Inside Bowie's Final Act

A new documentary dives inside the singer’s last days and final masterpiece—and proves he had a killer sense of humor

- Andy Greene

IN OCTOBER 2015, DAVID BOWIE decided to end his cancer treatments after learning the disease had spread too far to recover from. The very same week, he traveled to a Brooklyn soundstage to shoot a video for his new song “Lazarus,” the name of a biblical figure that Jesus brought back from the dead. Bowie spent the day in a hospital bed as cameras captured him with a bandage around his head. “Look up here, I’m in heaven,” he howled. “I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.”

Footage from that day and recollections from those who were there make up one of the pivotal scenes in David Bowie: The Last Five Years, a revelatory new documentary directed by Francis Whately— who chronicled Bowie’s golden Seventies period in his 2013 documentary David Bowie: Five Years. The film, which airs on HBO in January, traces the singer’s final chapter as he emerged from a long hiatus to create two brilliant albums and an off Broadway musical —while battling an illness that would take his life just two days after 2016’s Blackstar was released. “He wanted to make his final act one to remember,” says Whately. “And one way of coping with the pain of the treatment and knowing what was going to happen was to keep himself occupied.”