BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da Five Bloods (2020) are as electric as any other Spike Lee joint. But that’s the price of the quality that unifies and perhaps defines them: creative evolution. Sure, he and Byrne have produced their share of clunkers over the years. “Both of us, we have longevity,” Lee says. By the time Lee released his first feature, She’s Gotta Have It, in 1986, the band had banked six albums and six Billboard Hot 100 singles, and Byrne had become the unlikeliest of rock stars. Talking Heads had premiered live two years earlier, on the beer-soaked stage of CBGB, opening for punk pioneers the Ramones. 77.) By then, Byrne-handsome, tall like an antenna, and a bit shy-was a regular on downtown New York’s music scene. The year Lee shot his first short film, 1977, is the same one that Talking Heads, the new-wave band Byrne fronted that made him famous, released their debut LP. Although both made a name for themselves in New York, Lee, who’s sixty-three, came along a few years after Byrne, who’s sixty-eight. On Lee: Jacket by EBBETS FIELD FLANNELS Shirt by MONCLER Trousers by GUCCI Hat by CITYHATS “What The NY” Sneakers by NIKE Rings by CARTIER Glasses, Lee’s own. “Both of us, we have longevity" -Spike Lee On Byrne: Suit by GABRIELA HEARST Shirt by BRUNELLO CUCINELLI. The result, which comes out on HBO in mid-October, is not a glorified theatrical recording. He invited Spike Lee, whom he’d been friendly with for years, to attend previews, then asked whether he’d like to direct. In the summer of 2019, before the start of the show’s run on Broadway, Byrne had the idea to adapt it for the screen. In between, Byrne muses, philosophically and humorously, on whether babies are smarter than grown-ups and why people are more interesting to look at than, say, a bag of potato chips. But it’s a cover of Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout,” one of American Utopia’s last songs, that becomes its soul. Byrne wrote or cowrote almost every song in it-a few are from his 2018 album of the same name, and about half are familiar Talking Heads tunes, including a version of “Once in a Lifetime” that’s somehow even more poignant than the original. It’s a stripped-down look for a show that is as cerebral and subtly political as it is raucous and joyful. They, like Byrne, are dressed in gray suits, with no shoes, no socks. As in Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads concert film, band members emerge as the show progresses. Otherwise, the stage is empty, save for a curtain composed of hundreds of thin metal chains that line the walls and shimmer like streaks of rain. On Lee: Jacket by DIOR MEN Hat by CITY HATS Sunglasses, Lee’s own.ĭavid Byrne’s American Utopia begins with the sound of birds for close to a minute before revealing the singer, seated alone at a desk, holding a human brain. On Byrne: Jacket by GABRIELA HEARST Shirt by BRUNELLO CUCINELLI.
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