The Black Keys Discuss Their Fantastic Documentary & What It’s Like To Tour the World
10SXSW is an annual festival that dedicates days to celebrating both film and music, so what better way to present the world premiere of the music documentary This Is a Film About the Black Keys? From filmmaker Jeff Dupre, the doc explores the over-two-decades-long relationship between band members Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, the brains and creatives behind the four-time Grammy Award-winning band The Black Keys. As we near the release of their twelfth studio album, Ohio Players, the duo are ready to share their journey with the world.
While at SXSW 2024, Dupre and The Black Keys joined our own Steve Weintraub at the Collider media studio where they discussed the inspiration behind this documentary, and how they managed to compile all that footage and history into something that honored their discography and did not shy away from their ups and down. According to Carney, communication has been key in making this doc, and to their continued collaboration, but that wasn't a virtue the two of them mastered early on:
"I think making the movie would have been impossible up until the last two years. Watching the movie, it was crazy to go back in time and see moments unfolding that, I think, since then, we’ve sorted through and worked it out. But to see it happening in real time back then was kind of fascinating. I just kept wishing that we could pause the film, go back in time, and just talk to each other and sort it out. That’s what was interesting to me. That was what was compelling to us about the idea of a documentary. One thing is that when you’re in a band for 20 years you have a definitive story, and it’s never told clearly. We’ll meet a journalist and they’ll have all the facts mixed up, or they might not even know that we’ve known each other for so long. So, I thought having something that could clearly demonstrate to an audience the clear and whole story, and what it looks like to start from where we started, and to get where we got, and all the things we had to go through… I think communication is the number one reason why most bands fall apart — why most relationships fall apart."
He adds:
"Maybe there’s a 15-year-old kid in Akron that needs to see this thing, see how it actually went down, see the shithole that we used to live in, see the minivan we used to tour in, see how it started. When we started the band, once we realized it could be a thing…how much more work it took."
During the rest of the wide-ranging conversation, Dupre, Auerbach and Carney discussed the making of the documentary and if anything was off limit, getting the footage, their thoughts on AI in music, how the film changed in the editing room, touring and how it's changed, their favorite TV shows, and their next album Ohio Players and what fans can expect.
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