A FLIPPY FLOPPY FILM!
The Talking Heads performance documented in Stop Making Sense was already an eminently filmable proceeding long before director Jonathan Demme (Melvin And Howard, Swing Shift) got anywhere near it. The visual awareness of the Heads has always been a few cuts above that of most other rock bands, as shown by the interesting ambiguity of their album covers and videos.
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A FLIPPY FLOPPY FILM!
Creemedia
STOP MAKING SENSE (Cincom/Island Alive)
Renaldo Migaldi
The Talking Heads performance documented in Stop Making Sense was already an eminently filmable proceeding long before director Jonathan Demme (Melvin And Howard, Swing Shift) got anywhere near it. The visual awareness of the Heads has always been a few cuts above that of most other rock bands, as shown by the interesting ambiguity of their album covers and videos. That three members of the group (David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz) are design school grads hasn’t hurt their visual presentation any, either, helping them to enter the age of music video without much pain. And this visual savvy—along with a relaxed, energetic musical performance, the sharp directorial eye of Demme, the crisp, booming miracle of digital sound, plus a total absence of backstage conversation and other usual pretentious rockumentary bulljive—makes Stop Making Sense one of the most exciting rock concert films ever.
In order to best document the Heads’ show, Demme evidently knew he had to become a participant in it. His camera (or more precisely cameras, since Demme used a crew of eight camera operators who often appear in plain view, wandering among the musicians onstage and elsewhere) isn’t exactly the detached observer of an event. Demme picks up the little smiles two musicians shoot at each other when a sudden rhythm shift or keyboard riff sounds particularly good, as well as the physical mannerisms that reveal a lot about a performer’s personality—Frantz’s perpetual sheepish grin, Weymouth’s awkward mugging and the lip-chewing brow-furrowed concentration of Bernie Worrell. In doing so, Demme achieves an easy intimacy and immediacy seldom found among the stilted imagemongery of rock videos.
This point is brought home most clearly in the “Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)” segment, during which Demme and the Heads explore the different emotions and sensations evoked by the concept of “home.” In front of a New York skyline (which, after all, is home to some people) backdrop, Byrne, Weymouth and company sing while standing close together in the warm glow of an old-fashioned living room lamp. During the instrumental break, Byrne—with a big grin on his face— dances with the lamp, gently tossing and catching it in what is a combination caress and echo of James Brown’s famous microphone stage shtick. Byrne is of course nowhere near as slick with his moves as King James, but the rawness of his dancing is analogous to the rawness of a Lou Reed guitar solo—his technical shortcomings force him to be simple, clear and to the point.
Maybe Stop Making Sense will— once and for all—do away with the Talking Heads’ lingering image as a cold, cerebral band. In this movie, Demme and the Heads not only invite us to dance our blues away, but also offer consolation and a sense of reassurance by demonstrating how it’s possible to feel at home in a big hard world.
