Saturday, October 2, 2021 True Stories (1986) at October 02, 2021

 

Directed by David Byrne

Starring John Goodman, Annie McEnroe, Swoosie Kurtz, Spalding Gray, Pop Staples, Tito Larriva, Jo Harvey Allen, John Ingle and David Byrne

Sometimes, an artist or piece of art comes along at exactly the right time in your life.  Such was the case with my discovery of the Talking Heads a scant two years ago.  I certainly knew OF them and had their highlights in my iTunes library.  But when I decided to take the plunge and sample the whole catalogue...I was blown away.  Have you ever had an emotional experience with music?  Songs like "Houses in Motion," "Slippery People" and "Once in a Lifetime" seemed to be speaking directly to me as a late-'30s loser who spends 99% of his free time alone and has no prospects of changing that any time soon.  Make of that what you will.  To cut the superlatives short, these guys (and gals) are incredible, and one of my top five bands ever.

The movie poster was somehow burned into my memory; there's no doubt that I passed by that VHS tape countless times in the various video stores that I frequented over the years.  But I never put the two and two together until I started reading up on the Talking Heads albums via the ever-accurate Wikipedia.  True Stories is the brainchild of the Heads' dynamo frontman David Byrne.  He had total creative control over this project as a result of the success of the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense and, man, did he let that creativity run wild.  The film is a little depressing in that regard; we will never get anything like this again from a big studio, where everything is micromanaged down to the fractional amounts of each ethnic group required in a new project.  The result is a film that was in and out of theaters in nary a month back in 1986, but one that has gained favor from critics and audiences ever since and is now a bona fide cult classic.

To say that this movie is one of a kind is an understatement.  It defies any sort of traditional narrative structure, instead conveying what it wants to convey via a series of very loosely-connected vignettes.  It does have a couple of framing devices: (1) the town of Virgil, Texas, that the entire movie takes place within, and (2) an unnamed visitor to the town who also narrates the film, played by Byrne himself, who makes pithy and witty remarks about the town and its residents all the while.  If you've listened to much Talking Heads music, you know that he has a great ear for humor, and it really shines through in this film.  I have something to say about the difference between American and European cities. But I've forgotten what it is. I have it written down at home somewhere.  Those last three sentences?  Actual lines from the film.

I think that writing a review of this movie actually requires a bit of understanding of the thought process that went into it.  Writer Stephen Tobolowsky (Ned Ryerson himself from Groundhog Day) and his girlfriend once visited David Byrne and saw tabloid headlines taped to the guy's walls.  Byrne asked them how crazy it would be if all these stories turned out to be true.  Eureka moment, this movie was born.  The writers combined it with an idea about a movie set in Texas' real-life upcoming 150th anniversary celebration.  This melding of two different ideas gives us a movie us a funhouse mirror version of small-town living, populating Virgil with some of the weirdest people you'll ever see as they prepare for the town's "Celebration of Specialness."

The closest thing that the film has to a conventional arc comes in the character of Louis Fyne (John Goodman), one of the workers at the town's Varicorp computer factory who longs to find a wife and has designs on being a singer in his spare time.  You would think that those two particular character traits are a pretty slim basis for your protagonist, and you would be right, but the movie stretches the limited confines of this character for all it's worth thanks in no small part to a tour-de-force performance from Goodman.  I don't think I've ever disliked this guy in anything he's in; even in some Coen brothers projects that I'm not a huge fan of, when Goodman shows up, you can be guaranteed that he's going to bring the goods.  Louis' hero's journey, as it were, concludes in the finale of the film where he...what else?...sings a song.

True Stories is jam-packed with a whole heap of memorable characters.  The town's serial liar (Jo Harvey Allen) is a superficial woman who goes off on repeated tirades about the amazing events of her fictional life to anyone who will listen.  These soliloquies are a virtual framing device in and of themselves and never cease to entertain.  There is also preacher (John Ingle) who gives us...some conspiracy theories that don't sound so crazy these days.  His scene also leads to the movie's single best musical sequence for the song "Puzzlin' Evidence."  Lastly, there is a woman who won't get out of bed (Swoosie Kurtz).  She's not sick, she just has enough money that she doesn't have to.  Wouldn't you do the same thing?  Again, actual dialogue from the film.  Amazingly, she still has the presence of mind to get her hair immaculately coiffed despite never leaving the room.

Time to touch on the musical elements in the film, being that this is a movie directed by the lead singer of the Talking Heads.  I already owned the soundtrack to this film.  I didn't consider the True Stories album to be among their best work, but seeing the songs put in motion the way they are in this film gave me a deeper appreciation for them.  The lyrics are usually (but not always) delivered by the characters that populate the landscape rather than Byrne himself, with each one touching on a different aspect of life in Virgil.  In addition to the aforementioned "Puzzlin' Evidence," there's "Dream Operator," accompanied by the strangest fashion show you've ever seen; "Love for Sale," which has a really strong commercial parody montage; and "Radio Head," where an ancillary character talks about how he is able to receive "tones" from people.  It's great stuff, very well-performed and well-staged.

Byrne also works plenty of satire into the film.  His narrator character repeatedly speaks about the various ways that the American small town has changed over the years, with the stretching city limits cutting into the countryside, the shopping mall that serves as the town hub, and the beauty-free modern architecture of all the new buildings.  Now, I don't live in exactly a small town, but it's smallish enough for me to know that it's essentially all true, if not exaggerated.  But hell, everything is exaggerated in a movie called True Stories.  Get it, people?  Irony.  Amazingly, though, Byrne never comes across as mean-spirited with any of it, viewing his people and buildings with a sort of loving voyeurism.  And when the narrator drives off into the distance and puts Virgil behind him, his final lines of the film give the bizarre characters an entirely new meaning.

Rating time: **** out of ****.  I've done my best to explain the appeal of this film, but really, this is one you just have to see to to understand.  Check it out.  Classic scene after classic scene and quotable dialogue for DAYS.