The Last Movie I Saw

Here's something of a companion post to the review of Dean Wareham's Black Postcards that I posted last night. Like that book, Anvil! The Story of Anvil chronicles the career of some long-time rock and roll disciples, in this case the titular band whose roots go back twenty plus years. The film attracted attention upon release as a real-life mirror of the famous mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap which came out around the time Anvil first hit the big time in the early eighties. For the first thirty or forty minutes of this film, the comparison is apt, as the filmmakers seem inclined to recognize a kind of black humor in Anvil's fall from the spotlight, and the continuing efforts of primary members Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner to reclaim some degree of fame and success are kind of played for laughs. But as the film goes on, the tone changes to one of almost admiration for the desperate persistance of Lips in particular, to pursue his dream of stardom. In the end, this comes across as more a celebration of the rock and roll myth of realizing your dreams (and I guess, the importance of holding on to those dreams) than a takedown of the misguided or deluded commitment to such an ideal (which was kind of the point behind Spinal Tap). Unlike Wareham, who is willing to examine his choices and their consequences (and see their connection to the bigger context of the pop music industry) with clear-eyed rationality, Lips clings to something he imagined as a teenager was his due. He ascribes all his setbacks to not his own shortcomings, but bad timing or bad luck that's certain to change if he only remains true to his dream. To some this might appear noble (and Lips pretty clearly is willing to work at it), but to me it borders on pathetic-- not that Lips wants to continue to make and perform music, but that he can only measure success in terms of a commercial breakthrough and the concurrent trappings of stardom, the likelihood of which pretty clearly passed a long time ago. Having said all that, the movie itself is quite entertaining, and though you might draw some different conclusions about Lips and the band than I did, if you're a rock fan it's worth seeing.