The Favorites - Stop Making Sense (#89)

My video on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks, which was supposed to appear on Monday, is finally up.

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Stop Making Sense (1984/USA/dir. Jonathan Demme) appeared at #89 on my original list.

What it is • An empty wooden stage, a shadow falling across it, applause faintly emerging on the soundtrack...David Byrne (lead singer and songwriter of Talking Heads) suited up in that distinctly post-counterculture hip-to-be-square kind of way, with a mixture of modesty and bravado, informs the eager (as yet unseen) crowd, "Hi. I've got a tape I'd like to play you." He presses a button on a tape player which provides the only backing track as he stands solo in the theatrical lights (in front of an audience politely seated) and stabs his guitar with the focused ferocity of a psycho killer. And there it begans - nearly non-stop music for 88 minutes as Byrne is gradually joined by various bandmates, from bass player Tina Weymouth to the rest of the original members to some backup singers and supporting musicians. By the end, the crowd is on their feet, the atmosphere is electric, and Byrne is dripping sweat after running in circles around the stage, dancing with a lamp, bending backward almost 180 degrees, and clothing himself in a ridiculous baggy jacket making him look like a child swimming in daddy's business uniform. This concert film to end all concert films - directed by Demme, but conceived and orchestrated by Byrne himself - obviously structures itself around the escalation of activity and accumulation of personnel. However, it also features an increasingly focused and fantastical style. The film begins with pseudo-documentary approach, cutting frequently to depict the crew hustling in the wings while haphazard wires, unhidden ladders, and exposed cameras and lights emphasize the technical details. Two-thirds of the way in, immersive, stylized performances, against a black backdrop, alternate close-ups with very long takes (like the one which captures almost the entirety of "Once in a Lifetime"). Ultimately, Stop Making Sense provides perfect evidence that even non-narrative films can have a strong story arc.

Why I like it •

The Kids Are Alright & Stop Making Sense

Are concert films musicals? In a sense, sure. Woodstock usually gets classified as such. A Hard Day's Night, which combines more conventional musical numbers (and I use the term "conventional" advisedly) with a concert finale is easier to peg in that category. What about Gimme Shelter (which is possibly my favorite documentary of all time)? Doesn't it feel strange to classify a movie featuring a real stabbing as a "musical" with all the cheerful connotations that implies (however unfairly)? And is music really the focus of the Maysles' Stones documentary anyway? In a sense, though, concert films like The Kids Are Alright and Stop Making Sense can be considered more musical than most musicals. After all, they both contain wall-to-wall music accompanied by little else - about 90% music in the former case and 99% in the latter. Or maybe 100%. But they're both quite different from one another.

Storytelling Giant

The other day I was talking to an animal-lover and preservationist about local wildlife. Apparently, as people and their homes encroach on natural habitats, woodland creatures begin to nest in backyards. Unable to change their surroundings, they accommodate themselves to it, adapting for the sake of survival. The same can be said of creative types in a media-saturated, commodity-drenched world.

This is a central idea in David Byrnes' 1988 film Storytelling Giant, a compendium of Talking Heads videos punctuated by lower-case talking heads, normal folks telling normal and not-so-normal stories about their lives. Usually these anecdotes (they're relatively short, none more than fifteen or twenty seconds) serve as lead-ins to the videos, so that we get someone talking about self-realization before the burst-of-consciousness song "Once in a Lifetime," or partying before "Wild Wild Life." Initially it appears that the film will be little more than a video collection but as it moves along, certain overarching themes begin to appear.