Film / Stop Making Sense

"Music is very physical, and often the body understands it before the head."

"Hi. I've got a tape I want to play."

—David Byrne, opening the concert

Stop Making Sense is a concert film featuring Talking Heads, and is often regarded by critics as the finest example of the genre. It was directed by Jonathan Demme and released in 1984, and documents three separate concerts filmed in Los Angeles in December 1983, with all the footage spliced together. These shows would be their last on U.S. soil until their 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction performance. The film was notably the first to utilize digital audio techniques for the entirety of its runtime; while the recording equipment was analog, mixing was done with a 24-track digital recorder, removing generation loss and allowing for much clearer sound than other films of the time.

Even though the film contains footage from all three concerts, it plays as a unified whole, and our attention is always on the performers onstage as they progress through their set. There are no cutaways to the audience until the very last number; there are no features on the band and their musical evolution; there are no interviews with the musicians backstage as they prepare for the concert. The camerawork is extremely understated and naturalistic, with very long takes and an almost complete lack of quick cuts. All of these qualities are extremely rare among concert films, then and now, especially in contrast to the rising star of MTV and its music videos that were changing the shape of the industry at the time.

The music itself is, broadly speaking, New Wave, but with a host of other influences, especially funk. Just under half of the songs are from the Speaking in Tongues album, which their tour was supporting; in fact, all but three songs from the album ("I Get Wild/Wild Gravity", "Moon Rocks", and "Pull Up the Roots") appear on the setlist. However, the band also plays a number of their older hits, as well as "What a Day That Was", a piece from David Byrne's soundtrack to Twyla Tharp's 1981 dance performance The Catherine Wheel ^note Another piece from the Catherine Wheel soundtrack, "Big Business", was performed and filmed, but was cut from the theatrical release alongside performances of "Cities" and "I Zimbra". Yet another song from the soundtrack, "Big Blue Plymouth (Eyes Wide Open)" was performed at the shows but apparently not filmed, or at least no official footage has surfaced. "Love → Building on Fire" and "The Book I Read" were also performed on the tour, but were dropped for these performances and from the handful of subsequent concerts early in 1984; incidentally, the live arrangements of these songs were much more faithful to the studio releases compared to the funk-oriented rearrangements of the rest of the setlist, which may at least partly explain why they were dropped. and "Genius Of Love" by Tom Tom Club, side project of Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz

The film's release was accompanied by an identically titled Live Album, released through Sire Records in North America and EMI internationally, marking the band's first release on the latter label. The album featured considerably edited versions of the songs from the film, with various overdubs and other remixes applied thanks to Byrne's desire to differentiate it from the movie. A straightforward release of the film soundtrack wouldn't occur until 1999 to similarly accompany the 15th anniversary re-release of the movie. Another expanded double-LP edition, featuring two performances from Deleted Scenes, would come out in 2023 to accompany another theatrical re-showing by A24, itself coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Speaking in Tongues.

The film would eventually receive a Spiritual Successor 36 years later with the Spike Lee-directed American Utopia, taken from Byrne's 2019 Broadway residency show in support of his 2018 album of the same name.

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Setlist (also used for the 1999 live album; timestamps for the latter included here):

1. "Psycho Killer" (4:24)
2. "Heaven" (3:41)
3. "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel" (2:09)
4. "Found a Job" (3:15)
5. "Slippery People" (4:00)
6. "Burning Down the House" (4:06)
7. "Life During Wartime" (5:51)
8. "Making Flippy Floppy" (4:40)
9. "Swamp" (4:30)
10. "What a Day That Was" (6:00)^note Originally by David Byrne
11. "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" (4:57)
12. "Once in a Lifetime" (5:25)
13. "Genius of Love" (4:30)^note Originally and performed by Tom Tom Club
14. "Girlfriend Is Better" (5:06)
15. "Take Me to the River" (5:32)^note Originally by Al Green
16. "Crosseyed and Painless" (6:11)

Bonus songs (deleted from the theatrical cut but included on home media releases)

• "Cities"
• "Big Business"^note Originally by David Byrne
• "I Zimbra"

1984 live album tracklist

Side One

1. "Psycho Killer" (4:28)
2. "Swamp" (4:28)^note 3:50 on LP copies
3. "Slippery People" (4:13)^note 3:35 and in a different mix on LP copies
4. "Burning Down the House" (4:14)
5. "Girlfriend Is Better" (5:07)^note 3:32 on LP copies

Side Two

1. "Once in a Lifetime" (5:34)^note 4:34 on LP copies
2. "What a Day That Was" (6:30)^note 5:08 on LP copies
3. "Life During Wartime" (5:52)^note 4:52 on LP copies
4. "Take Me to the River" (6:00)^note Originally by Al Green

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Hi. I've got some tropes I want to play:

• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Tina Weymouth's Tom Tom Club does their single hit "Genius Of Love" during the break.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: David Byrne's stage design was intended to get rid of "distracting" elements, even cups of water, to focus on the music itself. The stage risers and even the mic stands were painted matte-black and conspicuous logos on instruments were taped over with black duct tape (save for the Zildjian-branded cymbals, which needed to be untampered to sound right). The amps were hidden in the risers.
• Audience Participation: At screenings, the audience would often act as if they were at a real concert, dancing in the aisles and even applauding in between songs.
• The Band Minus the Face: In the film, the lineup of the Tom Tom Club is literally Talking Heads minus David Byrne, as the secondary purpose of the performance of "Genius of Love" was to allow Byrne to change into the big suit for the next number. (As well as to recognise the fact that Tom Tom Club had recently had their own legitimate hit single.)
• Bilingual Bonus: "Psycho Killer" features lyrics in French.
• Call-Back: For "Once in a Lifetime", Byrne dons a pair of horn-rimmed glasses similar to the ones he wears in the music video and does similar movements.
• Chiaroscuro: The primary lighting style used throughout the film. Exaggerated in Once In a Lifetime, when the camera stays on Byrne for the entire song, and the light / dark is very contrasted.
• Cloudcuckoolander: David Byrne definitely comes across as this, if not during the actual concert, then during his famous interview with himself about the film.
• Concert Film: Often regarded by critics as one of the finest examples of the genre. Unlike other contenders for this honor (e.g. The Last Waltz and Woodstock), this film is unique for focusing solely on the performance. David Byrne said in interviews that the band was always impatient with films like The Last Waltz that had endless backstage interviews with the band and shots of the audience whooping it up, etc., so they made a conscious decision to film a Talking Heads performance and leave out all the extraneous stuff.
• Control Freak: David Byrne wouldn't allow cups of water on the stage, according to Tina Weymouth.
• Creepy Monotone: Byrne's solo performance of "Psycho Killer" at the start of the movie is rendered this way, with him singing much more quietly than on the 1977 studio version and with an overall flat tone of voice, complimenting the robotic sound of the drum machine playing in the background.
• Debut Queue: Each of the four band members comes out one song at a time, followed by the backing musicians for the fifth number. At the same time, the stage is being assembled in full view of the audience.
• Diegetic Switch: How the film starts: Byrne carries a boombox on stage, mentions that he wants to play the audience a tape, and presses play. Upon doing so, a hidden TR-808 starts up, acting as the intro to "Psycho Killer".
• Early-Bird Cameo: Lynn Mabry, one of the two backup singers, can be heard singing the harmonies during the chorus of "Heaven", several numbers before she and Edna Holt appear onstage.
• Epic Rocking:
  • The film version of "Take Me to the River" goes on for just over eight minutes, a good chunk of which is occupied by Byrne introducing the musicians and crew to the audience.
  • On the 1984 live album, "What a Day That Was" surpasses six minutes and "Life During Wartime" comes close, both on the CD and cassette releases, "Take Me to the River" meanwhile tallies in at exactly six minutes.
  • On the 1999 live album "What a Day That Was" and "Crosseyed and Painless" both reach or surpass the six-minute mark, with "Life During Wartime" again coming close.
• Epileptic Flashing Lights: A rapid series of strobe lights activate partway through "Genius of Love".
• Everything Has Rhythm: During "This Must Be the Place," Byrne dances with a lamp.
• Feet-First Introduction: Actually, the first thing we see is the shadow of Byrne's guitar neck as he passes through a doorway. We then see the bottom of his Iconic Outfit— namely, his pants legs and white shoes—as he strides to the microphone and sets down his boombox. Then after he presses play on the device, the camera finally pans up to show us David Byrne's face.
• Gone Horribly Right: The intention of the film was to create the illusion that the audience was actually watching a Talking Heads performance, not just a concert film. The effect was so good that audiences danced in the aisles, to the annoyance of one David Byrne, who was trying to concentrate on a screening of his own film.
• Hong Kong Dub: The audio doesn't sync up to the visuals in some places, the results of using the best visual takes with the best musical performances of the concerts. This produces a noticeable continuity error in "Take Me to the River" where a beach ball bounced onto the stage by the audience suddenly disappears.
• Iconic Outfit: The big— and we mean big— suit that Byrne wears in the last part of the concert is forever associated with both him and this movie.
• Inherently Funny Words: The slides shown during "Making Flippy Floppy" are supposed to be phrases that Byrne thought were funny.
• I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: Tina Weymouth, in the DVD commentary on her stage costume of the time: "Ah yes, the blimp suit. It must have looked very modern in The '80s."
• Lampshade Hanging: Literally.
• Large Ham: Byrne, unsurprisingly, but also drummer Chris Frantz (especially during "Genius Of Love") and percussionist Steve Scales, both of whom mug for the audience every chance they get.
  • At one point, Byrne flops down on his back and sings from the floor. Shortly thereafter, he gets up and runs a full lap around the set.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The contributions of the backing singers and additional musicians, if anything, heightens the lyrical dissonance of "Life During Wartime", providing an even more upbeat arrangement to a song about the paranoia and ennui that surrounds living in a war-torn country.
• Occidental Otaku: When it came time for the staging and art direction, David Byrne took influence from Kabuki and Noh theaters' minimalist aesthetic, to the point of dressing stagehands and painting microphones black. The iconic big suit was also inspired by Noh theater.
• The Oner: There are quite a few of these. It even starts with one: showing David Byrne walking out on stage. "Once in a Lifetime" spends the entire song on Byrne; other people are visible only insofar as they enter the shot.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis:
  • The Big Suit. The Simpsons episode with David Byrne As Himself has he and Homer briefly wearing the Big Suit together.
  • The concert is also remembered for the aerobic jogging by the band during songs.
    Roger Ebert: Watching the Talking Heads in concert is a little like rock 'n' roll crossed with "Jane Fonda's Workout."
  • This film's version of "Once in a Lifetime" was the one used for Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
• Rearrange the Song: All of the songs are performed in a much funkier style than their studio counterparts; several songs are are significantly different on-stage compared to others. David Byrne has kept some of these arrangements in solo performances.
  • Byrne performs "Psycho Killer" with just an acoustic guitar and a drum machine.
  • "Heaven" just features acoustic guitar and bass.
  • "What a Day That Was" is given a much faster tempo and more energetic vocals, turning it from an ethereal avant-funk track to a song you can jump up and down to.
  • "This Must Be the Place" is given a significantly different intro and a longer outro, the latter incorporating a lengthy instrumental break before capping off with a reprise of the ending howl.
  • Thanks to the soulful backing singers, "Take Me to the River" sounds a lot more like a normal Gospel song.
  • "Crosseyed and Painless" has an extended, slower-tempo intro, carried over from the arrangement used during the Remain in Light tour and transposed to a different key.
• Re-Cut:
  • For the first home video release, three extra songs were inserted into the middle of the show. Later DVD releases went back to the theatrical cut, but included those extra songs as bonus content.
  • The album version was heavily edited, with some songs being different lengths than their movie versions and Chris Frantz's acoustic drums being replaced with triggered samples. (Byrne said that he wanted the album to be something completely separate, rather than just a soundtrack for the film.) In 1999, it was rereleased as Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition, and this version was the soundtrack from the film (though with several songs edited down again due to space constraints, most prominently excising the band introduction from "Take Me to the River", which was also absent from the 1984 release). It was reissued again in 2023 to coincide with the theatrical re-release of the film that fall, slotting in the extra songs from the original home media release.
• Shout-Out:
  • David Byrne's dance with a lamp is a reference to a routine from the 1951 film Royal Wedding, in which Fred Astaire dances with a coat rack.
  • Byrne's "staggering" dance during "Psycho Killer" is a reference the way the main character of the film Breathless staggers after being shot (you'll notice that right before Byrne staggers the drum machine's beat is very rapid and sounds similar to a machine gun).
    Stephanie Zacharek: During "Psycho Killer," when he stumbles and staggers against the synthesizer "gun shots" on his tape loop, he's like Jean Paul Belmondo in the final minutes of Breathless, a hero succumbing, surprised, to violence that he'd thought he was prepared for. (But unlike Belmondo, he doesn't fall: As a psycho killer, he's indestructible.)
  • The opening credits are done in the style of Dr. Strangelove. Pablo Ferro, who worked on the classic film, did the titles for Stop Making Sense as well.
  • Keyboardist Bernie Worrell indulges in brief musical quotes during his solos ("The Star-Spangled Banner" in "Making Flippy Floppy", "Little Drummer Boy" in the bonus extra "I Zimbra").
  • Byrne's storyboards for the movie, which were printed in a booklet that came with the album, note that when he takes off the Big Suit jacket for "Take Me To The River" he "looks like Ralph Kramden".
  • Chris Frantz very literally shouts out James Brown during "Genius Of Love"
  Chris Frantz: He still is the Godfather of Soul, y'all, so check it out!
• Spiritual Antithesis: Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz on The Band is often used as a contrast to this film with its lack of interview footage. That said, Jonathan Demme and Talking Heads cited the film as a key influence on Stop Making Sense and Robbie Robertson was an attendance at one of the concerts captured in the film as well as meeting the band backstage.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Tina Weymouth (the blonde-haired bassist) sings her Tom Tom Club song "Genius of Love".
  Chris Frantz: The girls can do it too y'all!
  • Also a downplayed version during "Girlfriend Is Better": Byrne is walking about the stage with a cameraman pointing the camera at him and a stagehand carrying a portable light pointed at him. He sings the title phrase of the movie because it gets repeated twice at this point in the song, then for the second repeat he sticks the mic in the stagehand's face—and the stagehand sings it perfectly on key, without missing a beat. Byrne then offers the microphone to the camera filming the shot and, by extension, the viewer.
• Talking Heads: Averted. There are no Talking Heads in a movie about Talking Heads.
• The "The" Title Confusion: It's not "The Talking Heads", Chris Frantz, drummer for the band Talking Heads.
• Title Drop: Of the film itself, during the song "Girlfriend Is Better".
• Updated Re Release: To commemorate the film's 15th anniversary, the live album was re-released, not only containing every song from the film, but also presenting most of them as they were heard in the film (the original live album contained heavy overdubbing to differentiate it from the movie, most notably re-recording all the percussion tracks). The film was also released on DVD in its "Special New Edition", after being out of print on VHS for a few years.

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"Thank you! Does anybody have any questions?"