Demme filmed “Stop Making Sense” over several performances at Los Angeles’ Pantages Theatre in December 1983, as a pure caught-in-the-act documentary (there are, appropriately, no talking heads interrupting the flow), and it’s magical. The opening is tiny and hypnotic: a single beam of light, a skinny young man (Talking Heads leader and singer David Byrne) in a light suit and white sneakers, a guitar, a cassette deck playing a drum track. And slowly, things grow: bassist Tina Weymouth joins Byrne for the next song, then drummer Chris Frantz, and more — keyboardist/guitarist Jerry Harrison, guitarist Alex Weir, percussionist Steve Scales, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, backup singers Ednah Holt and Lynn Mabry.
We see the crew moving set pieces on stage, and we watch as a world is created, one in which people find giddy joy in making music together. Watch Byrne and Weir, in “Burning Down the House,” wildly jogging side by side as if they suddenly, happily became one person. Watch Weymouth’s perfect, tiny pointed-toe prances, adding soft punctuation to the beat. Watch Frantz, looking very non-rock-star in his blue polo, mouthing the lyrics as he drives the rhythm. And watch Holt and Mabry, two beaming beacons of energy, playfully interacting with everyone else on stage; they’re like our guides on a musical pleasure cruise. Demme’s cameras don’t just capture this, sweat and all, but become part of it — dancing, interacting (Scales playfully sticks out a tongue at the camera; Byrne at one point offers it a microphone), bringing us onto that stage, letting us live the music with them.
And Byrne, looking both impossibly youthful and ageless, gives a performance of staggering confidence and charisma, whether dancing with a lamp (it seems to magically float) in “This Must Be the Place,” running endlessly in “Life During Wartime” or unblinkingly staring at the camera as he malevolently drones “Swamp.” At one point, he seems to become a marionette: the vertical line of the microphone stand dividing him in two, with gyrating arms and legs seemingly independent of each other. It’s as if the music possesses him — and us.
For a lot of us, this music is the soundtrack of our very young adulthood; you may find yourself unable to stop grinning at the shimmery, deliciously endless intro to “Girlfriend Is Better,” or bouncing up and down in your seat along with Holt and Mabry, or realizing that, despite the passage of time, you still know every word of each song. Watching it last week, I couldn’t always tell whether the applause and cheers were coming from the movie or from the live audience. It was as if the line separating life and art had blurred, and we were all happily caught within it.
by Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Talking Heads/Stop Making Sense
