The new documentary This is a Film About The Black Keys follows the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney from forming the band in Akron, Ohio, to becoming Grammy-winning, arena-headlining rockstars.
“Their story is really fascinating,” director Jeff Dupre tells ABC Audio. “It’s about how these two guys from Akron, Ohio, figured out that they both love to make records, and they figured out how to do that on their own. And then they figured out how to be a rock band and how to navigate all the ups and downs and twists and turns that are involved with that.”
While Auerbach and Carney grew up in the same town, they occupied different social circles and weren’t exactly the best of buds. As the film explores, they didn’t truly become friends until after the band had started.
“It’s a story about how these two guys managed to build a friendship on top of this astonishing musical bond that they have together,” Dupre shares.
As they did build that friendship, Auerbach and Carney often found themselves unable or unwilling to talk to each other about how they were feeling, and when they did, they communicated to each other through their music rather than with words. In creating the doc, Dupre adopted that as an “operating principle”: “Let the music tell the story as much as possible.”
“All of those songs they wrote over the years, they each capture a moment in time,” Dupre says. “They tell you who Pat and Dan were at that moment in time and what they were going through and what they were thinking and what they were feeling.”
This is a Film About The Black Keys premieres Monday, March 11, at South by Southwest.
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