It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry when you discover that
Anvil: The Story Of Anvil is real.
The middle-aged never-was Canadian heavy metal band is real. Each calamitous gig on their whistlestop European tour is real. Every childish tantrum during the recording of their thirteenth album
This Is Thirteen is real. Ad Anvil’s dummer really
is named Robb Reiner. As in Rob ‘director of
This Is Spinal Tap’ Reiner.
Documenting their bittersweet hijinks is Sacha Gervasi, a man with an equally colourful history. He was a wide-eyed young roadie for Anvil in their heyday (that’d be 1984 to 1986), he played drums in Bush before they got famous, had an overdose, sired a child to Geri Halliwell, wrote The Terminal for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and was the inspiration for a character in
How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.
If Anvil look like ridiculous caricatures in the movie, sitting down with Gervasi and Reiner was like being locked in a cupboard with a circus clown double-act: hilarious, hyperactive and terrifying.
WATCH THE INTERVIEW