The documentary seven years in the making tracks Brand’s life from Essex mama’s boy to the tortured aspiring comedian whose career was nearly derailed by a nasty heroin habit. After getting off drugs and achieving notoriety in his native UK, Brand set his sights on Hollywood, got America’s attention by hosting the MTV VMAs, and started landing movie roles. In 2010 he scored the next feather in his hipster Jesus fedora: A celebrity marriage to the fairytale princess of bubblegum pop, the California Gurl herself: Katy Perry.
But just as Perry’s career was exploding, Brand became restless from the rapid, vapid crossover fame he’d finally achieved. In a scene straight out of an Aldous Snow music video, he went to Africa on a charity trip to ease his jaded soul and experienced a life-changing epiphany.
After watching young Kenyan children sift through heaps of syringe-laden garbage for recyclables, he flew back to his Hollywood millionaire existence where the juxtaposition hit home, he says.