David Byrne on Everything Everywhere, his Oscars nod, and what's next

Decades before directing duo the Daniels dreamed up their kaleidoscopic marvel Everything Everywhere All At Once, now up for 10 Academy Awards, David Byrne might have invented the concept. Since his earliest days with the Talking Heads, the creative statesman has made a multiverse of himself: musician, producer, playwright, filmmaker, indefatigable art star.

At an age when many of his peers have glided into semi-retirement or the greatest-hits circuit, the 70-year-old New Yorker also remains a famously enthusiastic and eclectic collaborator: "This Is a Life," the haunted, delicate duet he composed for EEAAO with the cultishly revered singer-songwriter Mitski, will face off in the Best Song category at the coming 2023 Oscars ceremony against the likes of Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and the juggernaut that is RRR's "Naatu Naatu."

Recently, a dapper, thoughtful Byrne, still elegantly rangy beneath his swoop of silver-dollar hair, sat down to reflect on the light in "Life," the vagaries of performing for a live TV audience, and how he might round out his EGOT (only an Emmy still eludes him).

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you come into the Daniels' world? Was it via Son Lux, the post-rock trio who penned the score?

DAVID BYRNE: It was. I knew Son Lux and their manager, Michael, through an artist called Sufjan Stevens. And so Michael reached out to me and said, "Oh, we're doing a score for this movie. Do you want to do a duet with Mitski?" And I said yes immediately. I knew their previous films, but the Daniels felt obliged to convince me, so they sent a link to a rough cut, and I was blown away, even though it didn't have lots of the effects and this and that yet. I just thought, 'Oh my God, this is really insane. It's wonderful."

And so we all talked, and I said, "I think rather than doing a really crazy song after sitting through that, you want to pinpoint that the movie actually has a lot of heart. It's about compassion and forgiveness and this family reuniting, and that's kind of the emotional core of it." So it does feel like we're leaving all the bagels and the hot dog fingers and everything behind for a minute.

You've been in this seat before, when you won an Oscar in 1988 for Best Score along with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cung So for Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. In your speech, which was very brief, you had a great quote: "This is a lot of fun, but it's more fun doing it." Do you still have distinct memories of that ceremony? Even for an established rock star, it must have been pretty wild.

Oh yes, I'd never been to anything like that before. I had no idea that they had seat fillers, which I'm sure some of your readers will know about, but that whole thing kind of blew my mind. Of course, they don't want the cameras to see empty seats when people go to the bathroom or go up to accept their award — I mean, sometimes it's a whole production team that comes on stage where it's like eight people or whatever, and that's a sizable chunk of an audience row. [Laughs] So that was another world for me. But it was a lot of fun.

Last Emperor was nominated for nine awards and won all of them. Everything Everywhere is up for 10, so it could be another big night for you.

It could be; you never know. I was kind of surprised about Last Emperor. I thought, "Well, people really like it, but look at this competition. Look at the other movies that are out there! Is it really gonna take all that?" And in a way, I feel the same [now]. Look at these other songs that have been nominated. It seems like an outside chance, but who knows?

I was sad to hear that Mitski has chosen to opt out of your live performance at the ceremony, though Stephanie Hsu [who is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for EEAAO] will be joining you onstage in her place.

It is sad. But as a fan of her music, she reveals herself a lot in her songs, and you realize she's an amazing creative talent, but she's also a very fragile and maybe has a kind of a thin skin about some of these public-appearance things. And I thought, "Okay, this is not a world that she's comfortable dealing with." But Stephanie and I had a little vocal rehearsal just sitting in a room singing this song yesterday. So that's going to be fun.

With a show like this that has such a massive global audience, do you tend to treat it more like theater than a concert? I'm picturing something closer to what you did with American Utopia, but with a Daniels twist.

In a certain way, yes. We've been working with a choreographer and director, a guy named Ryan Heffington, who's done a lot of music videos and performance stuff [Heffington has an Emmy for Euphoria and choreographed Sia's "Chandelier" video, among other things]. So there's a lot of video and extras and my choir and this and that — all kinds of elements that will turn it into something that we hope works for television. We do realize it's very, very different than a concert or just a regular performance. You're kind of doing it for whatever format people watch it on at home, and it's also really short, so you want to make an impact in that little bit of time you have.

Have you done your due diligence in terms of watching the other nominated films this year?

I've been trying! I haven't seen them all. I have to say it's exciting that an uncompromising movie like RRR — not an Indian art film or something, but a really popular Indian film — has showed up in the nominations. The world is opening up.

I'm sure it's been noted to you before that you are only one E away from an EGOT. I know you've guested on The Simpsons and done some other TV work. But in a perfect world, how would you like to get your Emmy?

I think it's a really long shot. But I am pitching a couple of television shows, so who knows?

Well, either way, no one can take away that EGOT O from you. Where does your 1988 Oscar live now?

I think it's on a shelf in my office, along with just a lot of other stuff that I've collected over the years, like a wine bottle with the dictator who runs Turkmenistan on the label and maybe some odd little statues. Also, a can of sandwich spread that has a link to Here Lies Love, this musical that I've been working on. And so people come into my office, and they're kind of looking around the shelves, and then they look down, and they go, [gasping in disbelief] "David. David! Is that an Oscar?"

To switch gears, it's exciting that Here Lies Love, the disco musical you wrote with Fatboy Slim about Imelda Marcos, is coming to Broadway this spring. There's so much interactive staging in it, though; I wondered how you're planning to translate that for a more traditional audience.

Obviously, it took a long time because that's part of the concept of the show, turning the theater, or at least a good part of it, into a dance club. And then the other portion of the audience can sit in seats and look over the edge and all that.

But there's still a good chunk of them on the dance floor, and that took a lot of convincing [with the show's producers] to take the leap and go, "Okay, we'll do it in a real Broadway theater." I think COVID actually made them a little more desperate and a little more willing to try these kind of unusual things, like "We gotta get something in here. We've got an empty theater." They know people love the show — it's not brand new, you know, it's a little bit tried and true. So we intend to do it in pretty much exactly the same way, just scale it up a little bit.

You've turned a building into an instrument and collaborated with color guards and Twyla Tharp. Is there anything on your bucket list in terms of performance that you just maybe haven't figured out the logistical challenges of yet?

I still think about — and it might not be possible — but if there's some way to do a concert that tells a story, that has a kind of arc to it, which American Utopia turned into that. That used a lot of old material mixed in with new, and I thought there [could] be a way to do that with newer material. Would audiences go for that or would they just say, "Oh no, you gotta play the hits?" I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet.

Well, to end this on a weirdly personal note, Stop Making Sense was actually the first movie I remember being taken to in a theater, so you've haunted my dreams in a way since I was a small child.

That's coming back as well! A24 is taking it up; they're going to rerelease it theatrically.

Oh wow. And A24 is very good at merchandising, that should be interesting.

They are. I'm wondering what [they'll do]. I've been sending them little trinkets and things that I have in storage and going, "Here's some stuff that's been around; this might be an inspiration for you."

Something to add to your Oscar-and-sandwich-spread shrine.

[Laughs] Exactly.

Related content:

• Back to the beginning: Everything Everywhere All at Once's journey to the Oscars
• Watch Stephen Colbert kick through walls in wild Late Show opening directed by the Daniels
• Dave Karger's 2023 Oscars predictions: Everything Everywhere dominates post-nominations
• Spike Lee directs David Byrne in the joyous concert doc American Utopia: review