Well, Brady Corbet has got his work cut out for him.
That was one of the first thoughts that came to mind soon after David Byrne and company took the stage for the first of two shows at the Hollywood Bowl this weekend. It stemmed from an announcement having come out just one day earlier that Corbet, the director of “The Brutalist,” had already shot shows along Byrne’s long-running tour, in 70mm, for the purposes of a feature film. The proper first response to that news was delight, that one of the most striking tours of all time, now coming to a close, was going to be captured for posterity by a visually inventive filmmaker. And the inevitable second response should have been: Yes, but how can he?
At the Bowl, you might have been tempted to make a fleeting mental game out of how a show with this many moving parts — which is to say, constantly moving humans — might be wrassled to the ground for a satisfying screen experience. But ultimately that was too distracting a thought experiment to pursue for very long when, before your eyes, you had one of the greatest shows on earth, and what surely has felt to everyone who has seen it across 140 or so dates like a you had to be there experience. Viewers have come away from the “Who Is the Sky?” shows over the past year like glassy-eyed cultists, suddenly feeling, as corny as it sounds, like it’s good to be alive. And to cut off one letter to reduce that thought into Pollstar terms: It’s good to be live.
