by dan pine
staff writer
If Anvil’s Steve “Lips” Kudlow has to explain one more time that his movie is real and not a heavy metal mockumentary like “Spinal Tap,” he’s going to scream.
And it’ll be a hell of a scream.
After all, for 30 years Kudlow has fronted Anvil, one of the hardest rocking bands you never heard of. Maybe, with the release of “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” he and his band will finally get their due. Or not.
The film will make its West Coast debut July 26 at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Kudlow and fellow Anvil stalwart Robb Reiner are scheduled to appear.
Despite his protestations, it’s easy to mistake the film for a put on. The story of a hard-luck Canadian band that just keeps missing the gravy train is at times painful to watch.
Now in their 50s, singer-guitarist Kudlow and co-leader-drummer Reiner, started out as a couple of Jewish kids in Ontario who loved rock so much that they started a band. And never stopped. They almost broke into the big-time in the early ’80s, influencing such admirers as Metallica and Motörhead.
But a string of bad business decisions consigned them to the musical wilderness. No stretch limos for them. Kudlow and Reiner were forced to take minimum-wage jobs, keeping Anvil alive through sheer will.
“It was really important to show how bad it got,” says Kudlow by phone from Toronto. “That’s the integrity. Why would we ever let anyone see that no one comes to our gigs, that we missed trains, those kinds of things? Because it’s the truth, as real as it can possibly be.”
The film’s director, Sacha Gervasi, is a Hollywood screenwriter, with Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal” among his credits. As a young man he was a roadie for Anvil, and has considered himself a fan ever since. In 2005 he approached them, proposing to follow the band around and capture their day-to-day lives.
With 350 hours of footage in the can, Gervasi caught the good, the bad, and plenty of the ugly, including a catastrophic European tour and a string of humiliating “thanks, but no thanks” responses from record labels. But the message of “Anvil” is about sticking to your dreams, no matter what.
The film was a hit with audiences at the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered earlier this year.
“This transcends metal, really,” adds Kudlow. “This is a human story of struggle, belief in yourself and love of family. There’s a lot of human emotion very exquisitely portrayed, with music as the backdrop. It’s really accessible.”
As for the Jewish story, Kudlow and Reiner both come out of minimally religious but culturally Jewish homes. Kudlow had a bar mitzvah, while Reiner grew up the son of a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor.
Considering Kudlow used to perform dressed in a leather S&M harness, it’s safe to stay the boys weren’t exactly shomer Shabbos.
But Kudlow remains proud of his Jewish heritage and says it impacted the band’s approach to survival. Especially when they had to borrow money from family members to make their records.
“Being able to turn to family in that regard is part of what Jewish families are about,” Kudlow maintains. “There’s a common thread in Jewish families that you’re allowed to do what’s in your heart. That’s the philosophy I was raised with.”
And as for that S&M craziness, Kudlow even perceives a bit of Jewish sensibility under the surface.
“Who’s gonna pull off shtick like that?” he asks. “All the greatest comedians, the greatest entertainers, have been Jews. I don’t know what fosters that, but it’s unbelievable, these outspoken, unguarded type of people. I suppose I’m one of those people.”
After all the screenings, Kudlow returns to his wife, kids and day job. It’s humdrum by some standards, but chances are this weekend, Kudlow and his band will be playing some cheesy bar in Ontario, rocking out ’til last call.
With the movie drawing more attention to Anvil than ever, they might even sell out that bar.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California