TALKING HEADS REUNITE,
TORONTO
Who knew a 40-year-old concert movie playing in a multiplex could be such a happening?
Members of Talking Heads reunited onstage for the first time in 21 years — for a Q&A moderated by Spike Lee, that is. The band, which broke up acrimoniously in 1991 and hasn’t appeared in public together since its 2002 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, didn’t play a single note.
They simply watched their younger selves on a gigantic screen in the new 4K Imax restoration of Jonathan Demme’s seminal concert documentary “Stop Making Sense,” which was having its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. And yet, demand to be in that room with them was so high that one man waited four hours in a line for rush tickets, which would be given out only if someone with a ticket failed to show up to the sold-out screening. (“That’s a new record,” said an admiring ticketscanner.)
“When I was watching this just now, I was thinking, ‘This is why we come to the movie theaters,’ ” said singer David Byrne, after the screening. “This is different than watching it on my laptop.”
Byrne was joined by drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth (who are married) alongside keyboardist Jerry Harrison. Frantz wrote a 2020 memoir that accused Byrne of being powerhungry and ruthless, seizing sole credit for songs the whole band had written. Weymouth has called him “a vampire,” “insecure” and “Trumpian” — incapable of thinking about other people.
Byrne recently admitted that he was responsible for the band’s “ugly” breakup and that he could be “a little tyrant” when he was younger. He gets along better with Harrison, with whom he gets dinner sometimes.
The water didn’t seem to be totally under the bridge — in the red carpet photos for the evening, Weymouth looked very much like she did not want to be there — but the crowd reaction to the film and the band seemed to soften things a bit.
“You know, Talking Heads was such a good band,” Frantz told Lee for the Q&A, which was being simulcast to Imax theaters around the world. “It’s so good to be here with my bandmates tonight . . . . I’m very grateful to be here tonight and to be able to watch this and to enjoy it so much.”
The crowd in Toronto was already pumped the second Byrne’s white sneakers walked out onstage, in the film’s opening shot, as he leaned over to turn on a boombox. They screamed as Byrne danced, knocking his knees together in a flowing white suit, or as Weymouth stomped around in striped tights. The film, which had been shot over three nights at L.A.’s Pantages Theater in December 1983, looked fantastic, restored from the original 35mm print. The sound was immersive and impeccable, as if it were being created in the room that very moment. It didn’t feel like film; it felt like Talking Heads really had timetraveled, and we were the lucky witnesses. (It will release exclusively on
Imax on Friday and hit theaters everywhere Sept. 29.)
“I’m going on record, around the world: This is the greatest concert film ever!” said Lee, who’d filmed the concert version of Byrne’s “American Utopia,” which premiered at TIFF three years ago.
His enthusiasm was a stark contrast to Weymouth, who deadpanned: “My big contribution was I never turned my amp up past three.”
She let the laughter settle in, then explained: “That way it left room for everybody else to shine, because if the bass player gets too loud, forget it.”
If “Stop Making Sense” feels like being in a time machine back to 1983, that’s because it essentially is. “This is more or less what we were doing on tour,” Byrne said. The intermission, a couple of songs and costume changes got cut out, “but other than that, this is kind of the show we were doing,” Byrne said. “It seemed like it had a progression to it, a story. And I think it occurred to us, ‘This could maybe work as a film.’ It’s got a beginning and a middle and an end, and we started thinking about who could direct this and how can we do this? How do we pay for that?”
The band had decided to restore the film, Harrison said, in part because the advent of new technology and multichannel audio could vastly improve the sound. If you really wanted to listen to the keys in one section, you can now, whereas it wasn’t as clear in the original or in the 1999 re-release, which restored some songs that Demme had cut.
Before the screening started, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey told the crowd how lucky they were; five times as many people had tried to get tickets as actually got in. Then he gave permission to let loose:
“As was said, you can dance if you want to.”
The crowd took it to heart. When late keyboardist Bernie Worrell of Parliament-Funkadelic showed up in close-up during “Life During Wartime,” a voice behind me exclaimed, “A band like that?!” It sounded like both a definitive statement and an expression of glee. I turned around. The voice was Lee’s, two rows back.
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco.
When the familiar strains of “Burning Down the House” came on, a smattering of people stood up to dance in the front and back of the theater, then soon Byrne and the entire band, seated on the right side of the room, were on their feet.
“It’s a little steep for dancing, but some people managed,” said Harrison, referring to the stadiumstyle Imax setup. He’d left his seat, he said, and sneaked around to the back of the theater for better comfort. “I wanted to dance around a little bit and just sort of experience it. I don’t want to be off at the side,” he said. “I wanted to experience the widescreen.”
At one point, when Byrne runs around onstage, a young man with a blond ponytail vaulted over the railing in front of his seats and ran loops of the theater, across the front aisle, and up and down the stairs, before doing a perfect vault back over the rail and into his seat without hitting the wheelchair-accessible row below him.
That was the moment there was no turning back. The crowd whooped and screamed. Every time Worrell came on, Lee would shout, “Bernie!” Every time Byrne or Weymouth danced, everyone lost their minds. “Go David! Go David!” Lee shouted. When Byrne did his costume change into his oversize suits, the floor was practically shaking. And as soon as they launched into “Once in a Lifetime,” everyone was standing.
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down.
Byrne and Frantz explained the origins of the film. Demme had simply approached them backstage after a show. They’d loved his comedy “Melvin and Howard,” which they found more beautiful than any other movie of its time. Then, once they saw how Demme was working with editor Lisa Day, they saw his vision. He also let the band weigh in on edits and how to shoot it on the six cameras they used every night.
“I realized that he was looking at it as an ensemble film, like you would have a bunch of actors in a location and you get to know each character one by one,” Byrne said. “He lets you get familiar with them. And then you watch how they all interact with one another. And I thought, ‘I’m in my own world, but he saw what was going on there.’ ”
Demme came out on tour with them, as did Sandy McLeod, a visual consultant who meticulously mapped out everyone’s movements, so they’d know who to shoot when there were six cameras trained on them.
Byrne also told Lee how the giant suit came to be. A Japanese designer had told him that, in the theater, everything is bigger than in real life. “He’s referring to, like, gestures and you sing louder and all that, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my suit should be bigger, too,’ ” Byrne said.
Acrimony or not, as they laughed about the past, some warmth returned.
“I love that show. It was magical. Everything about it was so special,” Weymouth said.
“One of the reasons for the lasting power of the film is you see how much fun we are having onstage, and the audience is, too,” Harrison said.
“Can I put the word love in there, too?” Lee asked, as the audience hooted in agreement.
“And love,” said Harrison, smiling. “Exactly: love and fun. And the audience is brought right in there. We’re saying, ‘You’re part of this, too.’ And I think every time anybody watches, it brings back that wonderful emotion.”