Sacha Gervasi is perhaps better known as a screenwriter, being just one of two Englishmen to have their scripts made into movies by Steven Spielberg, his movie being The Terminal.
But for his latest movie Anvil! The Story of Anvil he moves behind the camera for his directorial debut following the metal band that he was in awe of as a teenager.
Thirty years later the band are still producing music and touring and Anvil! The Story of Anvil has made them the hottest metal property around at the moment.
I caught up with the filmmaker to talk about why he made the movie, going on tour with the boys and effect the movie has had on them.
- Your new movie Anvil: The Story of Anvil has just come out on DVD here in the UK so can you tell me a little bit about it?
It’s a story of these two best friend who, when they were fourteen, decided that they were going to rock forever and they formed this band. In the early part of their they were fairly successful and influential and then it all went sour for about thirty years until recently and with this film that I have made they have had this incredible resurgence. It’s an very long story, it’s a bit like Rocky I suppose.
- And what prompted the idea for the film and how did you get the band on board?
Well I was a fan when I was fifteen and I saw them in London and was completely blown away by them. I went backstage after the show and introduced myself as the biggest Anvil fan in the UK and took them on a tour of London and at the end of the day they were like 'hey man do you want to be a roadie for us next summer?' And I said yeah.
So I ran off and went on tour during the summer school holidays and became a drum roadie setting up for Robb Reiner.
- That's fantastic! So how did you get the band on board?
Well when I hooked up with them I didn't have any initial plans to do anything I just wanted to hang out with my mates. What happened was it was the summer of 2005 and I didn't know what had happened to them, other bands that were around at the same time had gone on to success, and one I was just wondering what happened to Anvil?
I went on line and found that they had released a record that I had never heard of and I discovered that they were still gigging and I was jut like this is incredible.
I went on their website and the got an email back from the league singer Lips, like most good Jewish boys he is called Lips, and he said 'hey man haven't seen you for years what happened?' He flew out to LA and we were just hanging out and he was just telling me how he was still with the band and I was just blown away and I told him that I wanted to make a movie.
Then I flew to Toronto and sat down with both of them and said that I wanted to make a film and they saw it as a huge opportunity, and quite rightly, they were up for it because I was their old fan and roadie so there was a certain level of trust there.
- Well that sort of leads me into my next question really were they up for making the film or did they need talking into it?
Well Lips was really up for it right away but the drummer Robb Reiner was a bit more skeptical he was like 'well why would anyone be interested in Anvil?' I had to explain that it wasn't about Anvil
I hope that the film will appeal to anyone who has a dream. So he agreed to do it and once he got into it he really enjoyed it.
- Can you tell me a little bit about the filming process how long was it what was it like?
Well it was two years of filming on an off, 720 hours of footage and we travelled around the world with the band twice so it was very intense because we were also editing as we were shooting. It was hard, it was a hard film to make because it took so long and it was a hard film to make because I paid for it myself, crazy but I did.
It was extraordinarily challenging experience in the best possible way because the main challenge was to cut down all this great footage that we had into an hour and twenty minutes, that's why it took so long to edit.
There were many highs and many lows, like getting lost in Transylvania we parked up in the middle of the night and only discovered in the morning that the truck had parked on the edge of a ravine, so if we had carried on we would have gone over and we wouldn't have known about it, we were 4.5 feet away from the drop. So it was just stuff like that you know waking up to discover that we could have died for Anvil.
- How difficult was the editing process? How did you decide what to keep in and what to cut out?
I think it's what the story is about and what was the most important angle the story is very much A, B, C so anything to do with the story of these two guys had to fall away, there were so many great scenes but they didn't serve the underlining story of these two guys then it had to be left out, it was hard they are all your little darlings as they say.
- Once you got on the road were they difficult to work with? And how did your relationship with them alter over time?
Well I was on the road again doing my old job, one minute I was the film director and next I was fixing cymbals. But yeah they were great to work with but it was hard going on the road with a band and it's hard when you do it economy style, which we did, but we all held it together.
It was great actually and basically we were like a band on the road and they were a dream to work with and they were excited about the movie that we were making because they never thought in a million years that someone would make a film about them.
- And what were the issues that you did face during filming?
Well there were many I can give you an example we were in Eastern Europe at the boarder between Romania and Bulgaria and we were on this bridge, and basically we had to bribe our way out of Romania. So we bribed $400 to one person to take our stuff across the River Danube over this bridge but then we got to Bulgaria and we tried to bribe our way in.
So we were stuck on this bridge between Romania and Bulgaria over the River Danube and we had just bribed or way out of Romania and we had to try and bride our way in, and they wouldn't let us back in. So then we had to bribe those we had just bribed to get over the boarder we had to bribe then twice the amount to get back.
- You have touched on the fact that you financed the movie yourself so were studios reluctant to get behind the film?
No not really. When I hooked up with Lips there just wasn't enough time to sit down with the studios because they were about to go on tour and I had four weeks to get it together so there was no way I could have gone in there because we would have missed our opportunity. So to a certain extent I had no choice there was just no time to go and set the project up.
- You are known more as a scriptwriter, penning The Terminal, so what was it like stepping behind the camera for you directorial debut.
It was great I have worked on a lot of films with a lot of filmmakers and been on a lot of sets picking up a lot of things. It was really gratifying taking ten years of working on other films and translating all that into my film, it was wonderful.
- What did you want to achieve with this movie did you want to introduce the band to a new generation?
Yeah absolutely! I had multiple objectives obviously I wanted to make this movies but also I wanted to celebrate this band who are so under-appreciated, and that's what's happened they have just played at Download and they blew the roof off the stage.
I wanted to make a film that would help the band and amazingly my crazy plan seems to have worked as on July 31st to fifty five thousand people in New York opening for AC/DC so it's all happening for them at the moment and they are probably the hottest metal band around.
- Finally what's next for you?
What's next for me? I have a Keanu Reeves movie that begins shooting in October and I'm currently working on a movie about Herve Villechaize.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil is out on DVD now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Sacha Gervasi is perhaps better known as a screenwriter, being just one of two Englishmen to have their scripts made into movies by Steven Spielberg, his movie being The Terminal.
But for his latest movie Anvil! The Story of Anvil he moves behind the camera for his directorial debut following the metal band that he was in awe of as a teenager.
Thirty years later the band are still producing music and touring and Anvil! The Story of Anvil has made them the hottest metal property around at the moment.
I caught up with the filmmaker to talk about why he made the movie, going on tour with the boys and effect the movie has had on them.
- Your new movie Anvil: The Story of Anvil has just come out on DVD here in the UK so can you tell me a little bit about it?
It’s a story of these two best friend who, when they were fourteen, decided that they were going to rock forever and they formed this band. In the early part of their they were fairly successful and influential and then it all went sour for about thirty years until recently and with this film that I have made they have had this incredible resurgence. It’s an very long story, it’s a bit like Rocky I suppose.
- And what prompted the idea for the film and how did you get the band on board?
Well I was a fan when I was fifteen and I saw them in London and was completely blown away by them. I went backstage after the show and introduced myself as the biggest Anvil fan in the UK and took them on a tour of London and at the end of the day they were like 'hey man do you want to be a roadie for us next summer?' And I said yeah.
So I ran off and went on tour during the summer school holidays and became a drum roadie setting up for Robb Reiner.
- That's fantastic! So how did you get the band on board?
Well when I hooked up with them I didn't have any initial plans to do anything I just wanted to hang out with my mates. What happened was it was the summer of 2005 and I didn't know what had happened to them, other bands that were around at the same time had gone on to success, and one I was just wondering what happened to Anvil?
I went on line and found that they had released a record that I had never heard of and I discovered that they were still gigging and I was jut like this is incredible.
I went on their website and the got an email back from the league singer Lips, like most good Jewish boys he is called Lips, and he said 'hey man haven't seen you for years what happened?' He flew out to LA and we were just hanging out and he was just telling me how he was still with the band and I was just blown away and I told him that I wanted to make a movie.
Then I flew to Toronto and sat down with both of them and said that I wanted to make a film and they saw it as a huge opportunity, and quite rightly, they were up for it because I was their old fan and roadie so there was a certain level of trust there.
- Well that sort of leads me into my next question really were they up for making the film or did they need talking into it?
Well Lips was really up for it right away but the drummer Robb Reiner was a bit more skeptical he was like 'well why would anyone be interested in Anvil?' I had to explain that it wasn't about Anvil
I hope that the film will appeal to anyone who has a dream. So he agreed to do it and once he got into it he really enjoyed it.
- Can you tell me a little bit about the filming process how long was it what was it like?
Well it was two years of filming on an off, 720 hours of footage and we travelled around the world with the band twice so it was very intense because we were also editing as we were shooting. It was hard, it was a hard film to make because it took so long and it was a hard film to make because I paid for it myself, crazy but I did.
It was extraordinarily challenging experience in the best possible way because the main challenge was to cut down all this great footage that we had into an hour and twenty minutes, that's why it took so long to edit.