Focus Features' newest documentary The Sparks Brothers is giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the life and career of one of music history's most underrated but highly influential bands, Sparks!
With special participation from fellow music legends like Flea, Beck, Jack Antonoff, and others, the doc takes viewers on the whirlwind journey Sparks has had over the past 50 years, and just how much of an influence they've had on generations of artists who have come after them!
And PRIDE got to speak with Sparks band members Ron and Russell Mael, as well as the film's director Edgar Wright!
"I've been sort of aware of Sparks since I was five, and then it had been a growing obsession between then and now," Wright told PRIDE when asked about the moment he stopped becoming just a Sparks fan and decided to actually document their story in a film. "I think when I started to think about a documentary at first, I just started to feel aggrieved that Sparks did not have a documentary about them. I wasn't necessarily willing it into the world thinking that I was gonna do it. I would just say to anybody who'd listen, 'Hey, it's a crime that there's not a documentary about Sparks. They're like the greatest and most influential band that don't have a documentary about them.' So I think I'd said this loud enough to people within earshot that eventually one of my director friends kind of called me on it. And Phil Lord actually said, 'You should make that movie.' So I went, 'Yes, I will.' And then we were at a Sparks gig and I told Ron and Russell about my idea that night. That was how it all started, three and a half years ago."
The Sparks Brothers is now playing in theaters!
