Jews, drugs and rock 'n' roll: The Jewish stories behind a heavy metal cult classic film

• Published date: 09 October 2021
• Author: RON KAMPEAS/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

It bounces against the chest of a guy with big hair who's prancing in front of his girlfriend, who has equally big hair. He's wearing suspenders over a bare torso, and he has something to say about this moment in 1986, in a suburban Maryland parking lot, where fans of the rock band Judas Priest are waiting to get "f**ked up," as several documentary subjects and one of the filmmakers put it.

"Let's rock, OK, all right!" says the big-haired guy, as the Jewish symbol bounces in and out of the frame.

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Thirty-five years later, that man, who was once known as Robbie Ludwick, has a different take.

"When I listen to heavy metal, I don't see the hand of God," says Zev Zalman Ludwick, a member of the Breslov Hasidic sect who lives a quiet life in the Maryland suburbs. Instead of pregaming in parking lots, Ludwick now mends damaged violins and tends koi fish in his backyard about a 20-minute drive from the long-demolished Capital Centre, where he saw Judas Priest perform on Memorial Day weekend in 1986.

"Heavy Metal Parking Lot," a mini-documentary that accidentally achieved iconic status via underground word-of-mouth, turned 35 years old this year. It has received no shortage of accolades during that time: the sports website Deadspin once called it "the 'Citizen Kane' Of Wasted Teenage Metalness." Professed fans include filmmakers Sofia Coppola and John Waters, and Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters frontman.

Today it's held up as a snapshot of a before-time: before the Internet erased physical presence as a predicate for human interaction — a time when, if you wanted to find people who thought like you, you had to get into a car and drive out to a parking lot in a godforsaken suburb and, well, find them.

That search continues today, in a different way. Many of the documentary's subjects, men and women in their teens and twenties in 1986, now see the film refracted through not just nostalgia but the exigencies of aging and experience. And for at least three people involved — Ludwick and the film's two directors, John Heyn and Jeff Krulik — some of the experiences that color their viewing of the film today are Jewish.

In 1986, Krulik, then 25, worked at a public access TV station in Prince George's County, in Maryland's D.C. suburbs. Heyn, 28, had a job duplicating videotapes for internal company use. He heard Krulik wanted to make documentaries and had access to the necessary equipment, so he got in touch. They filmed a...