True Stories

When he began directing his own rock videos David Byrne (lead singer of the Talking Heads), seemed to be making an effortless transition. The leap to feature film making comes even more freely. In this pseudo-documentary, Byrne is an amusing eccentric himself, cruising around town in a cherry-red convertible spewing humorous one-liners, often speaking directly to the audience, and wearing tacky urban cowboy attire.
Byrne brings his players, eccentric characters taken from newspapers together in a fictional place. The small American town of Virgil is celebrating its 150th anniversary with a parade and a concert. Byrne’s countenance throughout the film is a wonderful mix of curiosity, amazement and disbelief as he passes through the everyday life of Virgil seeking, and finding, the bizarre in the ordinary.
This being a one-man-band job for Byrne who writes, stars, and directs, True Stories still features a number of songs written by Byrne and performed by various members of the cast, as well as by Byrne’s band (the members of which make cameo appearances). This movie does what some painters try to do: it recasts ordinary images into strange new shapes. There is hardly a moment in True Stories that doesn’t seem everyday to anyone who has grown up in mid-America, and not a moment that doesn’t seem haunted with secrets, evasions, loneliness, depravity or hidden joy.