Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984) (Patreon)

BY REQUEST: Lucas Holloway

Among the myriad feelings and revelations I had while revisiting Stop Making Sense (which I probably haven't seen since the late 80s), the first was both comedic and brutal. "My god, he's so young!" I was genuinely taken aback by David Byrne's first appearance onscreen, and while yes, it's been ages since I've seen him with smooth skin and black hair, the epiphany was one of utter self-reflection. I am old, and this totemic object from my 7th grade year smacked me upside the head with that recognition. It also reminded me that I wanted to do some really huge, bizarre things with my life back then. Shortly after starting high school I began staging weird performance art pieces, noise compositions, and slide shows of humdrum locations, all attempts to propose some kind of sublime within the mundane.

I cannot be objective about Stop Making Sense, even though this time I saw certain editing errors or sound / image mismatches that I certainly never noticed before. No, as I sat there, anticipating every single synth squiggle, every lighting cue, every slight deviation from the songs' studio versions, I had to just cop to it. Stop Making Sense is one of the key texts that helped me form my identity. As I was getting pummeled in gym class or made fun of for my poor kid's clothes, this film, and this band, and yes, this man, alerted me to an alternate reality, where being weird wasn't just tolerated but celebrated.

There was no avoiding it, even though I tried. Watching Stop Making Sense again was an awkward past-tense encounter with a Lacanian ego-ideal, returning to take my temperature in the winter of discontent we call 2023. Once I realized that this entire film was going to be a Proustian experience, I could let that element drop into the background so I could notice other things (the film itself), and of course just bliss out to it all over again. It's perhaps worth noting that some things have changed that cast Byrne and the Heads in a new light. By 1984, the window of permission for a white artist to be openly influenced by funk, gospel, and African poly-rhythms was already starting to close. I recall an interview with Larry Blackmon of Cameo from the mid-80s where he called out Byrne and Peter Gabriel as "these lame white guys trying to be funky." And I have seen a few comments to this effect now that Stop Making Sense has been re-released.

It seems a bit churlish to bash the Talking Heads by these standards of 21st century political correctness, especially since Byrne and Demme so clearly conceived the film and the performances in order to highlight players who would be treated like anonymous sidemen and women in another context. Byrne is clearly in awe of Bernie Worrell and Alex Weir's playing, Steve Scales contagious stage presence, and above all the vocalists Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt, who frequently mirror his bizarre dance moves and strangled yelps. While Stop Making Sense doesn't foreground race in any way, it's evident that especially where Mabry and Holt are concerned, Byrne understood that casting two Black women as his performative foils would only exaggerate his whiteness.

Also, in 2023 it's hard to separate Stop Making Sense from one's knowledge of the acrimony in the band, where the other members felt overshadowed and creatively bullied by Byrne. Tina Weymouth even made some insane comment about how Byrne was an autistic vampire and had sacrificed a young boy in Haiti. (Too much of that snow white, Tina?) What's impressive, especially in this light, is just how much Byrne and Demme worked to showcase the other Heads. The liner notes to the CD posed the question, "Why do the musicians come out gradually?" And the answer seems clear. It allows each of them to make an entrance, and it uses sonic isolation to demonstrate what Weymouth's bass ("Heaven"), Chris Frantz;s drumming ("Thank You For Sending Me an Angel") and Jerry Harrison's guitar ("Found a Job") brought to the table.

And let me say, only Nixon could go to China, and only Jonathan Demme could direct Stop Making Sense. I've seen some revisionist takes lately suggesting that Demme just did what Byrne told him to. What bunk. Anyone with an awareness of Demme's style and artistry can see that his democratic, all-over approach -- making sure we see Weymouth's goofy knee-dancing, Frantz singing along even when his mic is off, or Scales constantly reaching for some obscure percussion instrument -- is evident throughout. Of course it's the David Byrne Show, but Demme mitigates this with his roving, prowling visual coverage.

It's also difficult in 2023 to watch Stop Making Sense, and Byrne in particular, without a critical lens very few people had in 1984. Pauline Kael was ahead of the curve here. She perceived the film's racial dialectic where others did not. (“He’s so white he’s almost mock-white,” Kael wrote. "He seems fleshless,  bloodless; he might almost be a Black man’s parody of how a clean-cut white man moves.") But she also remarked that although "there’s something unknowable and almost autistic about him, he makes autism fun." In the intervening years, Byrne has been more open about discussing life on the spectrum, and how his non-neurotypical experience helped shape his creativity. In American Utopia, he even mentions his personal growth, how in his younger days he was fascinated with things (e.g., More Songs About Buildings and Food), but he has since come to understand the wonder of other people.

I didn't know I was on the autistic spectrum in 1984. And frankly, I'm not sure knowing would have helped me. I might've been removed from the gifted classes and shunted into the catch-all special ed programs that Texas had at the time. I did, however, know I was somehow different from most of the other folks around me, who seemed to have a much easier time moving through the world. (That too was deceptive, of course. Everyone has struggles, and they are mostly invisible.) But on some deeply intuitive level, I saw some part of myself reflected in Stop Making Sense, a playful tendency to observe things from a tilted angle, a detached but curious perspective. (I also got this same charge from Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave, which I hope someone re-releases one day.) Talking Heads allowed me to peer above the walls of my limitations, both internal and external. And although I didn't realize it at the time, David Byrne helped my world start making sense.