TORONTO (AP) ā You may find yourself in a movie theater with playing and the members of Talking Heads in the audience.
That was the once-in-a-lifetime scenario when the new 4K restoration of āStop Making Senseā premiered recently at the . On screen was a young, elastic David Byrne. In the theater, he was dancing, too, along with a crowd who couldnāt stay seated for āBurning Down the House.ā
āFor a moment I thought, āIs it OK for me to get up and dance at our own movie?ā Byrne says, laughing, the morning after. āBut how could you not?ā
For nearly four decades, āStop Making Sense,ā directed by Jonathan Demme, has exerted an inexorable pull on all who encounter the frenetic fever of arguably the finest concert film ever made. Its power to bring together ā it opens with Byrne alone on a spare stage and swells into an art-funk spectacular ā is such that itās even managed to reunite the Talking Heads, too.
For the first time in 21 years, the Talking Heads are a band again, even if only in movie theaters. Byrne, the bandās principal songwriter and singer, keyboardist-guitarist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz ā who last gathered together in 2002 for their induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ā have assembled once more for the rerelease of āStop Making Sense.ā
āIt feels normal,ā says Weymouth. āI mean, this is our tour. Weāre touring this movie.ā
Since they officially broke up in 1991, the four members of Talking Heads have often squabbled, bitterly. Byrne has said Frantz, whoās married to Weymouth, published that described some of the discord and lingering hurts. When Byrne mounted a few years ago, featuring many Talking Heads songs, Frantz was stung not to even be invited.
As the group congregated the morning after the āStop Making Senseā premiere for an interview, though, they were cordial with each other. They're now all in their early '70s. āHow you livinā, Jerry?ā greeted Frantz. Byrne gazed out the window, contemplating a possible cycling route for the afternoon. He and Harrison sat on one couch, Weymouth and Frantz on another.
Their spirits were high. The film remains in light, a potent reminder of Talking Headsā uniquely transfixing power. Harrison helped oversee the restoration from the long-lost original negatives. It opens on IMAX screens Friday and in other theaters Sept. 29.
āOne of the things that happened to me in rewatching it and working on it, was realizing: āOh my God is everybody good,āā says Harrison.
āI didnāt know I was cute,ā smiled Weymouth, who nimbly bounces from one foot to the other throughout the film. āThe whole band, they were so attractive, so beautiful.ā
āStop Making Sense,ā filmed over four nights at Los Angelesā Pantages Theater in 1983, hasnāt dimmed with time. āSame as it ever was,ā you could say. What begins with a solitary Byrne, with an acoustic guitar and boombox, steadily accumulates as the members of the band join him, then others like Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell and guitarist Alex Weir. This jittery, wide-eyed musician singing of psycho killers to a syncopated beat attracts a legion. His movements are malleable and constant. The music grows euphoric. This IS a party. This IS a disco.
āItās the unbridled joyousness of the performance, which snowballs,ā says Frantz. āIt starts off with āPsycho Killer,ā which is a thing unto itself. But it snowballs into this ecstatic experience. You can see it very clearly with the band members. Theyāre gettinā more and more fever.ā
āTheyāre going to church,ā adds Weymouth.
Demme once called shooting live music āthe purest form of filmmaking.ā And much of āStop Making Sense,ā with an eagerly responsive Demme and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth catching all the interactions between the band, approaches a perfect harmony of sound and image.
Now THAT, Byrne said after watching the film on IMAX, is why you go to the movies.
Byrne had choregraphed the Talking Heads tour that year, for the album āSpeaking in Tongues.ā Their concert came ready-made for Demme, a devoted Heads fan and an ardent music listener who approached the band with producer Gary Goetzman after seeing them perform in 1983 at the Hollywood Bowl.
āThe great thing about Jonathan Demme was he had this amazing enthusiasm,ā says Weymouth.
For several weeks beforehand, visual consultant Sandy McLeod came along on tour to plot out how the filmmakers might document the concert. Byrneās concept stemmed from, he says, āshowing people what it takes to put on a show.ā
āWe start with an empty stage and gradually add each part, each musician. As they come in, you hear what their contribution is,ā Byrne says. āYou see how it all gets done. Itās like a magician showing how the tricks are done, but the trick still works. Weāve seen behind the curtain, but the trick still works.ā
And the ātricksā are grand. Thereās, of course, in āGirlfriend Is Betterāā now even bigger in IMAX. (The big suit, itself, resides in a big box in Byrneās office.) Thereās also his achingly gentle dance with a floor lamp in ā a sumptuous echo to Gene Kelly's in āSinginā in the Rain.ā
The lamps were made specially to be a little taller than the typical size, so they would illuminate faces.
āWe bought a few of them. Theyād break all the time. Iād drop them and all the light bulbs would break,ā says Byrne, laughing. āWeāre kind of lucky that the ones in the film held up.ā
Other elements of āStop Making Senseā have also proved remarkably resilient, though they can be harder to pin down. The songs, particularly something like synthesized a modern discombobulation that was only just emerging in the tech-nascent ā80s. āStop Making Senseā ā shot on film with six cameras but mixed digitally in Hal Ashbyās editing room ā heralded a disorienting information age future while at the same time making the case that this strange new world could also be funky as hell.
āThereās most definitely a prescient nature in Davidās lyrics,ā Harrison says. āDavid seemed to capture, you might say, the future zeitgeist.ā
That can be heard in what Byrne was singing about but itās also embodied in his constant, live-wire physicality. It was only a few years before āStop Making Sense,ā on tour in 1980, that Byrne began to find his a stage persona.
āBefore that, I didnāt move much. I just thought: Itās OK to move but you have to find your own way to do it. You canāt be imitating other performers,ā he says. āSo I just listened to the songs and thought: How does this groove make you move? On āLife During Wartime,ā I felt like running.ā
Unlike most concert films, Demme elected not to cut away to the audience until the final moments of the film. He wanted to preserve the pure experience of a live concert, and not mix in interviews along the way.
āU2 wanted to make a film that was better than āStop Making Senseā and then they went and ruined it by doing all those interviews,ā Weymouth says. āThe art should be separate from the personalities. So you donāt get all the dysfunction.ā
To her, āStop Making Senseā derives from a different era when not everything was self-documented. It was a vividly artful presentation that left it up to the viewer to interpret, or dance to.
Talking Heads never participated in another film, though Byrneās āAmerican Utopiaā was captured thrillingly by Spike Lee in . (Lee, in attendance at the Toronto premiere, pronounced āStop Making Senseā āthe GOAT" of concert films.)
The 1983 tour was the last time Talking Heads hit the road, and Byrne has consistently said he has no interest in a reunion tour. After their experience with Demme, a career-spanning documentary also seems unlikely.
āIt would have to take something pretty extraordinary to make us want us to do something like that,ā says Harrison. āIf the right filmmaker came along and you could then imagine yourself in the framework he or she sets up, itās possible. It certainly wouldnāt be now.ā
Besides, who needs legacy burnishing when āStop Making Senseā is still so alive? In conversation, the band again and again marveled at how deeply in tune they were with one another then ā perhaps especially in contrast to the years that followed.
āThis is going to sound really ridiculous but I think about the fusion of the sun,ā says Weymouth. āIt implodes and explodes. And I think that push and pull was so magical to our creative forces, the way that we worked together, the way we were supportive of each other. It was very special and none of us has found it again. If we sat down and played music, weād be connecting again.ā
The Talking Heads members are now, a little surreally, part of the audience gazing back at āStop Making Sense.ā It remains the defining encapsulation of what the Talking Heads were and what they achieved. If there's one thing they can all agree on, it's an abiding love for it.
āHaving had two near-death experiences in the past couple of years ā one with Tina in a head-on car crash -- whoās the guy who said āEnjoy every sandwichā? Warren Zevon," Frantz says. "Thatās what Iām doing.ā
āItās a good legacy. Now I can die,ā says Weymouth, before adding: āI donāt want to.ā
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
