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Rush: Beyond the lighted Stage

Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage may not be the first Toronto-based music documentary to feature a scene shot in Pancer's Deli on Bathurst (Anvil! The Story of Anvil beat it to the proverbial pastrami), but it is the first to feature both a CNN anchor (John Roberts) and the drummer of Pantera pondering the same existential question: can a band sell 40 million albums and fill stadiums worldwide and still be considered outsiders?

That question runs through each of the 13 sections introduced, as per prog-rock tradition, by Roman numerals that comprise local filmmakers Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen's amazingly thorough documentary tribute to this city's most famous musical export. Unlike the duo's Juno-winning Iron Maiden: Flight 666 travelogue and their preceding two Metal tomes, nominal tour guide Dunn is nowhere to seen or heard in Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage probably because there's no room for him amid the dozens of intimate interviews with Rush, their friends and celebrity super-fans, plus the treasure trove of archival footage (including remarkable scenes of a teenaged Alex Lifeson pulled from Allan King's 1973 portrait of suburbia, Come on Children) documenting the band's ascent out of Willowdale high-school gymnasium gigs toward becoming, in the words of Geddy Lee, "the world's biggest cult band."