2023-09-11 12:44:06
The 1983 launch of disco Speaking In Tongues from the band Talking Heads It was a complete upheaval in the global music scene. Without a doubt one of the best albums of the 80s, for the magazine’s critic Rolling StoneDavid Fricke, the album erased the fine line that separated the art white pop deep funk black. In his piece, Fricke praised the hybrid nature and a certain electric freshness that the album continues to retain almost intact so long later.
The critic also pointed out that this new music from the band led by David Byrne managed to effortlessly escape the pretensions that usually characterized the music of that time, and also did so with a relaxed attitude and providing music that was incredible for dancing. , qualifying it in the last line of his article as: “A new model for future great records to listen to at parties”.
He was right about that, it’s clear that the album was probably played at thousands and thousands of parties around the world for a few decades. It was an absolute success. Your song Burning Down The House provided the band with its only Top 10 on the US pop chart (it reached nine) and, over time, album and song turned, if they weren’t already, the Talking Heads into a cult group.
He was also a little to blame for all of this. Stop Making Sense (1983), the film directed by the then young director Jonathan Demme (which years later he would bill The silence of the lambs), and now, after acquiring its distribution rights, the almighty production company A24 is going to relaunch in theaters and IMAX, in a restored and remastered copy to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
The genesis of “the best ‘concert film’ in history”
As told in This Must Be The Place: The Adventures Of Talking Heads In The Twentieth Century by David Bowman, one of the best biographies ever written about the New York group, in 1983 Jonathan Demme was filming his first major film Girls on the warpath, a big-budget film (it included, for example, the star of the moment, Goldie Hawn), but it was too small for the director’s artistic ambitions. Demme deeply hated that film and wanted to make another one, perhaps smaller, but much funnier.
The American director always loved music and had seen Talking Heads play earlier that year in Hollywood. The concert had seemed incredible. He found Byrne’s presence on stage impressive and it occurred to him that perhaps it might be a good idea to make a film of one of his concerts.
The project also fit perfectly with the band’s interests: they were in their prime and a film of their concert would allow them to become even bigger and take their show where they couldn’t physically do so. Besides, David had liked it a lot. Melvin y Howarda film that Demme had directed a few years ago, so after meeting to discuss the project, everything went smoothly.
Con Stop Making Sense, Demme intended to follow in the footsteps of other previous musical films such as The Last Waltz by Martin Scorsese or Rust Never Sleeps de Neil Young and, drawing on his direct and honest approach, to do the best concert film of the story, transmitting to the viewer all the energy of attending a Talking Heads performance.
Why see the public?
The idea was that the concert was a kind of band retrospective, which had been active since 1975, in which at first only David Byrne would appear on a completely naked stage and, little by little, musicians and instruments would join him, ending with a kind of final explosion. The first song chosen was Psycho Killerthe group’s first hit, a song from 1977. They also played their great hit of the moment, Burning Down The Houseas well as various songs from the Heads drummer and bassist’s side project, Tom Tom Club, and some songs by David Byrne alone.
For your recording four concerts were actually filmed that the group performed at the Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard during Christmas 1983, and it was decided that each night the film crew would focus on a specific aspect of the concert.
The first day the public was recorded. The team placed enormous arcs of lights to illuminate the more than 2,800 people who packed the premises. As explained in the book, the feeling of seeing the gigantic stalls constantly illuminated was really strange. Both for the audience itself and, especially, for the musicians, who couldn’t concentrate and offered perhaps the worst concert in the history of the Heads.
When Demme saw the result of the recording the next day, he found it to be an absolute disaster. But after the shock Initially, the director thought that perhaps what had happened was a stroke of luck. He took it as a sign that he had to remove the audience from the final cut: he would focus on the stage.
In fact, he argued that showing the public was the equivalent of the canned laughter of sitcoms. Seeing people on screen having a good time was like showing viewers that they also had to have a good time at that moment. something too much naive and that he did not respect the maturity of the public.
The rest of the nights were spent recording close-ups of Byrne, another of the band members, and finally general shots of the stage.
El show del ‘Big Suit’
Perhaps one of the most memorable moments of the concert is when Byrne comes on stage to sing the song Girlfriend Is Better with the Big Suitan absurdly large costume that was inspired in part by Japanese Noh theater and which became an icon not only of the film, but also of Byrne himself.
In an interview for the magazine Time In 2014 the artist recalled how he had come up with the idea: “I was in Japan between tours and I was researching traditional Japanese theater: Kabuki, Noh, Bunraku, and at the same time I was thinking about what to wear for our next tour. Then a fashion designer friend (Jurgen Lehl) said to me in his typical ironic tone: ‘Well, David, everything is bigger on stage.’ He was referring to gestures and all that, but I applied the idea to a businessman’s suit.”
Later, in an interview included on the concert DVD, the artist added: “I wanted my head to look smaller and the easiest way to do it was to make my body bigger, because music is very physical and often the body makes it bigger.” understands before the head”.
Premiere and impact
The premiere, held at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 24, 1984, it was a real party. As things heated up, many of the spectators got up from their seats and began to dance and jump in front of the screen. The chaos was such that, literally, the audience’s jumps made the building shake. So much so that the manager of the venue panicked and was about to stop the screening and demand that everyone return to their seats. Finally, someone, perhaps Demme himself according to the book, managed to calm him down.
The reaction around the world was similar. The film was almost unanimously considered by critics as one of the best musical films in history., describing it as overwhelming, fascinating or brilliant. Also in our country where the critic Ángel Fernández-Santos was impressed with its montage and its ability to show an a priori simple action, such as a music concert, and give it a strange depth. “The babbling of VIDEO current situation and the lack of a shocking encounter between the rock rite and the channels pierced by musical cinema […] finds in this humble film the indication of a path that leads, behind the expected, to the unexpected; behind the facility, to the complexity; behind the document, to fiction; behind a claustrophobic confinement, to the serene burst of freedom.”
Even today, the film has a 100% approval rating in Rotten Tomatoeswith an average rating of 9 out of 10 and a consensus review that reads: “Stop Making Sense by Jonathan Demme captures the energetic, unpredictable live performance of Talking Heads’ prime era in all its splendor and visual acuity.”
Now, thanks to A24, viewers in 2023 will once again have the opportunity to enjoy a unique work that isIt will premiere on September 11 at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). and which will be accompanied by a question and answer session with the members of the group, who will reunite again after their separation in 2002. Jonathan Demme died in 2017.
Although there is no confirmed release date in Spain, The world premiere in theaters will be on September 25 in IMAX and on the 28th in conventional cinemas.
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