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• Anvil! The Story of Anvil

  Friday, Jul 24, 2009 2:56AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  
  
  Anvil! The Story of Anvil
  (director: Sacha Gervasi; 2009)
  
  Lest the repetitive absurdity in the title and the aesthetic superiority you possess over ‘80s hair bands lead you to conclude the subjects of this rock documentary should be mocked, let me tell you that the subjects—the Anvil drummer Robb Reiner (no relation to director of “This is Spinal Tap,” Rob Reiner; ‘tis only a delicious coincidence) and lead singer and guitarist Steve Ludlow, known to most as Lips but ought to be called Teeth, of the gapped variety—are, well, ripe for mocking. But they are also nobly human. Lips and Robb formed Anvil 34 years ago, and, now living in middle-age mediocrity, are all too familiar with getting rejected by record companies, being dismissed by fellow metal musicians who’ve ascended to superstardom and won’t look them in the eyes, and performing their hearts out in front of an audience of five. Sometimes the venues don’t even pay them. The band mounts an Odyssean tour of European dive bars, ending in an arena in Transylvania where they believe the mayor and ten thousand other fans will attend; less than 200 showed. They borrow $13,000 to record an album in Dover, England, and you smell the inevitable letdown ahead.
  
  Despite all this, Lips remains candy-coatedly toothsome. "Sometimes things go wrong," Lips says. "Things went drastically wrong. But at least there was a tour for it to go wrong on!" Now that's a good line to remember and tell my kids. Robb doesn't talk much, but he's the Butthead to Lips' Beavis, grounding the Anvil universe by slowing it down to his rhythm. You couldn't pay me to listen to Lips' and Robb's music, but by mid-movie I was so enthralled with these two that I couldn't stand seeing them head-banging against the wall of fate any longer. I suspect that director Gervasi, a one-time roadie for the band, has always known and admired the brotherhood between Lips and Robb, and let's be thankful he brought this story to us. Here are two men fighting the inexorable counting down of their days, and their most potent weapon is not that prized subgenre of thrash metal, but Lips’ exclamation, amid tears and snot, of, “I love you, man!” You know the two of them will continue to rock on as long as they have each other, and maybe beyond the conclusion of the movie, perhaps 30 years into the future, Lips will plead with Robb on his deathbed to get up for one last adventure, and like Sancho with Quixote, they will go to the end of the world to find their Lady Dulcinea as ravishing as any death-metal empress. ♦