Stop Making Sense – REVIEW

We’re finally coming to a point in my writing since the beginning of this decade. If you don’t know, I wrote album reviews from about 2020 to 2022, and even though that really isn’t my thing anymore, it did help shape out what my current taste in music would end up being right now. That blog is actually still up to read somewhere (it’s not exactly hard to find). However, I’m going to throw a big curveball in there: I barely knew who Talking Heads were about two years ago. I knew the name David Byrne, but that was at the point where I regularly mixed up the names David Byrne and David Lynch. It’s actually been a little over a year since I watched Stop Making Sense, the 1984 concert film conceived by Talking Heads frontman Byrne and directed by the late Jonathan Demme, who’d go on to direct movies like The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and The Manchurian Candidate. Watching it for the first time as a 720p rip on YouTube wasn’t exactly the ideal way for me, but something clicked for me with these guys. I’m pretty sure it was known then that A24 was going to be releasing a restored version in theaters at some point in 2023, but we didn’t know when yet. I saw the 4K remaster in theaters, and *that* is when I truly fell in love with it. As a side note, the trailer for the remaster (which is linked below) has quickly become one of my favorite trailers for anything ever. Give that a watch.

I feel like people do love to talk about the overall structure of the movie, but it really does add so much to the movie. Opening with just David with a guitar and a boombox and gradually adding Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Bernie Worrell, Steve Scales, and Alex Weir with each song on top of building a working set of lights and visuals behind them until a fully functioning stage show forms during the performance is just, plain and simply, wonderful. Since that’s probably been talked to death, I’d also like to throw in another element that I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about. During the first few songs in the movie where the entire band isn’t on stage yet, David Byrne just looks so stiff while performing. As the movie goes on, though, he gets much looser and energetic, like the rest of the band and Byrne are all feeding off of each other to bring it their all to this series of shows recorded for the movie. It’s truly something that not a lot of straight-up concert movies can capture that feeling for me.

The actual filmmaking here is pretty astounding here too. There’s so many little choices here that just feel awe-inspiring to me. Some of them include barely showing the audience until the very end, entire songs being close-up shots, the use of wide shots, specifically during “What a Day That Was,” the shot of David Byrne’s iconic dance during “Life During Wartime” that looks like it’s right in the middle of the audience… I could go on for a while. Since it’s a concert movie, the music is definitely a key element, so I just gotta list out some of my favorite tracks in this. It’s very tough for me to choose a favorite, but I do always keep going back to “What a Day That Was,” one of two non-Talking Heads songs in the movie. That shot of his face mostly covered in shadows as he sings is one that’s already burned into my brain. “Slippery People,” “Swamp,” “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody),” “Once in a Lifetime,” “Heaven,” I could name every song on here, but that’ll just defeat the purpose. It’s just that great.





Instead of an overall paragraph, I’ll just say this: Stop Making Sense is absolutely electric and if you’re at all interested in music, filmmaking, or both, it’s essential. Like the trailer above proudly claims, it’s the best concert film of all time. Now, here are some moments throughout Stop Making Sense that just make me smile.

• Tina’s crabwalk during “Genius of Love”
• Chris’s “JAMES BROWN!” ad-libs on “Genius of Love"
• The Big Suit
• The dance we all know during “Life During Wartime”
• David’s cardio routine
• That first minute of “Crosseyed and Painless” before we hear the lyrics
• David and Alex dancing together during “Burning Down The House"
• David stumbling around Breathless-style during “Psycho Killer”
• All of “What a Day That Was”
• The lean that David does at the very end of “Thank You for Sending an Angel"
• David laughing like a madman during “What a Day That Was”
• David’s silly voice during “Swamp”
• The close-up on David the last time he said “lifetime” during “Once in a Lifetime”
• David looking surprised that the lamp didn’t fall during “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”

♡

As of today, Stop Making Sense is streaming on MAX, along with the 4K physical release being available as an A24 Shop exclusive.