TRUE STORIES (1986)
In a recent interview on The Colbert Report, David Byrne admitted that edgy artists like himself often fear being normal and that while he’s “getting over it” now, there was a time when he was neurotic about enjoying ordinary things or being like everyone else. This brainy misfit’s ambivalence about the straight world enlivens the companion film of the 1986 Talking Heads album True Stories...or maybe the album was the companion to Byrne’s directorial debut about a small Texas town’s sesquicentennial “Celebration of Special-ness,” where the inhabitants (played by John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz and fellow misfit Spalding Gray, among others) are viewed from a bemused, extraterrestrial distance by Byrne’s Our Town-ish narrator, who may or may not find the “common folk” around him fascinating, ridiculous, contemptible, endearing, inspiring and/or weirder than himself. It perhaps speaks to Byrne’s singular creative vision that I’ve never really seen another movie quite like True Stories, what with its largely plotless structure, catchy musical numbers (including the anthemic “Wild, Wild Life”) and dreamy visuals of late-night traffic stops, avant-garde fashions and a big stage in the middle of the desert where everyone, ultimately, seems welcome to fret and strut...unless the whole thing is really just an elaborate performance art put-on, full of sound and irony, signifying nothing.
Read More...