YMMV / Stop Making Sense

• And You Thought It Would Fail: The film had initial trouble finding a distributor out of the belief that it would be uncommercial. The film drew critical raves and remains popular on the art house and "midnight movie" circuits.
• Common Knowledge: Most laypeople associate David Byrne's iconic Big Suit with the film's performance of "Once in a Lifetime", rather than "Girlfriend is Better"— which it was actually worn for. The blame for this can be put on the film's parody in Muppets Tonight, which features Kermit the Frog covering "Once in a Lifetime" while wearing the Big Suit.
• Covered Up: "Take Me to the River", originally performed by Al Green.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bassist Tina Weymouth plays as many songs (15) as Byrne, and has plenty of moments to shine. When all the band members are introduced to the audience near the end of the concert, she gets the loudest reaction.
  • Even though the stage crew is supposed to be "invisible" to the audience in reference to Japanese theater, they get big cheers when they set things up.
• Fridge Brilliance: The suit is expanding.
• Genius Bonus: The concept of the roadies dressed in black visible on the stage was borrowed from Japanese theater. It's up to the audience to not see them.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Roger Ebert stated that the film really conveyed the fact that Talking Heads loved their music, and that the band and the music had a relationship with the audience.
    The overwelming impression throughout "Stop Making Sense" is of enormous energy, of life being lived at a joyous high.
  • This may not be the only concert movie in which the band thanked their own crew and had them come on for a bow, but it was certainly the first. Not to mention the cheers they get from the audience when they appear onstage.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, remarks on the jogging sequence in "Life During Wartime" that the film could double as an exercise video. In 1999, David Byrne made an almost identical joke in the DVD Commentary.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • David Byrne dancing with a lamp, as well as his "big suit".
  • Also the hypnotic "Philip Glass section" at the end of "Found a Job", the only song featuring the core group: for a precious few minutes they're just joyously grooving away, all of which is captured in one of Demme's most memorable Oners.
  • Tina Weymouth's sideways crab dance during "Genius of Love."
  • At a meta level, this is one of cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth's films that he shot after his 1978 diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.
• Padding: While the impromptu performance of "Genius of Love," by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth's side project Tom Tom Club, is by no means disliked, it's only there to kill time as Byrne changes into the big suit for "Girlfriend is Better". Weymouth, for what it's worth, seemed to agree with this sentiment, being horrified upon seeing it in the finished cut, resulting in an argument with Jonathan Demme that ultimately ended in the director's favor.
• Signature Scene: "Girlfriend Is Better," where David Byrne dons the big suit. Of all the material from the film, this bit remains the most widely-recognized and widely-parodied (even by Byrne himself), to the extent where it appears on the theatrical poster and live album cover. The ad for A24's theatrical rerun of the film in 2023 even depicted Byrne digging up and re-donning the suit.
• Tough Act to Follow: The reason the band never played live again after the concerts that make up the film, save for some dates in Australia and New Zealand. As explained in the "self-interview", the band would only tour if they felt they had something new to say rather than just supporting a new album.
• Unintentional Period Piece: In the DVD commentary, while the band jogs in place in "Life During Wartime", Byrne remarks that the sequence reflects the popularity of jogging in the 1980s.
• Values Dissonance: David Byrne appears in blackface in the "self-interview." Granted, it seems to be more out of naivety towards the imagery's connotations than genuine racism, given that the black character he portrays doesn't exemplify any particular stereotypes (not to mention Byrne's own social consciousness as an artist and a public figure), but it's definitely something that wouldn't have been received as lightly today. In 2020, Byrne apologized for the appearance in a blog post as well as on Twitter, admitting that the reason why he didn't address the matter for so long was because he genuinely forgot it happened, remembering it after a journalist brought it up in an interview.

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