Anvil! A Story of Love

Mr. Strausbaugh was insistent that I come to Brooklyn to see the documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil, which he'd seen and couldn't wait for me to see. John was right: The film is simply wonderful. Everybody should see it. It is easy to think Spinal Tap, and shut down emotionally, when you hear that this film deals with dashed dreams of rock-stardom in a Canadian metal band that was influential but never successful, after a brief interlude of fame 30 years ago. In fact, it is the opposite of Spinal Tap. (And we love Spinal Tap too.) You are  brought inside the beating heart of the rock myth and dream — no longer standing outside of it mockingly. The lead singer, "Lips," has a heart so guileless and vast, a smile so charming, a nature so loveable, that you drop all your attitudes about 50-year-old craggy men with caveman hair who wear tights and play unlistenable (to my ear, that is) music for five people in a basement in Prague, waiting, hoping, and working their asses off for the big break.

This is a film about a dream. Every great story is about a dream — something rooted in love and faith. By the time the withholding, mercurial, sadistic Gods of the Rock Dream drop a single coin in Anvil's basket, you almost stand up in your chair to cheer. The rock myth is powerful, insidious, and merciless. I have witnessed it firsthand. This film shifts the focus from the ones who made it to the ones who didn't, and fills you with empathy and a new understanding for the dream itself, which turns out to be invincible. The director, Sacha Gervasi, amazingly, was a teenage fan and roadie for the band in the 80s, who went into filmmaking and emerged with this unlikely masterpiece.

Another cathartic angle to this film is watching a band break free after 30 years of enslavement to the asphyxiating rejections and exploitations of the recording industry. As in all the arts, it turns out that freedom is close at hand, once our heroes realize that the recording industry possessed no special magic powers, other than the power to pass on countless demos and crush countless dreams. Do what you love, and bring it directly to the fans is the ultimate message.

We here at The Truth Barrier couldn't agree more. The middleman is nothing but a Berlin Wall standing between the artists and the fans. The true Gods of Rock wish for them to be reunited. They have the thing the Wall's guardians don't understand and maybe envy: A powerful desire to connect — stronger than everything. Or call it love.

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