ANVIL!: The big screening

The journey to the Hot Docs premiere of Anvil! The Story of Anvil begins at the former Gasworks Tavern that is now a Dollar Kwik store at 585 Yonge Street.

Well, actually, it begins a couple blocks over at the Sutton Place Hotel, where director Sacha Gervasi is spotted in the lobby. He’s wearing a proto-acid-wash zipper-laden jacket that provides '80s metalhead authenticity at the broadcast media interviews that inevitably follow getting his backstory told in all three local broadsheets — oddly enough, not in what was once the average Anvil fanatic’s preferred paper, the Toronto Sun — along with the cover story in EYE WEEKLY.

Gervasi changed to a slightly snazzier wardrobe for the screening of his directorial debut at the Elgin Winter Garden Theatre. Anvil, on the other hand, made the scene in costume — frontman Steve “Lips” Kudlow clearly has a different style of Anvil T-shirt for every day of the month. It’s estimated that around one-tenth of the 1,000-person audience are somehow with the band, in the film, or both — plus Gervasi’s local relatives. Kudlow generally isn’t being recognized by anyone else, though, and he’s relishing his relative anonymity.

“People are really simple,” he observes from the rear of the theatre, as many take their seats not clued into the fact that they’re about to be amused by his artistic struggle on the big screen. “Maybe they’ll start throwing money at me afterward — here, pay your sister back for that album she paid for you to make.”

Copies of that disc, This is Thirteen, fill cardboard boxes atop duffel bags stuffed with Anvil T-shirts that are being schlepped around, primarily by drummer Robb Reiner. Years of honing their do-it-yourself aesthetic, where they have had to win over one fan at a time, aren’t going to be transcended by one night in a vintage Vaudeville theatre — even if the opening act turns out to be Isabella Rossellini.

Making an appearance at Hot Docs to promote her effort to break new ground with short films delivered through mobile devices, Rossellini exudes all the calm that Anvil cannot. Her project, Green Porno, are one-minute vignettes inspired by the sexual life of insects — produced by local filmmaker Jody Shapiro — giving her the opportunity to dress in paper costumes and enunciate details about anal secretion and other orifices, in a context that’s not even directed by David Lynch.

Waiting backstage to be introduced before the screening were Gervasi and Anvil! producer Rebecca Yeldham — and Rossellini, too. Needless to say, the feature presentation elicited the more enthusiastic cheer. “She turned to us and smiled painfully,” says Gervasi. “I don’t think she was too clear about who Anvil were.”

What followed was the next stage in Gervasi’s boundless effort to change that. Registering with this audience, however, were references that wouldn’t be as readily noticed elsewhere – the local landmarks (some of which were noted in the cover story sidebar, “Anvil’s Jewish Geography”) and footage of two times that Anvil appeared on local TV: J.D. Roberts getting practice for his CNN job by visiting the band in the recording studio and, more hilariously, Lips defending his right to rock on CTV’s faux-Oprah chat show, Shirley. (Watch a clip here.)

The credits rolled, a standing ovation occurred, and the emotional rollercoaster that had just been projected onscreen was suddenly manifest inside the theatre.

Gervasi was joined by the current Anvil trio to talk about how the project came together: “Without him, we would’ve gone another 30 years without anyone knowing who I was,” exclaims Kudlow — recalling how the project was initially pondered at Sacha’s uncle’s house, where they last assembled 20 years earlier. Reiner was apparently concerned that a documentary directed by Anvil’s former teenage roadie risked overshadowing awareness of their loud sonic legacy.

“Listen, man,” Kudlow recalls retorting. “It was our music that brought Sacha to our change room in 1982 — and don’t you forget it.”

Still not entirely sold, Reiner makes a point of whispering to Gervasi that they’ve got “shit to sell” for people leaving the theatre. Yeldham promptly steps in to clarify that by “shit” he actually means Anvil merchandise.

The aisles of the Winter Garden are forced to clear out fairly quick as the second Hot Docs opening night screening, Sturla Gunnarson’s Air India 182, was starting just a few minutes later. Those inclined to loiter end up outside the backstage doors on Victoria Street. And, as it turns out, that includes just about everyone who was in the movie, including some who were depicted as dubious of Anvil’s persistence in this musical racket, i.e. their family members.

Colin “Mad Dog” Brown, the band’s human mascot, is there, too — just the other day, Sebastian Bach was recalling the awe of watching him open a beer bottle with his eye socket and drinking it through his nose.

Robb’s son, Tyler Reiner, has inherited not only a drumming gene but also a self-promoting one, drawing attention to his emo band Invermier, playing at the Reverb on May 7 and opening for Billy Talent at Nathan Phillips Square July 26.

Certainly, no one would mistake this scene for a Motley Crue tour launch. Yet, there are several more film festivals to strike, stoking hopes that the commercial potential of Anvil! will be realized with a wide theatrical release. The flick will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival’s springtime spin-off at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 31, and the band will play a set immediately afterward.

But it won’t likely be as epochal as last night, where Gervasi was reunited with members of the original Anvil road crew whose coattails he once road: Brick, Jethro, Spider, Vegas, and a guy called “The Door.” Brick, now a kickboxing instructor in Vancouver, confessed that the British kid they called “Tea Bag” was a terrible roadie — but he was a good fashion consultant.

Anvil had amends they wanted to make, specifically with Millie Kosoy, the director’s mom: “When I ran away to hang out with them at age 15, getting really high in the hotel, Robb answered the phone and from the other side of the room I could hear the crazed voice of a woman on the phone, ‘What are you doing to my son?’ Turns out it was my mother who tracked me down.

“More than 25 years later, the guys from the band saw her, and she gave them a big hug — but they actually apologized for all of the worry.

“Lips even said to her, in all sincerity, ‘I hope you realize that it was all worth it.’”

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