AMERICAN UTOPIA
Psycho Killers David Byrne + Spike Lee
We can’t get enough of David Byrne — and neither can the film world. Legendary director Spike Lee captured Byrne’s sold-out Broadway show American Utopia at the Hudson Theater. Now, everyone with HBO Max can see the performance in full.
The movie is shot like a concert, which David Byrne fans know well. The 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense about The Talking Heads — Byrne is the frontman — is regarded as one of the very best. (It’s free on Tubi right now.) But American Utopia is entirely a David Byrne production.
American Utopia is a live interpretation of Byrne’s solo album of the same name. Byrne leads the musicians through the album on stage. The trailer — watch it above — shows the group’s energy as they perform in matching grey suits and barefoot. With Spike Lee behind the camera, you can’t expect this to be your average concert. After making its rounds at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, the movie is called spectacular and a way to bring cheer to this bleak time.
American Utopia is part of a larger multi-platform project of Byrne called Reasons to be Cheerful, an online magazine. The singer made it to “balance out some of the amplified negativity and show that things might not be as bad as we think.” Well, if there is any time that we need that, it’s right now.
