inspirational to the film students is that “˜Anvil!’ is a film no one was going to give him money to make,” Suber said. “And he was successful in telling people this is not about heavy metal, it’s about real people.”
Ackerman said that the passion Gervasi had to tell this story, along with his strong storytelling background as a screenwriting student helped to make this film a universal story that a broad audience could connect with.
“What’s so touching for me is that … the idea of it being commercial was miles away from his mind,” Ackerman said. “You try to make a screenplay that no one else will make because you have a special connection to it.”
Gervasi said he credits learning these lessons from Ackerman and Suber themselves while he was a student at UCLA. Today Gervasi will still come to their classes to impart his own knowledge and continue the learning process he began so long ago. This includes his experience returning to UCLA as the 2008-2009 holder of the Lew and Pamela Hunter/Jonathan and Janice Zakin Chair in Screenwriting, an honorary teaching position given within the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
“I still have Howard and Hal’s original notes. I pull them out sometimes while I’m working, I still feel like I’m in school,” Gervasi said. “I fit right in when I go back to their classes.”
Since his years at the UCLA film school, Gervasi has had his fair share of commercial success working with the likes of Steven Spielberg and Keanu Reeves.
But the final image of “Anvil!,” a black and white image of Gervasi with Kudlow on the band’s tour bus in the 1980s, shows the early connection that survived more than 20 years during the course of which Kudlow and Reiner refused to stop rocking.