Appearing together for the first time in 21 years, the band talked with Spike Lee at the Toronto International Film Festival about the making of their classic 1984 concert film
got involved. “It was more or less our tour, what we were doing every show,” Byrne said, referring to the way he started off the concert with just a guitar and a boombox, with band members coming out one by one per number. “But we saw that there was a progression to it — there was a story, a beginning, a middle, and an end. And we all thought, Maybe there’s a film here.”Melvin and Howard
got involved. “It was more or less our tour, what we were doing every show,” Byrne said, referring to the way he started off the concert with just a guitar and a boombox, with band members coming out one by one per number. “But we saw that there was a progression to it — there was a story, a beginning, a middle, and an end. And we all thought, Maybe there’s a film here.”Melvin and Howard
. The director had also come backstage after one of their shows during the tour, they recalled, and had told them, “I want to make a movie of this!” Sandy McCleod, the visual supervisor who Weymouth said “mapped out every shot and took notes on everything every musician was doing,” had been on tour with them while Demme was forced into reshoots for his 1984 movie“When I saw what Jonathan and [editor] Lisa Day were doing in the editing room,” Byrne said, “I realized that he was looking at [our concert] like it was an ensemble film. Like, you have a group of actors in one place, and you get to know each character one by one. It was like Jonathan was letting you get to know them, get to be familiar with them as they all came together and interacted with each other. It blew my mind. I thought, ‘Well, I’m in my own world up there — but he saw it. He saw what was going on up there!”