There were many highs and many lows, like getting lost in Transylvania we parked up in the middle of the night and only discovered in the morning that the truck had parked on the edge of a ravine, so if we had carried on we would have gone over and we wouldn't have known about it, we were 4.5 feet away from the drop. So it was just stuff like that you know waking up to discover that we could have died for Anvil.
- How difficult was the editing process? How did you decide what to keep in and what to cut out?
I think it's what the story is about and what was the most important angle the story is very much A, B, C so anything to do with the story of these two guys had to fall away, there were so many great scenes but they didn't serve the underlining story of these two guys then it had to be left out, it was hard they are all your little darlings as they say.
- Once you got on the road were they difficult to work with? And how did your relationship with them alter over time?
Well I was on the road again doing my old job, one minute I was the film director and next I was fixing cymbals. But yeah they were great to work with but it was hard going on the road with a band and it's hard when you do it economy style, which we did, but we all held it together.
It was great actually and basically we were like a band on the road and they were a dream to work with and they were excited about the movie that we were making because they never thought in a million years that someone would make a film about them.
- And what were the issues that you did face during filming?
Well there were many I can give you an example we were in Eastern Europe at the boarder between Romania and Bulgaria and we were on this bridge, and basically we had to bribe our way out of Romania. So we bribed $400 to one person to take our stuff across the River Danube over this bridge but then we got to Bulgaria and we tried to bribe our way in.
So we were stuck on this bridge between Romania and Bulgaria over the River Danube and we had just bribed or way out of Romania and we had to try and bride our way in, and they wouldn't let us back in. So then we had to bribe those we had just bribed to get over the boarder we had to bribe then twice the amount to get back.
- You have touched on the fact that you financed the movie yourself so were studios reluctant to get behind the film?
No not really. When I hooked up with Lips there just wasn't enough time to sit down with the studios because they were about to go on tour and I had four weeks to get it together so there was no way I could have gone in there because we would have missed our opportunity. So to a certain extent I had no choice there was just no time to go and set the project up.
- You are known more as a scriptwriter, penning The Terminal, so what was it like stepping behind the camera for you directorial debut.
It was great I have worked on a lot of films with a lot of filmmakers and been on a lot of sets picking up a lot of things. It was really gratifying taking ten years of working on other films and translating all that into my film, it was wonderful.
- What did you want to achieve with this movie did you want to introduce the band to a new generation?
Yeah absolutely! I had multiple objectives obviously I wanted to make this movies but also I wanted to celebrate this band who are so under-appreciated, and that's what's happened they have just played at Download and they blew the roof off the stage.
I wanted to make a film that would help the band and amazingly my crazy plan seems to have worked as on July 31st to fifty five thousand people in New York opening for AC/DC so it's all happening for them at the moment and they are probably the hottest metal band around.
- Finally what's next for you?
What's next for me? I have a Keanu Reeves movie that begins shooting in October and I'm currently working on a movie about Herve Villechaize.
Anvil! The Story of Anvil is out on DVD now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw