“It didn’t feel like we’d be bringing anything new to life.” “I was a little bit reticent, because I didn’t think they would be interested in retelling the past,” Niles said. (A call for comment to Keith Brown’s attorney was not returned.)Īfter meeting the siblings in 2015, Niles talked to a Steinway staffer about the idea of making a documentary on the Browns. He’s now incarcerated at the Utah State Prison, and his first parole hearing is set for 2022. It soon became public that Keith had been charged in Utah’s 4th District Court with three felony counts, in a plea deal that led to a prison sentence of 10 years to life.
Ultimately, after attempts to deal with the issue quietly, everything changed on Valentine’s Day 2011, when a Porsche driven by Keith, and carrying his wife, Lisa, plunged 300 feet down an embankment in Little Cottonwood Canyon. They then approached their younger sister, Melody, who confirmed that she too had been abused. “It was the worst moment in my life to hear the answer,” Desirae says in the documentary. In 2007, while the family was on tour in Japan, Desirae asked Deondra whether Keith had ever abused her. Niles didn’t take the advice for that film (2007’s “Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037”), but he met them in 2015 for another project with Steinway, featuring pianists performing on the piano maker’s factory floor.Ī lot had happened in between. They’re on fire right now,’” Niles said this week. “I was looking into interviewing artists for the film, and somebody at Steinway said, ‘You should just interview The 5 Browns. Niles first heard of The 5 Browns in 2004, when he was making a documentary about how Steinway pianos were crafted. There are four others who can answer that question.” “If they’re not comfortable speaking to somebody about something personal, that’s OK. “With the five of us, we wanted to make sure everybody is comfortable in the places that they are,” Ryan Brown, the youngest sibling, said this week. “We’re still brothers and sisters, we still love each other, we still like performing, and that’s never going to change.” “There’s something quite invigorating about realizing how far we’ve come, and that we’re still here,” Deondra said. The resulting film, “The 5 Browns: Digging Through the Darkness,” tells of the group’s fast fame, the revelation of sexual abuse that put their father in prison, and how the five siblings - all now in their 30s - are moving on with their lives as spouses, parents, advocates and musicians. After discussions over several weeks, the five siblings “ultimately decided that we were going to move forward,” to allow filmmaker Ben Niles and his crew into the Browns’ homes and rehearsal space.
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