951 True Stories

[DRW.mov]

True Stories



Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make this sole foray into feature film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind. Byrne plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings. In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show—all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director David Byrne and cinematographer Ed Lachman, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, supervised by Byrne, on the Blu-ray
• New documentary about the film's production, featuring Byrne, Lachman, writer Stephen Tobolowsky, executive producer Ed Pressman, coproducer Karen Murphy, fashion-show costume designer Adelle Lutz, consultant Christina Patoski, actor Jo Harvey Allen, and musician Terry Allen
• CD with 23 songs, containing the film's complete soundtrack, compiled here for the first time (Blu-ray only)
• Real Life (1986), a short documentary by Pamela Yates and Newton Thomas Sigel made on the set of the film
• No Time to Look Back, a new homage to Virgil, Texas, the fictional town where True Stories is set
• New program about designer Tibor Kalman and his influence on Byrne and role in the film, featuring Byrne and Kalman's wife, artist Maira Kalman
• Deleted scenes
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Rebecca Bengal, along with, for the Blu-ray edition, new pieces by journalist and author Joe Nick Patoski and Byrne, a 1986 piece by actor Spalding Gray on the film's production, some of the tabloid stories that inspired the film, and a selection of Byrne's preproduction photography and writing about the film's visual motifs

[beamish13]

DP Ed Lachman confirms.

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Absolutely tremendous news. One of the most distinctive and hilarious American films of the last 35 years. Completely singular in every facet.

[rapta]

Excellent! Always wanted to see this film. Being with WB, I hope they port it to the UK as well (though we're still awaiting announcement of other WB titles, especially Barry Lyndon, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Blow-Up).

[sir_luke]

I'm thrilled about this. I agree with beamish13 - a truly unique comedy, transposing the same kind of cerebral wit found in Talking Heads lyrics to a pretty broad and cartoonish film. I've been trying for months to get my wife to watch the old snap-case copy I have, but now I guess I can just wait!

[matrixschmatrix]

This is phenomenal, one of my favorite movies and it's never even been released in OAR here. I really hope they can get clean copies of the songs in the film as sung by the actors- a few came put as bonus tracks on the rerelease of the record (which otherwise has them all as performed by Talking Heads, though Byrne didn't write them with his own voice in mind) or b sides to singles or what have you, but as far as I know it's never been possible to get a clean version of Dream Operator as performed in the movie.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Great news. This is exactly the kind of stuff Criterion should be licensing from Warner Bros. "Wild, Wild Life" has been a go-to karaoke song of mine for years.

[tavernier]

Ugh. Great album, awful movie.

[zedz]

This is phenomenal, one of my favorite movies and it's never even been released in OAR here. I really hope they can get clean copies of the songs in the film as sung by the actors- a few came put as bonus tracks on the rerelease of the record (which otherwise has them all as performed by Talking Heads, though Byrne didn't write them with his own voice in mind) or b sides to singles or what have you, but as far as I know it's never been possible to get a clean version of Dream Operator as performed in the movie.

I think it was only alternate vocal versions of 'People Like Us' (by John Goodman) and 'Hey Now' (by a kids' choir) that were ever officially released as b-sides, and I don't think they were even necessarily the same versions that appeared in the film. The movie versions of 'Puzzlin' Evidence' and 'Papa Legba' are vastly better than Talking Heads' pallid versions.

This has always been an extremely polarizing film, but I found it sweet and funny at the time, and much more interesting than the patchy album it accompanied.

[whaleallright]

Ugh. Great album, awful movie.

Which album? There's True Stories by Talking Heads, which I think is their worst album, and represents a significant decline from the heady, adventurous music they were making in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (At whose impetus, by the way, did they return to a "rock band" sound for this album and, to some extent, for Speaking in Tongues? It was a bad idea IMO.) This one only has a little overlap with the film.

Then there's Sounds from True Stories, a proper soundtrack, that includes most of the music cues from the film save for the ones by T.H. and the cast members. That one's a pleasant hodgepodge, and it has some interesting work by oddballs like Terry Allen and Meredith Monk. I listen to it occasionally, certain much more often than the T.H. LP.

This film is a little too flaky and uneven (both conceptually and in its realization) for me to accept it as some kind of masterpiece, but it has a lot going for it. It seems to me (in part) a film equivalent of some of the lyrics on early T.H. albums, where David Byrne evinces a kind of gape-jawed awe at basic facts of modern existence; a sort of andidote to the familiar jaded hipster pose (esp. w/r/t suburbia, flyover country, etc.). There's also a less direct, spiritual connection to some avant-pop music by Blue "Gene" Tyranny and David Rosenboom, as well as to Pee-Wee's Playhouse. The tone is really hard to pin down. It seems at once wholly ironic and anti-irony, mocking and celebratory.

[zedz]

Ugh. Great album, awful movie.

Which album? There's True Stories by Talking Heads, which I think is their worst album, and represents a significant decline from the heady, adventurous music they were making in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (At whose impetus, by the way, did they return to a "rock band" sound for this album and, to some extent, for Speaking in Tongues? It was a bad idea IMO.) This one only has a little overlap with the film.

Then there's Sounds from True Stories, a more proper soundtrack, that includes most of the music cues from the film save for the ones by T.H. and the cast members. That one's a pleasant hodgepodge, and it has some interesting work by oddballs like Terry Allen and Meredith Monk. I listen to it occasionally, certain much more often than the T.H. LP.

This film is a little too flaky and uneven (both conceptually and in its realization) for me to celebrate it is some kind of masterpiece, but it has a lot going for it. It seems to me (in part) a film equivalent of some of the lyrics on early T.H. albums, where David Byrne evinces a kind of gape-jawed awe at basic facts of modern existence; a sort of andidote to the familiar jaded hipster pose (esp. w/r/t suburbia, flyover country, etc.). There's also a less direct, spiritual connection to the tone of some avant-pop music by Blue "Gene" Tyranny and David Rosenboom, as well as to Pee-Wee's Playhouse. The tone is really hard to pin down. It seems at once wholly ironic and anti-irony, mocking and celebratory.

I think the key to the film, that a lot of people missed (especially the ones who thought it was just an exercise in non-stop hipster condescension), is that Byrne is imaging the world that Weekly World News headlines came from. Maybe that's a cultural reference that's lost to most people nowadays, or one that has become so muddled with 'real news' that it's hard to perceive, but a number of characters / incidents are straight out of 80s tabloids, and the original poster art and a specific scene in the movie make the relationship pretty transparent.* I think the particular odd, and slippery, tone of the film comes from Byrne taking seriously (e.g. trying to create sympathetic characters from) material that was beyond parody to start with - which is kind of the opposite trajectory of a lot of comic films (i.e. taking behaviour or characters that are plausible and relatable and exaggerating them into comedy). In a sense, it's a sort of forerunner of the straight-faced bizarro worlds of a director like Yorgos Lanthimos, though it's obviously much more good-natured.

* EDIT: Actually, here's an unused poster design that makes it completely transparent:

[dda1996a]

Speaking in Tongues is a great album, that only pales to the live performances of Stop Making Sense. I am interested in whatever Byrne has a hand in so I'm excited for this

[matrixschmatrix]

I think even beyond the understated tabloid conceit, True Stories has a strange relationship with irony- there are elements like the fashion show that come off either as parodic or martian that don't have any particular connection to the conceit, and things like People Like Us where the lyrics really cannot be read straight ("we don't want freedom, we don't want justice" is a crazy thing to say seriously) but the tone of the movie is one of absolute acceptance of everything, lead by Byrne's performance. I think it's true to say that it's an inverted take on satire, taking something absurd and treating it with the gentle rhythms of an episode of California Gold or something. Whatever it is, it's absolutely unique, and it's intensely joyful- and the beauty of the music undercuts any perceived nastiness in the irony/not irony satire/not satire.

As for the record, I think the problem is just that the songs aren't Talking Heads songs, and Talking Heads as a band couldn't really make them their own- the two versions of Papa Legba, side by side, make the inadequacy of the one perfectly clear. If it were a soundtrack record of the songs as they exist in the movie, it would be a really excellent solo Byrne project, and fit in with his work in general.

[zedz]

As for the record, I think the problem is just that the songs aren't Talking Heads songs, and Talking Heads as a band couldn't really make them their own- the two versions of Papa Legba, side by side, make the inadequacy of the one perfectly clear. If it were a soundtrack record of the songs as they exist in the movie, it would be a really excellent solo Byrne project, and fit in with his work in general.

The song that's the most 'Talking Heads' on the album is 'Love for Sale', and it's telling that it's also the one that doesn't really fit into the movie and needs to be presented as a Talking Heads video playing on a TV.

For all that it's a disappointing album, at the time I thought it was a big improvement from the soporific Little Creatures, which still sounds to me like Talking Heads trying to be Dire Straits. Ugh.

[dda1996a]

What does it say about me if I love that album? Sure it's different in some ways to their other albums but I still think a lot of the album is pure Talking Heads. Bar one or two songs at the start of the album almost every song is terrific.
For me it's :
Stop Making Sense
Remain in Light
Little Creaturea
Speaking in Tongues (mostly because the live versions are better, which make up for almost the entire album)
Naked

Not a big fan of the rest

[domino harvey]

Did you forget Fear of Music or are you trying to start a fight

[dda1996a]

I definitely need to give their first three another shot.

[Rayon Vert]

I was a huge TH fan but remember being disappointed by the film. However, a revisit is surely in order 30 years later. So-so album. "People Like Us" was one of the better ones - the writer/singer of "The Big Country" as a no longer "angry young man".

[domino harvey]

I definitely need to give their first three another shot.

There's some great tracks spread around in those first two albums, but Fear of Music is really where it all came together and is just untoppable for me. I also really like the early recordings "Sugar on My Tongue" and "I Want to Live" from their early period that popped up on Sand in the Vaseline

[knives]

What's wrong with More Songs About Buildings and Food? Even most of the ones people don't talk about are quite good.

[dda1996a]

I never said they were bad. But I started with Stop Making Sense, and I connected more with Remain In Light onward more. I need to revisit them, but everything from Light for me is perfect (bar True Stories)

[matrixschmatrix]

Funny, I would say '77 through Speaking in Tongues was their hot streak, with some decent stuff on middling albums thereafter (though I like Naked and the single they did around then Sax and Violins very much, even there it doesn't have the cohesion or the sustained energy of their earlier stuff for me.) I will say though that if I only had one record of theirs to listen to for the rest of my life, it would be the expanded release of The Name of This Band- the long live version of Born Under Punches might be my single favorite piece of music they ever made (in competition with the Stop Making Sense version of Naïve Melody.)

[knives]

Honestly outside of Speaking and Tongues, and even that has Moon Rocks, there is not any album of theirs I feel works completely as a cohesive whole though from More Songs going forward the good individual songs tend to outweigh whatever less than may be present.

[Lowry_Sam]

Loved the movie but disliked the TH album when it came out. The songs are really not that great on their own (though still much better than much of the pop music at the time), but as musical numbers in the film work just fine.

While I found some of the storylines stronger than others, the film did contain the best barb at modern capitalism in any major studio film from the 80s & it's still one of my all-time favorite scenes from any movie... and speaking of the scene, Happy Labor Day!. Love the Philip Glass-like instrumental at the end of the clip....would be nice to see the instrumental portion of the soundtrack on disc or download.

Hope this bodes well for more Spalding on Criterion.

I also might as well put in my .02 for ranking of TH albums (best to worst) at this time:
Fear Of Music
Remain In Light
The Name Of This Band Is The Talking Heads
More Songs About Buildings And Food
'77
Stop Making Sense
Little Creatures
Naked
Speaking In Tongues (though it does contain one of my all-time favorite TH songs, This Must Be The Place, the album's commercial success really ruined the Talking Heads for me, I still can't listen to "Burning Down The House" without cringing)
True Stories

[zedz]

Did you forget Fear of Music or are you trying to start a fight

My favourite sometimes strays to the first or second album, but Fear of Music is the one that consistently surprises and delights whenever I return to it.

So basically for me it's five all time great albums:
Fear of Music
More Songs About Buildings and Food
77
Remain in Light
The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads

Two very good albums:
Stop Making Sense
Speaking in Tongues

And three more that, if pressed, I might be able to compile a single, merely good album out of, but even then it wouldn't be up to the level of any of the above. The band really took a nosedive quality wise in later years.

[knives]

I'd probably rate Live Creatures as their second best album to be honest. I only knock it down because it makes the clearest case for the band as merely a dry run for They Might Be Giants.