Stop Making Sense
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| Stop Making Sense | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover |
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| Directed by | Jonathan Demme |
| Produced by | Gary Goetzman Gary Kurfirst |
| Written by | Talking Heads Jonathan Demme |
| Starring | Talking Heads |
| Music by | Talking Heads |
| Cinematography | Jordan Cronenweth |
| Distributed by | Palm Pictures |
| Release date(s) | April 24, 1984 |
| Running time | 88 minutes |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,200,000 USD |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Stop Making Sense is the highly acclaimed 1984 concert movie featuring Talking Heads live on stage. Directed by Jonathan Demme, it was shot over three nights in December 1983, as the group was touring to promote their new album Speaking in Tongues. The movie is notable for being the first made entirely utilising digital audio techniques.
[edit] The movie
The movie begins with the opening credits, utilising a style similar to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (the movie trailer also makes references to Dr. Strangelove). In fact, title designer Pablo Ferro was responsible for both title sequences.
Lead singer Byrne walks onstage with a portable cassette tape player and an acoustic guitar. He introduces "Psycho Killer" by saying he wants to play a cassette tape, presumably from the boom box. In reality, the tick-tock drum machine was played from the mixing board.
One by one, Byrne is joined by Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison. Then Talking Heads are augmented by several additional musicians: Back-up singers Edna Holt and Lynn Mabry (a.k.a. The Brides of Funkenstein), keyboardist Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales, and guitarist Alex Weir. The first song to feature the entire lineup is "Burning Down The House", although the original 1985 RCA/Columbia Home Video release (which featured three additional songs in 2 performances edited into the film) has the complete band performing "Cities" before this song. Byrne also leaves the stage at one point, leaving the Tom Tom Club to perform their song "Genius of Love" (The 1999 re-release of the film featured alternate 'rap' lines by Chris Frantz to remove the cocaine reference, "snow white", featured in the original release).
The movie is also notable for Byrne's "big suit", an absurdly oversized business suit he dons late in the concert. The suit was partly inspired by Noh theatre styles, and became an icon not only of the film, but of Byrne himself.
The movie is notably different from many other rock and roll concert movies:
- It contains no audience shots until the very end, during the performance of "Crosseyed and Painless." According to David Byrne's comments on the DVD commentary, this is intended to enable the viewer to form their own opinion about the performance, which he hoped would be confirmed by the end sequence. The only other time the audience appears on film is during wide shots and whenever the camera is at the back of the stage.
- Byrne wanted no colored lights to illuminate the performers. This led to some unusual lighting methods being used for each song.
- Byrne wanted as few distractions as possible onstage. Water bottles were not allowed, and most props were painted with a black matte so as to avoid reflecting light.
- Unlike many concert films/videos that use excessive "MTV-style" quick-cut editing techniques, much of the film uses lengthy edits to allow the viewer to examine the performances and interaction. The performance of "Once In A Lifetime" is comprised of a single shot for almost 75% of the song. There are no close-ups of guitar solos, rather full-figure or upper-body shots.
[edit] Impact
The movie version of "Once In A Lifetime" was released as a single and also appeared on the opening credits to the 1986 movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Also, in Europe, "Slippery People" became a big single, appearing on a single-disc greatest hits album released in 1991. And occasionally, radio stations will play the film's version of "Life During Wartime".
When the film was first released on home video, the songs "I Zimbra", "Big Business", and "Cities" were restored to the performance, thus forming what was dubbed as the "special edition" of the film. In the 1999 re-release, these songs were not part of the programme. Subsequent video and DVD releases have placed these after the film in an unrestored full-frame version.
'Weird Al' Yankovic's 1989 music video for the title song from the motion picture UHF features brief clips of Yankovic as David Byrne in his 'big suit'. He also mimicked footage from Talking Heads original video for "Once in a Lifetime".
The film is currently available on widescreen DVD, and VHS in both fullscreen and widescreen versions.
[edit] Soundtrack
See Stop Making Sense.
| Talking Heads |
|---|
| David Byrne – Chris Frantz – Tina Weymouth – Jerry Harrison |
| Discography |
| Studio Albums: Talking Heads: 77 (1977) - More Songs about Buildings and Food (1978) - Fear of Music (1979) - Remain in Light (1980) - Speaking in Tongues (1983) - Little Creatures (1985) - True Stories (1986) - Naked (1988) |
| Live Albums: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads (1982) - Stop Making Sense (1984) |
| Filmography |
| Stop Making Sense (1984) - True Stories (1986) - Storytelling Giant (1988) |
