Zakin Chair Event - screening: ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL w/ Sacha Gervasi

Times

Mon Apr 27 at 7:30 PM

Cost

Free; Prioritorized seating for TFT classes & students

Venue

The James Bridges Theater (Melnitz 1409)

The 2008-09 Zakin Chair in Screenwriting is Sacha Gervasi. For his Lecture Event he will be presenting his film ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL then follow with a Q&A and audience discussion. Refreshments to follow.

In person: SACHA GERVASI & STEVE “LIPS” KUDLOW (schedule permitting)

About ANVIL:

“At 14, Toronto school friends Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. 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. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, that went on to sell millions of records. But Anvil’s career took a different path – straight to obscurity.

Director Sacha Gervasi has concocted a wonderful and often hilarious account of Anvil’s last-ditch quest for elusive fame and fortune. His ingenious filmmaking may first lead you to think this a mockumentary, but it isn’t. 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. It’s fascinating to see the reality of their day-to-day lives as 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 even finds a softer center to this raucous film, introducing us to band members’ ever-supportive, but long-suffering, families. At its core, Anvil! The True Story of Anvil is a timeless tale of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream, year after year. Anvil rocks – it has no other choice.”

John Cooper
Director of Programming
Sundance Film Festival

About Sacha Gervasi:

“Born in London in 1966, Sacha Gervasi was educated at Westminster School, and then read modern history at King’s College London.

Gervasi’s first position was to work for the Poet Laureate of England, Ted Hughes at The Arvon Writing Foundation, the charity Hughes started with his first wife, Sylvia Plath.

He subsequently worked for John Calder of the Samuel Beckett archive helping to arrange a vast sale of Beckett's personal papers at Sotheby's in 1989, including Beckett's own annotated version of Waiting for Godot which sold to Trinity College, Dublin.

Gervasi moved to Los Angeles in 1995 to attend the MFA Screenwriting Program at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, where he twice won the BAFTA/LA scholarship. While in the program, he supported himself by working as a journalist, writing for newspapers and magazines, including The Sunday Times, The Observer, and Punch.

Gervasi got his film writing start with The Big Tease, which he co-wrote with Craig Ferguson. He went on to pen The Terminal, made into a film in 2004 directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks. Other films for which he has written include Comrade Rockstar for Tom Hanks and How to Marry a Millionaire for Nicole Kidman.

In 2009 he will write and direct a biopic of actor Herve Villechaize based on Gervasi’s own interviews with the diminutive Frenchman, conducted only days before the actor committed suicide in 1993. The film is to be produced by Oscar winning Schindler’s List scribe Steven Zaillian.

From 1999-2000 he was the voice of Jaguar cars on U.S. radio and television.

He has been appointed the Hunter/Zakin screenwriting chair at UCLA and will teach there in spring 2009.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Published

Tue Mar 10, 2009 in Screening

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