Thoughts from the committee
“A FILM ABOUT A BUNCH OF PEOPLE IN VIRGIL TEXAS.”
So begins True Stories. Talking Heads frontman David Byrne’s only feature as director drifts in like a half-remembered dream about America, shopping malls, and the strange poetry of everyday life, as the citizens of Virgil prepare to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Texas’ independence.
Part road movie, part musical, part documentary that isn’t a documentary at all, True Stories wanders through this small town as it gears up for its “Celebration of Specialness”. Along the way we meet lovelorn karaoke singers, obsessive technophiles, proud suburban visionaries and people who don’t quite fit anywhere – all soundtracked by Talking Heads at their most playful and sincere.
Told in a series of loose vignettes, the film sits somewhere between Robert Altman’s Nashville and the deadpan surrealism of Portlandia. In its sensibility the film is a lot like Universal Language, but with Byrne’s trademark vibrancy added – and for a sense of the quirkiness involved, Byrne co-wrote the film with Stephen Tobolowsky, perhaps best-known for playing Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day. Fans of Talking Heads will of course be delighted by the show, but the film’s warmth and curiosity about ordinary lives make it far more than a band showcase. Nearly forty years on, True Stories still feels unique – a musical about people who don’t realise they’re in a musical.
“An exuberant and wonderfully oddball stew of deadpan comedy, character drama, music video, and art installation.” – Jason Bailey, Flavorwire