Concert Film Watch: Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense (1984)

Watched:  10/08/2023

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Jonathan Demme

I very much remember seeing the video for Burning Down the House on MTV at a neighbor's house in elementary school.  We watched a lot of MTV while hanging out in their living room, and so I became familiar with bands as much through visuals as the music.  And even in those early years of MTV, Talking Heads knew how to take advantage of film medium from jump.  

Over the years, I became more of a Talking Heads fan, picking up Naked on the say-so of a clerk at a music and video store near my house.  I'd asked "okay, so, what's new that's in that you'd recommend" and this guy looked at this dumb-looking 8th grader and decided to take the Pepsi Challenge, I guess, offering me that tape.  Well, I bought it and I loved it.

I slowly picked up all the Talking Heads output, and by college, had a subway poster of the band hanging in my room when that was still a thing young people did. 

In 1984, Talking Heads had teamed with director Jonathan Demme to produce a concert film.  I was aware of the movie mostly because my 4th grade art teacher had played it during class.*  No, I have no idea how he had a copy.  I guess they were selling them at record stores.  But he used it to try to explain art could be music and film, which was not a lesson my classmates were particularly ready for.

Sometime at the start of college I picked up the album of Stop Making Sense.  I had a tape deck in my car, so I think I taped it from the CD or else I picked up a tape, because that cassette was always floating around in the car as an option and the CD was in rotation in my apartments.

I, myself, did not see the film on my own until the mid-90's when I rented it from, I think, United Video on Riverside.  Since then, I've had copies on VHS, DVD and now BluRay.  But it has been some time since I've actually watched it.  

Many years ago now, the movie was re-released, but only played the Dobie, a small art house just off-campus in Austin.  I was travelling for work and missed the window of that release.  But now, A24 has picked up the rights and has made sure the picture and sound are as pristine as can be.  It's been released as an Imax film, I believe.  But I was fine just seeing it on the big screen, and so we headed down to the Alamo on S. Lamar for a viewing.  

Stop Making Sense (1984) is widely regarded as one of the best concert films ever, and I'm hard-pressed to disagree.  Perhaps the "why" of that statement is a bit ineffable, but I have some thoughts.

The film captures a band performing at the absolute height of their powers.  Yes, the staging of the concert deserves conversation - it's a deconstructionist thing - building the set for the show while the band plays, bringing in the musicians one by one over a few songs.  And as much as I dig the four core members of Talking Heads, the band expanded quite a bit for this tour.  In addition to Byrne, Weymouth, Harrison and Franz, two vocalists (Ednah Holt and Lynn Mabry), famed keyboardist Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales and absolutely bad-ass guitarist Alex Weir, and it's all to the benefit.  We have a large team, working in synch, and clearly loving playing together, everyone bringing their best.

Talking Heads are not known for slow-jams or ballads.  The energy shifts up and down between songs, but it rarely drops below, say, a 6/10 after Heaven hits as the second song.  Maybe down to a 4 or 5 for This Must Be the Place at the slowest.  That said, the music of the band never relies on big stadium-rock moments, and while the staging is impressive, it doesn't need fireworks or lasers (and I like lasers at concerts, man).  Sure, there are screens, but they project ideas, not an interpretation of the song in visual form.  The visualization of the song is happening as the whole of the collective:  band, screens, etc...  the whole stage.  

That energy is infectious.  It's hard to watch the band and not pick up on the vibe.  Even the often stone-faced Harrison gives tell-tale smiles here and there.  Byrne is living his best life doing whatever he likes on stage and it all just sort of working - and he's getting to play with his band and these amazing artists.  And I can't say enough good stuff about Holt and Mabry.  

I've watched other concert films, certainly.  There's an intimacy to this one that I'm not sure you always get, even with films that take you backstage.  The audience is there, but they don't play much with the interaction with the audience - there's not much to remind you that you were not there, that this already happened and you're watching a document.  Instead, you're placed on stage, making for some interesting choices.  We don't see what the audience itself would have seen all that often.  We're seeing something closer.  

Byrne also never mistakes himself for a rock god.  He's performing - this is his art.  And if you ever see him live (I've seen him 4 times) that hasn't changed.  And I think you can argue only when the band flips over to play Tom Tom Club's Genius of Love do we see the band as a band and less as art presentation.  And that's not a criticism - Tom Tom Club was always about the party.  I'll argue, Byrne does break character, especially during Take Me to the River, but that's just a peek into the enthusiasm driving the show.

Yes, it features "the big suit" and I've read about three different histories of that suit.  I suspect it's all true.  It's the same show that has Byrne playing with a lamp, the band members changing instruments, the crew on stage during the show, and endless, endless running.  It's unreal.

At the time of the film's release, Talking Heads attracted a certain audience.  They had mainstream hits, certainly, but they were cutting their own path in an industry that desperately tried to slot artists, often against their will.  They were big, but never sounded like anyone else, and asked that the audience pay attention to more than lyrics about new love and partying.  The fact Talking Heads remained so much themselves until their dissolution in the early 90's is fascinating, but it's also heart-breaking that they didn't hold on as a core unit.  One can only imagine what a 1990's tour and album would have been.**  But given where Byrne headed in the 1990's, I can see how there would have been some strife among the members who wanted to retain pop chart success.

But before all that, we're catching them in this film about 7 years past the debut album.  The audience in Milwaukee is your only real reminder of the era in which this is shot, as the band is wearing, essentially, costumes.  And we get a look at one of those things that was at the top of its game before falling apart.

Anyway, looking forward to getting the 4K version and the already-sold-out-hopefully-in-reprint vinyl double album.

*I had impressed him by being the sole kid in class who knew who the band was.  Thanks, MTV!

** in the late 1990's, me and my brother saw Franz, Weymouth and Harrison play at Liberty Lunch with Jeanette Napolitano on vocals.  It was great!