Product Description

Musically comic look at \true life" in a Texas town"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14107 in DVD
• Brand: BYRNE,DAVID
• Released on: 1999-03-30
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 89 minutes

Amazon.com
Truly quirky, this mock documentary is part musical, part farce, and completely, oddly innocent. This is a one-man-band job for David Byrne (lead singer of the Talking Heads), who writes, stars, and directs, It's ostensibly about the sesquicentennial celebration of a small Texas town, but it's really about strange characters and strange attitudes. Byrne is our guide, driving us around and giving tour information about Texas in an innocuous patter, frequently running into Louis Fyne (John Goodman), a lonely man looking for love. At various times, and with little provocation, the film swoons into a Talking Heads number with preachers and bar patrons belting out tunes. If you make room for it, however, True Stories can surprise and delight with its inventiveness and its unconventional treatment of the residents. A scene in which a construction worker launches into an aria, on a makeshift stage when no one else is around, is but one example of numerous such moments in this bizarre, delightful, and benign film. Any Talking Heads fan who doesn't own it should. --Keith Simanton

Customer Reviews

Great Movie; Horrible DVD
THIS REVIEW IS IN NO WAY a review of the movie, which is unique and fairly unmatched, and has set some artistic standards.

Excuse me, but wasn't the brilliance of this movie at least worth.. well... a WIDESCREEN inclusion?

Come on.

Formatted to fit-your-tv only.

No extra features, no insights, no commentary, and TWO - get this - TWO menu selections - either to select a scene, or simply play the movie.

Warner Brothers went family-style cheap on this disc and it is a travesty to assume people with a DVD player just want a VHS-level rendition of an art film.

Don't buy this - wait until a version comes out that shows evidence someone has given this incredible movie some respect.

BLAH. Disappointing.

A very funny Byrne-esque prophecy...
What is this strange movie about? Shopping malls, easily (and shabbily) constructed suburban building projects, computer dating, lonliness and the pursuit of attention, mass media, metal buildings, computers, evangelist preachers, the disappearance of culture into the principles of the ledger sheet and the skyscraper. These and other topics pervade "True Stories'" disparate plot lines and imagery. David Byrne took on the entire emerging power establishment of the late 1980s in this film. Today the film views like a warning, like a bleak testament to the disappearance of a previous way of life. Most of us live in the culmination of what this film seemed to prophesize. "True Stories" is cultural criticism embedded in campy film.

Byrne had played with the theme of mainstream alienation before. "Don't Worry About the Government" (from "Talking Heads '77"), "The Big Country" (from "More Songs About Buildings and Food"), and "The Road to Nowhere" (from "Little Creatures") provide just three examples. These songs attempt to elevate peoples' perceptions about their immediate culture. So does "True Stores".

Not everyone will enjoy this movie. Sometimes the pace moves along like molasses. Some of it feels very dated. It has an intentionally stilted perspective as it plays with common expectations and perceptions. Some of the humor is corny. In short, it's an experimental movie. That said, it also contains moments of absolute brilliance, penetrates some then unknown depths of humor, and has the ability to open eyes to the bizarre aspects of the culture of 1986 that we have all inherited. It also invites comparisons (in theme) to Luis Buñuel's "The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie". That and the cinematography of the vast Texas landscape is stunning.

One scene that really brings out the film's themes is "The Parade of Specialness" in Virgil, Texas (with the Shriners in cars and the 'lawnmower brigade'). This scene is more about the disappearance of small town culture and pride and less about the freakishness of small town parades. As the painfully brief parade passes, the crowd stares at the tail end of the festivities as it slowly fades away into an empty distance. Where are they going? Away, seemingly forever, to nowhere. And quickly.

Some of the other brilliant scenes include: the fashion show with wildly ostentatious and meaningless fashions paraded past gaping mall goers; the dinner with the Culvers ("pass this to our guest"); the "Puzzlin' Evidence" and "Love For Sale" montages; the film's climax "The Big Show". Byrne's intro "The History of Texas" is one of the biggest highlights. John Goodman, in one of his earliest roles, plays Louis with sincerity and sometimes over the top humor. And Spaulding Gray displays only absolute mastery when he appears on the screen. His almost surreal introduction to "The Big Show" would stand up to infinite viewings.

Lastly, calling "True Stories" a "Talking Heads Movie" must be one of the greatest misnomers of that band's career. This was Byrne's movie (the other 3 members only appear in very brief glimpses and in the re-edited cut of the "Wild Wild Life" video). In 1986 the band stood on a pinnacle of popularity following 1985's "Little Creatures". People with money in their eyes likely thought to capitalize on the band's success (or perhaps that's how the film received funding?). Unfortunately, the band also found itself breaking apart at the seams. In an issue of Rolling Stone at the time, the other band members (most notably Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz) openly attacked Byrne. They depicted this movie as Byrne's attempt to put himself above the band. Weymouth even compared Byrne to a five year old. Nastiness ensued, and the film "True Stories" remains one of the pieces in the puzzle of the band's demise. They released one more album in 1988, "Naked". That was it, apart from a few very cursory "reunions". The DVD re-release pretty much removes the "Talking Heads" tie-in that created so much tension during the film's original release. This is good. "True Stories" stands up better as a "David Byrne" film than as a "Talking Heads" film.

Leonard Maltin just doesn't get it
Ignore Leonard Maltin's review above - this is no "satire". Far from winking superiority and cruel condecension, David Byrne deeply loves these characters for their absolutely unique art-form: gentle, American, small-town eccentricity. He stars in this film for the simple reason that he wants to introduce his beloved eccentrics to you personally. Byrne's stated artistic objective, to "elevate the mundane", here succeeds thoroughly: he grants even the film's most pathetic characters a grace and poignancy that no other modern filmmaker could match (though David Lynch's "Straight Story" shows promise). This movie is a treasure.