American Utopia
David Byrne’s American Utopia show, essentially a greatest hits package plus plus, was getting towards the end of its run in 2019 when Spike Lee arrived to film it. Part of Byrne’s wider Reasons to Be Cheerful project aimed at spreading good vibes, it had become, like Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway shows in 2017, a must-see event by that point. Both Byrne and Lee are New Yorkers and there’s a definite Big Apple sensibility to this show – smart, dry, liberal, culturally catholic. Another way to see it is as Stop Making Sense Part II. That, if you remember, was Jonathan Demme’s great 1984 concert movie of Talking Heads in their pomp, and kicked … Read more