Traverse City Film Festival
By Tom Carr
Traverse City Film Festival
TRAVERSE CITY — Turn this one up to 11.
Canadian heavy metal band Anvil, hailed as a "real-life Spinal Tap" for their stubborn struggle to succeed over the last three decades, will visit the Traverse City Film Festival Friday and Saturday nights to play short sets following the screening of a documentary of the band's career.
"Someone described it as 'Rocky' with Marshall amplifiers," said Sacha Gervasi, director of "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" who also wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal."
The band remains devoted to heavy metal, much like the subjects of actor/producer Rob Reiner's classic 1984 mock-rock-documentary "This is Spinal Tap," which included a famous comedy bit about an amplifier that goes to 11 instead of 10.
And get this: Anvil's drummer is Robb Reiner. He and guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow are the two members who met in high school and have stuck with it as other members have come and gone.
"There's coincidences all over the place," Kudlow said during a telephone call to his day job as a file clerk in Toronto. "The second you try to make a documentary about a rock band, it's going to be compared to that."
Gervasi was a teenager in London when the Toronto-based band played a music festival in his hometown. He already owned their album "Metal on Metal."
"I was an immediate convert to the Anvil cause," he said. "I invited them around London and became their tour guide."
At age 16, he summered in North America and worked as a roadie for the group.
About 20 years later, Gervasi contacted his old friends to see what they were up to. He was impressed that, while he had stopped hearing about them, they were still at it.
"When I met Lips again, it was really inspiring," Gervasi said. "Lips hadn't changed. Oddly enough, he still thought they could make it."
Gervasi hadn't done a documentary before, but decided their story was worth telling.
Kudlow said he's enjoyed his career despite the lack of a major show-biz breakthrough. Long after many aspiring rockers would've given up, he's continued to work low-stress, low-pay jobs that he doesn't have to worry about when he gets home. That allows him to hit the studio in the afternoons.
"I have a family, a home and I've carried on pretty much a regular life," Kudlow said.
He now works for his sister and brother-in-law, and takes a vacation whenever the band tours.
"You get free, paid vacations while you're on tour and you get to pretend you're a rock star when you're not at work," he said.
He relishes that the group has a loyal, though small, following.
"The intent of the band is not to be a commercial commodity," Kudlow said. "That's anti-metal."
He's excited about the attention the movie has created for the band and where it might lead.
"I haven't made a living off the band yet," he said. "That would be the nicest thing that could happen."
The band will perform after both showings of the film, which are screening at 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Lars Hockstad Auditorium.
