Stop Making Sense (1984) is a concert movie featuring Talking Heads live on stage. Directed by Jonathan Demme, it was shot over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December of 1983, as the group was touring to promote their new album Speaking in Tongues. The movie is notable for being the first made entirely utilizing digital audio techniques. The band raised the budget of $1.2 million themselves. The title comes from the lyrics of the song "Girlfriend is Better": "As we get older and stop making sense...". The film is hailed by many as being "one of the greatest rock movies ever made" (Leonard Maltin).
The movie
The movie begins with the opening credits, using 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). Title designer Pablo Ferro was responsible for both title sequences.
Lead singer David Byrne walks on to a bare stage (seen from the feet only initially) 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 a Roland TR-808 played from the mixing board. During the song, the drum machine "fires" machine gun riffs that causes Byrne to stagger "like Jean Paul Belmondo in the final minutes of 'Breathless,' a hero succumbing, surprised, to violence that he'd thought he was prepared for."[1]
With each successive song, Byrne is cumulatively joined onstage by each core member of the band: first by Tina Weymouth for "Heaven" (with Lynn Mabry providing harmony vocals from backstage), second by Chris Frantz for "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel", and third by Jerry Harrison for "Found a Job". Performance equipment is gradually wheeled out and wired up to the bare stage between and throughout the performances, as Talking Heads continue to be augmented by several additional musicians, most of whom had extensive experience in funk: back-up singers Mabry (originally of The Brides of Funkenstein and Parliament-Funkadelic) and Edna Holt, keyboardist Bernie Worrell (formerly of Parliament-Funkadelic), percussionist Steve Scales, and guitarist Alex Weir (of The Brothers Johnson). 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 two performances edited into the film) has the entire band (minus Worrell) performing "Cities" before this song. Byrne also leaves the stage at one point, to allow the Weymouth–Frantz-led side-band 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 for the song "Girlfriend is Better" (which gave the movie its title from one of its lyrics). The suit was partly inspired by Noh theatre styles, and became an icon not only of the film – as it appears on the DVD cover, for instance – but of Byrne himself. Pauline Kael stated in her review: "When he comes on wearing a boxlike 'big suit' — his body lost inside this form that sticks out around him like the costumes in Noh plays, or like Beuys' large suit of felt that hangs of a wall — it's a perfect psychological fit."
This concert film is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of the genre. Leonard Maltin rated the film four stars out of four, describing it as "brilliantly conceived, shot, edited and performed" and "one of the greatest rock movies ever made."[2] Roger Ebert gave the film a three-and-a-half star rating, writing that "the overwelming [sic] impression throughout Stop Making Sense is of enormous energy, of life being lived at a joyous high...It's a live show with elements of Metropolis...But the film's peak moments come through Byrne's simple physical presence. He jogs in place with his sidemen; he runs around the stage; he seems so happy to be alive and making music...He serves as a reminder of how sour and weary and strung-out many rock bands have become."[1] Danny Peary described Stop Making Sense as "Riveting...What takes place on stage will make even the most skeptical into Talking Heads converts...[The] performances are invariably exciting, Byrne's lyrics are intriguing. Byrne, his head moving rhythmically as if he had just had shock treatments, is spellbinding - what a talent!...Byrne is known for his belief that music should be performed in an interesting, visual manner, and this should make him proud."[3]
Innovations
The movie is notably different from many other rock and roll concert movies:
- It contains no audience shots (and applause sounds are much less audible than usual) 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 to avoid reflecting light. An example of this are the Shure SM58 microphones used by Byrne and the other vocalists; the normally silver ball grilles have been replaced with matte black ones. Similarly, the labelling on the Prophet 5 and Emulator synthesizers were removed or obscured.
- Unlike many concert films and videos which use "MTV-style" quick-cut editing techniques, much of Stop Making Sense uses lengthy camera shots to allow the viewer to examine the performances and onstage interaction. The performance of "Once In A Lifetime" consists of a single chiaroscuro shot of Byrne for almost 75% of the song. There are no close-ups of musicians performing guitar solos, rather full-figure or upper-body shots.
Set lists
The set list of the film is as follows:
- Psycho Killer
- Heaven
- Thank You for Sending Me an Angel
- Found a Job
- Slippery People
- Burning Down the House
- Life During Wartime
- Making Flippy Floppy
- Swamp
- What a Day That Was
- This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
- Once in a Lifetime
- Genius of Love
- Girlfriend is Better
- Take Me to the River
- Crosseyed and Painless
Not all songs from the show were featured in the film. For example, at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on August 3, 1983 and at Berkeley on September 2, 1983, Talking Heads performed the following songs:
Set 1
- Psycho Killer
- Heaven
- Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
- Love → Building on Fire (Love Goes to Building on Fire)
- The Book I Read
- Slippery People
- Cities
- Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)
- Burning Down the House
- Life During Wartime
Set 2
- Making Flippy Floppy
- Swamp
- What a Day That Was
- This Must be the Place (Naïve Melody)
- Once in a Lifetime
- Big Business / I Zimbra
- Houses in Motion
- Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town
- Genius of Love (as Tom Tom Club)
- Girlfriend Is Better
- Take Me to the River
- Crosseyed and Painless
Bonus Songs (Available only on DVD)
- Big Business/I Zimbra
- Cities
As "Life During Wartime" led to an intermission in the live shows, Byrne overdubbed the line "Thank you. Does anybody have any questions?" in the film's post-production, while he can be heard announcing the band taking a short break on the soundtrack album and hidden under the dubbed line in the original film and video release.
In addition, "Pull Up the Roots" was performed at the University of Vermont on October 1, 1983.
Some performances in the film were shortened in the editing stage. The "Cities" out-take removes one complete verse and chorus.
Reviews and cultural influence
Stop Making Sense was very well-received by critics, maintaining a 97% "fresh" score at Rotten Tomatoes.[4] It won the National Society of Film Critics Award for best documentary in 1984.
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. 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". Yankovic also uses the suit in live shows, when performing "Dog Eat Dog", a Talking Heads style-parody.
On Saturday Night Live on November 3, 1984, Rich Hall appeared in an "SNL Fashion Report" wearing the big suit and parodying "Once In A Lifetime" and "Life During Wartime".
The 18th episode of the 14th season of The Simpsons, "Dude, Where's My Ranch?," starred Byrne as himself, and at one point in the episode, he dons the big suit once again, this time with Homer Simpson in it with him.
The film is currently available on Blu-ray, widescreen DVD, and VHS in both fullscreen and widescreen versions.
In an episode of the children's TV show Doug, Doug fantasizing about being in a rock band and wearing an over-size suit on stage, a reference to the big suit worn by Byrne.[5]
The big suit is one of the 1980's formal costumes in the PC game The Movies.
Soundtrack
See Stop Making Sense.
References
External links
