True Stories (PG.)
Directed by David Byrne. 1986
Starring David Byrne, John Goodman, Annie McEnroe, Swoosie Kurtz, Spalding Gray, Jo Harvey Allen, Tito Larriva, John Ingle, Matthew Posey, Alix Elias. 87 mins. Out on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection.
More than thirty years ago David Byrne, singer and songwriter with Talking Heads, (in case that is no longer common knowledge,) made a film. It was A Film About A Bunch Of People In Virgil, Texas, in which Byrne, wearing a cowboy suit and driving around in a red Chrysler convertible, narrates and interacts with various local characters as the town prepares for the sesquicentennial (150 years) celebrations of the founding of Texas. Byrne presents everything with wide-eyed innocence and a sense of wonder that may well be less arch than you assume it to be. It's marvellous: original, funny, wise, prescient and moving. Its style is wry and detached, yet incredibly warm. It's a true one-off. And after it, Byrne never made a film again. I guess that was all he had to say about that.
The Bunch Of People In Virgil, (not a real town) are all characters based on stories found in American tabloids. Goodman is a man so desperate for love he has a billboard advertising for a wife outside his house; Gray and McEnroe are a married couple who haven't spoken for 31 years; Kurtz is a woman who never gets out of bed; Allen is a compulsive liar. The title is ironic in that the film is blissfully unconcerned with any kind of narrative. Byrne floats around, dropping in and out of events, drawing connections, making observations and being enthralled by it all. It's also a kind of musical with the characters performing specially written numbers and the Heads doing three songs. In the best traditions of film musicals it is all leading up to a bug show, aconcert that is being staged at the end of the week to mark their Celebration of Specialness (or specialNess as Byrne always refers to it as.)
Seen today what strikes you is how perceptive and prophetic the film is. Work in Virgil is centred around a silicon production plant. Most of the cast work on the production line making the chips that will change society. 1986, before the internet, PCs and mobile phones (more or less), was such a long time ago. At one point the plant's managing director (Posey) tells Byrne, "'Figuring something out, something that's never been understood before, is a rhymical experience.' Steve Jobs said that. He used to be the head of Apple," and you are shocked to realize that we are in a time when Jobs was a has been.
At the dinner table, mayor Spalding Grey expounds on the exciting future ahead where inventors and creatives will break free of business, where "Economics will become a spiritual thing" and people will work for pleasure and the concept of the weekend will disappear. In the church, the preacher (Ingle) doesn't deliver a sermon, but an extended conspiracy theory about the "chain of coincidence" revealing the cabal that has been secretly running America since WWII.
And it all plays out under giant empty Texas skies, that blue expanse which seems to indicate both infinite possibilities and wonder, and total indifference and emptiness. The question you'll want to ask will be, is there irony here. Should we take Byrne's celebration of specialness at face value? I may be the rube here, but I think his deadpan wonderment is entirely sincere. Like David Lynch, Byrne is intoxicated with Americana, but his expression of it is diametrically opposite. Lynch threatens his vision of decency with extreme decadence, with Frank Booths; Byrne plants his vision of decency in a vast deserted terrain with an implicit message that it will not last.
The problem with Byrne's approach is that not having a narrative is very demanding. You have to constantly keep feeding the audience with new wonders. The first half is a cinematic miracle but it does run out of steam. Just past the halfway point the Swoosie Kurtz chararcter that never gets out of bed watches the video for Talking Heads' Love For Sale on her TV and it breaks the spell. It feels like filler, and after that the film rather treads water, mostly following John Goodman around, killing time before the big final concert.
But that's ok, you have been given more than enough. When it came out 32 years ago I seem to remember it making something of a splash, being quite well received. Somehow though it dropped out of circulation, disappeared and that should never have been allowed to happen. The years haven't diminished it all. Possible my very favourite bit is a fashion show in a mall where ordinary towns folk parade around in various garish outfits. And it should be a funny sequence but it is just so damn lovely, so pure, so touching, laughter is unnecessary. And maybe that is True Stories through and through: arch and affected, and totally pure and unselfconscious.
Extras
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
Directed by David Byrne. 1986
Starring David Byrne, John Goodman, Annie McEnroe, Swoosie Kurtz, Spalding Gray, Jo Harvey Allen, Tito Larriva, John Ingle, Matthew Posey, Alix Elias. 87 mins. Out on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection.
More than thirty years ago David Byrne, singer and songwriter with Talking Heads, (in case that is no longer common knowledge,) made a film. It was A Film About A Bunch Of People In Virgil, Texas, in which Byrne, wearing a cowboy suit and driving around in a red Chrysler convertible, narrates and interacts with various local characters as the town prepares for the sesquicentennial (150 years) celebrations of the founding of Texas. Byrne presents everything with wide-eyed innocence and a sense of wonder that may well be less arch than you assume it to be. It's marvellous: original, funny, wise, prescient and moving. Its style is wry and detached, yet incredibly warm. It's a true one-off. And after it, Byrne never made a film again. I guess that was all he had to say about that.
The Bunch Of People In Virgil, (not a real town) are all characters based on stories found in American tabloids. Goodman is a man so desperate for love he has a billboard advertising for a wife outside his house; Gray and McEnroe are a married couple who haven't spoken for 31 years; Kurtz is a woman who never gets out of bed; Allen is a compulsive liar. The title is ironic in that the film is blissfully unconcerned with any kind of narrative. Byrne floats around, dropping in and out of events, drawing connections, making observations and being enthralled by it all. It's also a kind of musical with the characters performing specially written numbers and the Heads doing three songs. In the best traditions of film musicals it is all leading up to a bug show, aconcert that is being staged at the end of the week to mark their Celebration of Specialness (or specialNess as Byrne always refers to it as.)
Seen today what strikes you is how perceptive and prophetic the film is. Work in Virgil is centred around a silicon production plant. Most of the cast work on the production line making the chips that will change society. 1986, before the internet, PCs and mobile phones (more or less), was such a long time ago. At one point the plant's managing director (Posey) tells Byrne, "'Figuring something out, something that's never been understood before, is a rhymical experience.' Steve Jobs said that. He used to be the head of Apple," and you are shocked to realize that we are in a time when Jobs was a has been.
At the dinner table, mayor Spalding Grey expounds on the exciting future ahead where inventors and creatives will break free of business, where "Economics will become a spiritual thing" and people will work for pleasure and the concept of the weekend will disappear. In the church, the preacher (Ingle) doesn't deliver a sermon, but an extended conspiracy theory about the "chain of coincidence" revealing the cabal that has been secretly running America since WWII.
And it all plays out under giant empty Texas skies, that blue expanse which seems to indicate both infinite possibilities and wonder, and total indifference and emptiness. The question you'll want to ask will be, is there irony here. Should we take Byrne's celebration of specialness at face value? I may be the rube here, but I think his deadpan wonderment is entirely sincere. Like David Lynch, Byrne is intoxicated with Americana, but his expression of it is diametrically opposite. Lynch threatens his vision of decency with extreme decadence, with Frank Booths; Byrne plants his vision of decency in a vast deserted terrain with an implicit message that it will not last.
The problem with Byrne's approach is that not having a narrative is very demanding. You have to constantly keep feeding the audience with new wonders. The first half is a cinematic miracle but it does run out of steam. Just past the halfway point the Swoosie Kurtz chararcter that never gets out of bed watches the video for Talking Heads' Love For Sale on her TV and it breaks the spell. It feels like filler, and after that the film rather treads water, mostly following John Goodman around, killing time before the big final concert.
But that's ok, you have been given more than enough. When it came out 32 years ago I seem to remember it making something of a splash, being quite well received. Somehow though it dropped out of circulation, disappeared and that should never have been allowed to happen. The years haven't diminished it all. Possible my very favourite bit is a fashion show in a mall where ordinary towns folk parade around in various garish outfits. And it should be a funny sequence but it is just so damn lovely, so pure, so touching, laughter is unnecessary. And maybe that is True Stories through and through: arch and affected, and totally pure and unselfconscious.
Extras
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, screenwriter Stephen Tobolowsky, executive producer Edward Pressman, coproducer Karen Murphy, fashion-show costume designer Adelle Lutz, casting director Victoria Thomas, consultant Christina Patoski, actor Jo Harvey Allen, and artist and songwriter Terry Allen
- CD 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 documentary about designer Tibor Kalman and his influence on Byrne and work on the film, featuring Byrne and artist Maira Kalman, Tibor’s widow
- Deleted scenes
- Trailer
- PLUS: Essays by critic Rebecca Bengal and journalist and author Joe Nick Patoski, along with, for the Blu-ray edition, an essay by Byrne; a 1986 piece by actor Spalding Gray on the film’s production; and a selection of production photography, along with Byrne’s tabloid clippings and writing about the film’s visual motifs
