ANVIL Frontman Doesn't Believe Band's Follow-Up Documentary Will Get Funding It Needs To Be Completed

Guitarist/vocalist Steve “Lips” Kudlow of Canadian metal legends ANVIL says that he doesn’t expect the proposed follow-up to the band’s first documentary, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil”, to ever see the light of day. He tells the “Thunder Underground” podcast (hear audio below): “They’ve got forty minutes of probably good footage. I don’t really expect anything to ever come of it. The whole movie industry is in the shitter too, just like the music industry. Everybody’s fucking downloading movies.”

He continues: “The director [Sacha Gervasi] paid for that movie [‘Anvil! The Story of Anvil’] himself. He doesn’t wanna do that again. So he’s looking for financing from a movie company, like MGM or fucking Warner Brothers or one of the movie houses. Will they wanna fucking part with money? Who knows? They’ve looked at all the documentaries that have come out since the ANVIL movie and not one of ’em has gone big — nothing! We’re like the only one. So then they’re thinking, ‘Should we or shouldn’t we make a sequel? Hmm…’ So that’s where it all lies.

“So is there gonna be a sequel? Who knows? Who knows, man? I don’t know. Maybe, if worse came to worse, the director will put his own money out again, but, to be really honest, I don’t really want him to do that. He already did that once. Why would he have to do it again? And he never made back all… You never make back all your money. But what it did for his career… like what he did for our career — same thing. He went and did the ‘Hitchcock’ movie, he’s got a new movie coming out called ‘November Criminals’. He’s gonna do a movie about Hervé Villechaize, the midget from ‘Fantasy Island’. Yeah, he’ll be busy. He’s got a career, and then some. But it’s just a question of, will a movie company wanna buy it, wanna finance it? And it’s not cheap. It won’t be like a blockbuster — it’s not gonna cost three hundred million dollars. You’re talking about probably less than a million to make a documentary. I don’t get paid. Documentary subjects never get paid. I’m not an actor. And it’s doing my career such a huge favor, I haven’t really got the right to go, ‘Hey, why don’t you pay me too? You’re making the biggest advertising campaign that ever existed? Now why don’t you pay me?’ It’s, like, that doesn’t make sense. And he’d say ‘no’ and I wouldn’t get the movie made.”

Lips adds: “So that’s the big question: will there or will there not be? Who knows? I’m not gonna discount it. I’m not gonna say ‘no.’ I don’t know enough. I’m not in that stream of the business, so I really don’t know how to answer it. Now, having said that, the ANVIL movie did extraordinarily well, so it would be in their best interest [to finance the movie]. And it’s, like, if you guys are lacking stories out there and storytellers and writers, here’s something that’s a natural, living, breathing fucking story. Why not continue it? You’ve got an automatic audience from all the people that saw it the first time. So it’s got all those positive aspects going for it. But it’s just a question of who’s gonna open their wallet. [Laughs]”

“Anvil! The Story of Anvil”, was named one of 2009’s best documentaries by a slew of film critics associations across the continent, including critics in Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, and Las Vegas, as well as the International Documentary Association, the Online Film Critics Society, and the National Society of Film Critics. It also made the year-end Top 10 lists in publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Village Voice.

“Anvil! The Story of Anvil” was the directorial debut of screenwriter Sacha Gervasi (“The Terminal”) and was produced by Rebecca Yeldham (“The Kite Runner” and “The Motorcycle Diaries”). The film follows Kudlow and Reiner and their band, ANVIL, which released one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982’s “Metal on Metal”. The album influenced an entire musical generation of rock bands, including METALLICA, SLAYER, and ANTHRAX, who all went on to sell millions of records. ANVIL, on the other hand, took a different path — straight to obscurity. The film was both entertaining and touching as it followed their last-ditch quest for the fame and fortune that has been so elusive to them.