So how did Sacha Gervasi‘s Anvil! The Story of Anvil manage to win two IDA Documentary Awards — i.e., best feature-length doc and best music documentary — last night while not even making the Academy’s feature-doc shortlist? How could there be such a huge disconnect from between the Academy’s documentary committee and the IDA? Especially with Anvil‘s recent nomination for a Best Doc Spirit award?

Is it that the IDA and the Spirit committees are younger, hipper, less stodgy? Except Anvil! is about balding heavy-metal musicians in their 50s afraid of losing their mojo. The film is about struggle, rebirth, redemption. It’s primarily a heart movie. The ending is pure Hollywood. How old and blinkered and plugged up do you have to be to consider Anvil too hip for the room? 85?

Anvil producer Rebecca Yeldham told me this morning that “one of our most amazing screenings was up at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival where the median age was 55. And when it ended we got a rousing standing ovation from an audience of upper middle-class Jews. It’s really a movie for everyone. Hopefully people will open their minds [after last night’s win].”

If exuding a proverbial heart element was a key requirement for a potential Best Picture Oscar nominee, Anvil would be right up there among the potential ten. But I can’t advocate this as I believe in Canadians staying in Canada and Mexicans staying in Mexico. I would nonetheless break ranks and cheer if Anvil was to suddenly gain traction as Best Picture hopeful, unlikely as this may sound.

Yeldham (who wouldn’t mind a Best Picture nomination either) claimed not to know the procedural particulars about why Anvil would score with the IDA and the Spirits but not the Academy. You’d think that the folks serving on the three committees for these groups would be cut from the same cloth, faith, DNA. It doesn’t make basic sense.

I’d understand if Anvil was short-listed and/or nominated by the Academy but didn’t win — stuff happens, get over it. But to not even be short-listed?