35mm

True Stories

David Byrne

The uncanniness of the suburban everyday is plumbed with aw-shucks gusto in the Talking Heads lead singer’s directorial debut, in which he stars as a visitor to Virgil, Texas, a Reagan-era vision of utopia on the verge of its annual “Celebration of Specialness.”

DIRECTOR
David Byrne
YEAR
1986
COUNTRY
USA
RUNTIME
90 minutes
FORMAT
35mm

The uncanniness of the suburban everyday is plumbed with aw-shucks gusto in the Talking Heads lead singer’s directorial debut. Byrne stars as a visitor to Virgil, Texas, a Reagan-era vision of utopia on the verge of its annual “Celebration of Specialness.” DP Ed Lachman’s cinematography throws the hyperrealism of the middle American landscape—littered with shopping malls and populated by a wealth of zany denizens (including memorable turns from John Goodman and Spalding Gray)—into sharp relief, and the Talking Heads’ soundtrack suffuses the film with a cohesively postmodern energy. Hoberman writes that the film “is so unambiguously patriotic as to be the avant-pop analogue to [Reagan’s 1984 campaign film] A New Beginning.”

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True Stories
True Stories
True Stories
True Stories
True Stories

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