Endearingly protective as he is of singer-guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, director Sacha Gervasi will allow that the two main men of Anvil are, to put things delicately, a tad out there. So much so that the L.A.–based Brit often found himself with some reassuring to do during the two years he and his team followed the Toronto metalheads for the rock-doc Anvil! The Story of Anvil (which opens on Friday, May 1 at Granville 7 cinemas).

“My crew did not believe that they were real,” Gervasi says, on the line from his home in the City of Angels. “My cameraman thought that I was playing a joke. My cameraman actually thought that I’d hired actors and that I was doing some sort of meta-headfuck on my crew, which was pretty funny.”

The 43-year-old director, who briefly roadied for Anvil in the ’80s, understood the scepticism.

“The whole thing was surreal,” he says. “You meet them [Kudlow and Reiner]—and I’ve known them for 25 years—are you’re like ”˜Fuck. How can they be real?’”

Once again proving the old adage that truth is sometimes far more demented than fiction, The Story of Anvil finds Gervasi catching up with the mid-’00s edition of Anvil. In the early ’80s, the Canuck metal pioneers practically invented the thrashy template which would make icons out of Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeath.

But because rock ’n’ roll is a vicious game where there are a few lucky lottery winners and a whole lot of losers, at the film’s start, Anvil is spending its weekends playing to greasy-haired leftovers and drunk skids in shitty Southern Ontario bars. Far removed from the glory years, Kudlow toils as a delivery boy for a public school lunch program.

Things pick up when a fan calls out of the blue asking the band if it would be interested in doing a European tour. After saying yes, most of the shows end up being disorganized enough to horrify Spinal Tap.

You want insane? That would be watching Anvil give its all in a grotty German club where a half-dozen fans show up, including one dude who drags a La-Z-Boy out onto the dance floor for a front-row seat.

Gervasi—who at one point played with grade-school friend Gavin Rossdale in the band that would become Bush—says his goal was partly to show the often-grim reality of the music business.

“Most people who were in bands now have regular jobs, even bands that were big in the ’80s don’t have any money,” he says. “Seeing the reality of where these guys were at in their lives was pretty intense. It was such an incredible juxtaposition.”

The Story of Anvil was a labour of love for Gervasi, whose screenwriting credits include the Steven Spielberg–shot The Terminal.

He’s proud that the oddly touching movie—which has won raves at Sundance and became the highest-grossing music documentary in U.K. history—has not only put a human face on the members of Anvil, but reignited the band’s career. After toiling for the past two decades in obscurity, Kudlow and Reiner have suddenly found themselves in demand on the European festival circuit.

“Most people have the kind of logical brain where they are like, ”˜If I haven’t made it by my 50s, I’m going to give up,’?” Gervasi says. “The film poses the question of ”˜Is that the right thing to do?’ These guys might have seemed hopeless and clueless, but they are going to have the last laugh.”