Two Metallica fans named Pete and Sarah reflect on how the promise of a Metallica concert was the perfect incentive to get Pete back on his feet after a brutal motorcycle accident in a clip from the upcoming documentary, Metallica Saved My Life. The movie will get its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival Wednesday night with New York City screenings following Thursday and Saturday. Full ticketing details are on the Tribeca website.
In the film, Pete explains how he and Sarah got married in 1999 and had “Nothing Else Matters,” the Metallica song title, engraved in their wedding bands. When Pete suffered cranial injuries in a wreck in July. He was hospitalized and comatose after the wreck. He spent more than a year recovering but his personality seemed changed. After he learned that Metallica were performing in Oakland, California in December, he found the carrot at the end of the stick to help him get back on his feet. The clip shows how transformative, literally, the experience of making it to the show was for him.
Sarah recalls how nervous she felt about the concert and how she’d prepared a wheelchair, a walker, and a cane for Pete to get around but that he didn’t want any of it. Some fans saw how he was in need and surrounded him like a protective wall so he would feel safe. “When Metallica actually came out and I saw his face light up, I’m like, ‘He’s coming back to me,’” she says. “Because I haven’t seen the guy I married in three years. I didn’t even know who he was anymore. It was, like, a miracle.” Sarah says the experience changed her life.
“It was a good sense of accomplishment to feel like I did this,” Pete says.
“The clip shows one of many heartbreaking and emotional stories we have in the film,” filmmaker Jonas Åkerlund tells Rolling Stone via email. “Pete and Sarah were so generous sharing their struggles and how Metallica became a driving force in their recovery. This is the power of music — and what this film is all about.”
The movie focuses not on the band itself but their effect on the fans who love them. Åkerlund, who previously directed Metallica’s music videos for “Turn the Page,” “Whiskey in the Jar,” and “ManUNkind,” interviewed fans from 23 different countries for the picture.
“This film shows humanity at its best — what it means to care and give, and how a helping hand can actually save a life,” Åkerlund tells Rolling Stone. “That’s why this film was important to make.” He hopes that the people who watch it feel inspired “to be proud of who you are, always be yourself and not give a shit about what people think of you.”
Åkerlund calls the project “one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done,” especially since he learned so much about Metallica’s fans. “I always knew Metallica’s music was powerful, but I had no idea it was on this level,” he says.
He believes the stories in the film are more far reaching than just stories about a thrash-metal band. “This is not a film about Metallica — it’s stories we can all identify with and relate to,” he says. “It’s human stories, and how we as a family can achieve the impossible.”
Metallica and Åkerlund will participate in a Q&A at the movie premiere. The event occurs during a busy time for the band. They’re in the midst of an earth-shaking (at least in Virginia) North American tour, with gigs in Houston around the premiere, and they’re about to reissue a super deluxe box set edition of their 1996 album, Load.
“The fans are in us, they’re amongst us, we all thread together,” Lars Ulrich said in a statement about the movie. “Metallica is all of us together, it belongs to all of us.”
