![]() Byrne’s narrator may be the killer or he may be killed. The anxious, comic choreography animates the troubling subtext. Over a skittering prerecorded beat, Byrne delivers a gestural performance suggesting Charlie Chaplin in the electric chair. Here we recognize both performer and director’s wrangling with the song’s terrifyingly ambiguous premise (Demme would go on to direct the most disturbing and successful of psycho killer pictures with 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs). He is the picture of a clean-cut, close-cropped, white-guy normie in garments ill-fitting from both a physical and psychological perspective. He wriggles and twitches bizarrely and mimes air guitar. On a frenzied take of “Girlfriend Is Better,” Byrne is first seen in shadow, before the camera pulls back to reveal the ludicrous spectacle of his carefully tailored 10X Large. ![]() In some ways, the narrative content of Stop Making Sense-with its ebbs and flows and costume changes-acts as a kind of dry run for Demme’s 1986 film Something Wild, where a straight-laced Wall Street banker played by Jeff Daniels is seduced and then gradually embraces a dangerous and exhilarating bender of sex and violence after encountering Melanie Griffith’s punky and impulsive Lulu.Ī gestational version of this story plays out over the course of the three songs at the end of Stop Making Sense (where the big suit is featured). Both artists shared a skepticism toward their respective social contexts-in the case of Byrne, the nightlife of New York in the 1970s, and for Demme, the hedonistic Hollywood of the same vintage. There is a thematic rhyme to their life’s work (Demme passed away in 2017 at the age of 73), one that stems from a preoccupation with the tensions between post-war suburban ennui and the double-edged promise of the counterculture-a game of chicken with societal taboos that, once broken, cannot be reaffirmed. It’s easy to see what drew Demme to Byrne and vice versa. Released 35 years ago this week, it remains an inimitable marvel and a fascinating time capsule: the fleeting intersection between two visionary artists whose propensity for sly, subversive takes on populist entertainments made them ideal compatriots in a sound and vision experiment as enduringly vital as any in the history of rock ’n’ roll. Much like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (generally considered the relevant competition in the category of Best Concert Film Ever) was a collaboration between the filmmaker and The Band’s erstwhile leader Robbie Robertson, Stop Making Sense is the by-product of the twin-engined genius of Byrne and Demme. Assembled from footage of four December 1983 performances at L.A.’s Pantages Theater, it’s a masterfully executed and profoundly ambitious reimagining of the concert film genre, achieving something at once wildly theatrical but unpretentious, endlessly bizarre but utterly legible, and publicly joyous without resorting to pandering. More than three decades after Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense represents not only the definitive document of this most idiosyncratic and forward-looking of rock acts, but also a landmark cinematic achievement. ![]()
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