They shared a mighty metal stage then with the soon-to-be-huge likes of Bon Jovi and Whitesnake. Next year he will write and direct the true story of Villechaize’s final week alive, starring Peter Dinklage.ġ.Original quartet is first seen in wrong-aspect-ratio’d footage from 1984, when they seemed on the brink of stardom. Sacha was the last journalist to interview Hervé Villechaize, six days before the actor committed suicide in 1993. He has since written projects for Nicole Kidman, Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves. In 2004, Sacha wrote THE TERMINAL, starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg. He turned them down citing the book’s “complete lack of commerciality.” Warners next asked Sacha to consider adapting a new children’s book about a boy wizard called Harry Potter. While still at UCLA, a script he co-wrote with Craig Ferguson was made into a film called THE BIG TEASE by Warner Bros. In 1995, he attended the graduate screenwriting program at UCLA Film School, where he twice won the BAFTA/LA scholarship and supported himself by writing for publications such as Punch, The Observer, and The London Sunday Times. Sacha next worked for British Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, at the Arvon Writing Foundation, the charity Hughes started with Sylvia Plath. He quickly left, claiming the band was “talentless and going nowhere.” Eighteen months later the band changed its name to Bush and sold over ten million records in the U.S. Returning home, Sacha earned a degree in Modern History from King’s College, London but turned down a fellowship to Harvard in favor of co-founding a band with an old school friend. He toured with Anvil twice more during the 80s, learning how to play drums from metal God Robb Reiner. Filmmaker Bio(s)įrom 2008 Festival: Director, United Statesīorn in London to an American diplomat and a Canadian concert pianist, Sacha Gervasi was the only head-banger at Westminster School where he was threatened with expulsion for wearing red-striped troubadour trousers and a matching Hawkwind waistcoat.Īfter meeting the legendary heavy metal band Anvil at London’s Marquee club, Sacha joined the band as a roadie for a tour of Canadian hockey arenas during the summer of 1983. At its core, Anvil! The Story of Anvil is a timeless tale of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream, year after year. Gervasi even finds a softer center to this raucous film, introducing us to band members’ ever-supportive, but long-suffering, families. It’s fascinating to see the reality of their day-to-day lives as, now in their 50s, they struggle to make ends meet, take a misguided European tour, and engage in antics on the road-which is not always lined with fans. Gervasi joined the legendary heavy metal band as a roadie for a tour of Canadian hockey arenas, so he has intimate insight into the members’ eccentricities. His ingenious filmmaking may first lead you to think this a mockumentary-scenes play like This Is Spinal Tap reset in the frozen North-but it isn’t. But Anvil’s career took a different path-straight to obscurity.ĭirector Sacha Gervasi has concocted a wonderful and often hilarious account of Anvil’s last-ditch quest for elusive fame and fortune. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, and went on to sell millions of records. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the “demigods of Canadian metal,” releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982’s Metal on Metal. At 14, Toronto school friends (and nice Jewish boys) Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever.
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