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“ANVIL! THE TRUE STORY OF ANVIL” director, Sacha Gervasi

I wish I’d had 10 percent more of an idea of what the fuck I was doing. Though I had a very strong sense of what I wanted the story to be, we kept shooting and shooting because everything seemed interesting. In the end we had more than 300 hours of footage, and turning that into an 80-minute movie with a strong narrative just became this living hell. The story would keep unfolding as time went on and things would happen and at a certain point I just lost the plot and wanted to kill myself. I just wish I had 10 percent more foresight in knowing exactly what we needed. There was one facial reaction shot in particular that I missed which really pissed me off that, I was so stupid to have missed it. As in most situations with this much footage, we could have made six movies but at a certain point you realize there’s only one movie you’re really interested in and only one story you want to tell. You end up coming back to where you started but you had to go through this whole stupid nightmare to get back there. I suppose in the end having no idea about what I was doing turned out to be the greatest gift. It allowed for something magical to happen. Thinking about it now, I’d like to change my answer. Maybe if I’d had 10 percent LESS of an idea of what the fuck I was doing, the movie could have been even better!

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 18, 5:30 pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City]

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