{"id":900009,"date":"2026-10-30T14:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T14:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/900009\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T14:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T14:58:10","slug":"david-bowies-stage-concert-documentary-brett-morgen-speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/900009\/","title":{"rendered":"David Bowie’s ‘Stage’ Concert Documentary: Brett Morgen Speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAlthough he released two albums during the final dozen years of his life, David Bowie had effectively retired from active duty, focusing on his family and, as his extensive posthumous catalog of sound and vision<\/a> shows, curating his life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been a treasure trove for longtime fans, but one thing in particular has been missing: Videos of his legendary concert tours from the 1970s. Aside from the legendary 1973 \u201cZiggy Stardust\u201d farewell concert \u2014 which has been available for years but was finally released in its entirety in a 50th anniversary edition \u2014 there are TV appearances and occasional live footage, but nothing in full.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll that will change on Feb. 14, 2027, when \u201cStage,\u201d Brett Morgen<\/a>\u2019s immersive concert experience of Bowie\u2019s 1978 tour, will be premiered at Berlin\u2019s Uber Arena. It is even less conventional than the director\u2019s previous Bowie documentary, the Grammy-winning \u201cMoonage Daydream,\u201d <\/a>which Variety described as \u201cthe first graduate-school music doc.\u201d It will be presented on multiple screens in arenas, with immersive sound and an elaborate light show.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tour was a landmark in Bowie\u2019s career for many reasons. It was focused on songs from the challenging first two albums from his so-called \u201cBerlin Trilogy,\u201d \u201cLow\u201d and \u201cHeroes,\u201d which combined angular rock music with atmospheric instrumentals and included extensive contributions from Brian Eno. These songs often required patience from the audience, yet they show also included earlier crowd-pleasing hits like \u201cFame,\u201d \u201cThe Jean Genie\u201d and \u201cRebel Rebel,\u201d as well as nearly half of his \u201cZiggy Stardust\u201d album, which he\u2019d barely performed live for several years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStage\u201d was created from meticulously restored footage taken from the final dates of the tour in London in July 1978. Bowie had commissioned director David Hemmings, who starred in the classic 1966 film \u201cBlow-Up\u201d and directed the considerably less-classic Bowie-starring film \u201cJust a Gigolo.\u201d However, Bowie was unhappy with the results and, as he often did, moved on.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut perhaps most strikingly, the shows featured Bowie the person, rather than a specific character he\u2019d decided to inhabit, like Ziggy Stardust (1972-73), Halloween Jack (1974) and the Thin White Duke (1976).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt really cuts against the image of him as a kind of distant, cold, detached, kabuki-esque performer,\u201d Morgen, who has screened every scrap of visual footage in the Bowie archive, tells Variety. \u201cThere is no mask for this show. There is no character \u2014 maybe just this one time, right? Because in my opinion, even on [later] things like \u2018Serious Moonlight,\u2019 he\u2019s playing a character.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is no question in my mind that this is the best film performance of David Bowie\u2019s career,\u201d he adds. \u201cI don\u2019t think I ever saw David more engaged or present or happier than this show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPresented in association with the Berlinale, the production is a collaboration between Rob Hallett\u2019s Wonderworld, the David Bowie Estate and Morgen. It features elaborate lighting design by renowned lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe, whose credits include collaborations with the Rolling Stones and Elton John, and a specially created sound mix from Academy Award winner Paul Massey (\u201cBohemian Rhapsody,\u201d \u201cMichael,\u201d \u201cMoonage Daydream\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tIn this exclusive interview, Morgen spoke with Variety for nearly an hour about \u201cStage,\u201d Bowie\u2019s career, and some other tantalizing items residing in Bowie\u2019s vast archive.<\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s start at the beginning. How did this project come about?<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2017, I was invited to tour the David Bowie archive in preparation for \u201cMoonage Daydream,\u201d it\u2019s this big, cavernous room filled with materials. Immediately, a stack of 35-millimeter [film] cans caught my attention, and I made a beeline for them and saw that they said \u201cStage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe archivist explained to me that this was a concert that David had commissioned in 1978, and the materials hadn\u2019t been touched in nearly 40 years. The visuals were extraordinary, but it took us nearly eight months to sync [the sound with the video]. Once we did, it became clear to me immediately that this was the finest and best-filmed performance of David Bowie\u2019s career. The concerts had been recorded on 24-track audio by [longtime Bowie producer] Tony Visconti \u2014 I think there were nine mics on the drum kit alone, at least.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe access I had to the estate afforded me the opportunity to screen every piece of [Bowie] media in existence, including thousands of hours of shows that were recorded just for the vault. At that time, concert films were a difficult sell in the film industry, and the last thing I wanted to do was put a concert film into a theatrical environment that would be playing to smaller crowds by the end of the first week, which is generally what happens with the concert films. But I was very excited by the idea of creating a communal experience.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo right from the get-go, I had the idea of presenting this work as a multimedia experience in arenas, and initially, the plan was to play the same arenas that David had played on the [1978] tour. The original vision called for multiple screens, an integrated lighting system, and an immersive sound design. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt took nearly 50 years for the technology to arrive for us to realize the show in the manner that we\u2019re about to do. Paul Massey\u2019s sound mix is, in my opinion, possibly the finest music mix for a concert film anyone\u2019s ever heard.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve said there will be several screens \u2014 how is that going to work?<\/p>\n

\n\tSince the advent of cinema, back to Edison, we\u2019ve been watching movies in a rectangular box, and the way we watch cinema has not really changed that dramatically. When the idea to use multiple screens first came to mind, I wasn\u2019t sure if that was going to be a triptych, like Woodstock, where there would be three images or multiple images on one screen, or whether there would be multiple screens. Here\u2019s what it comes down to: If you have three images on one screen, the viewer can take in all images at the same time. That is what cinema does \u2014 the director shows you where they want you to put your attention.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in theater or in live entertainment, the viewer has their own discretion, and so by presenting this on multiple screens, it invites the viewer to kind of create their own experience. That basically meant that I had to edit the film several times to fit each screen, and figure out how these screens would engage and interact with each other. I was converting a single-screen version into a multiple-screen version, which affords me the opportunity to hold shots of David longer than I would normally, and [have other shots] on the sides. And in other moments, maybe we don\u2019t even need to be seeing picture and let the lightning show power it. It\u2019s a very different way of telling a story and experiencing film.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth \u201cMoonage Daydream\u201d and the way you\u2019re describing this film are not normal documentaries, they\u2019re unconventionally structured and assume the viewer already knows a lot about the subject. Bowie probably would have been bored by conventional documentaries \u2014 were you trying to reflect his ethos in making these films?<\/p>\n

\n\tYes \u2014 these are not two separate projects. I was very much thinking about which songs to use \u201cMoonage Daydream\u201d and which ones I wanted to save for \u201cStage.\u201d And I took my directions from Bowie, because in most of interviews in \u201cMoonage Daydream,\u201d he talks about his creative process.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut I did have \u201cOblique Strategy\u201d cards<\/a> [created by longtime Bowie collaborator Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt, containing prompts intended to encourage unconventional ideas and solutions], two inches away from my keyboard, that I would draw upon constantly.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo me, every film is an opportunity to explore new ways to tell stories, and a lot of my work is designed to be experiential. IMAX is an amazing environment for that work, but financially, as an independent producer, it\u2019s very difficult to get much of a return off IMAX. And I love the [Las Vegas] Sphere, but we\u2019re limited at the Sphere due to the resolution.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what other options or opportunities are there for doing the sort of immersive work I want to do? I saw an opportunity with arenas to build a fan experience, and I\u2019m hoping that this is the first of many, to put screens wherever you want, to use pyrotechnics. I think it\u2019s really exciting.<\/p>\n

\n\tComing out of the pandemic, people seemed to yearn for a kind of communal experience, and I can\u2019t think of anything more exciting than bringing together seven to 10,000 to 15,000 Bowie fans to have a shared experience. So hopefully we can put a tour on the road that has the integrity and authenticity and the grace and elegance that convey David Bowie.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tI assume you can\u2019t give details, but is anything on the books beyond the Berlin premiere at this point?<\/p>\n

\n\tYes.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn some of your online comments about this film, you seemed quite anti-AI. You said that you wouldn\u2019t be able to show footage of, for example, Bowie\u2019s 1974 \u201cSoul Tour\u201d without using AI, but couldn\u2019t you do a \u201cGet Back\u201d and use it to clean up what already exists without doing anything gross?<\/p>\n

\n\tI want to be very clear: I have no issues with AI. But I think that those particular shows would require so much AI that it would go beyond just the cleanup and would become something pretty artificial. My guess is that Bowie was the forefront of digital technologies, and he probably would have been doing all sorts of AI things [if he were alive today]. But a fan asked that question, and that was just my knee-jerk response.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo the footage from those amazing early tours would really require that much work?<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, they\u2019re not releasable. They\u2019re just not. I\u2019m so sorry! There is a half-inch reel-to-reel tape of the [1974] \u201cDiamond Dogs\u201d show, there were two cameras and on one of them, you can barely see anything. No one knows where the masters are. And the [later 1974] \u201cSoul Tour\u201d tape, unfortunately, it was a single camera, very low to the stage. It\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m so grateful that \u201cStage\u201d exists. I don\u2019t believe they could have finished it in 1978 if they\u2019d wanted to, for technical reasons: There were some very serious challenges with some of the lensing and lighting that contributed to us needing over 1,000 hours of calibrating to pull things into [the final film].<\/p>\n

\n\tAnything else you\u2019d like to say?<\/p>\n

\n\tI think one of the things that people will be surprised by is that David is the credited producer on the film. It was commissioned and produced by David Bowie. And there is no question in my mind that this is the best film performance of David Bowie\u2019s career. Nothing [better] is going to emerge. <\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t think I ever saw David more engaged or present or happier than this show. And part of that is because in this show the cameras stay with David [rather than cutting to musicians] when the band goes into a jam. There\u2019s a scene in \u201cThe Jean Genie\u201d where the band are trading solos and David goes offstage and into the shadows, grabs a beer and lights up a cigarette, just smiling and dancing and there\u2019s no lights on him. David is as engaged and entertained as anyone in the audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although he released two albums during the final dozen years of his life, David Bowie had effectively retired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[377117,88,206],"class_list":["post-900009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-brett-morgen","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}