True Stories (1986)

Back when I first got together with Mr. B, he listed True Stories as one of his favourite films. Having never heard of it, I was intrigued, but not quite so intrigued as to bother seeking it out; it sounded like proto-Wes Anderson, one of those little arthouse curios that play like vintage musical boxes in that they charm the eye and ear without necessarily engaging the mind or the heart.

A few years passed, however, and I temporarily found myself in arguably the worst job I've ever done. In the dusty, windowless basement of a particularly joyless public library, alone barring several hundred boxes of child abuse records that needed cataloguing, the nonstop energy of Talking Heads became an effervescent forcefield against the unending gloom. Suddenly, I wanted to know about everything they'd done and every project they'd been involved with. 

For a brief period, the Stop Making Sense DVD was on permanent loop in our household. True Stories, though, Byrne's own film project, proved rather harder to track down. In the end, and in desperation, I purchased not only a VHS copy but a machine to play it on.

For the uninitiated (of which I'm guessing there will be many), the film is based on stories Byrne read from the lurid tabloid news magazines of the late 70s and early 80s. Here, he takes the essence of them and moulds them into a mockumentary about a visitor to the small town of Virgil, Texas, during the week where the state celebrates its 150th anniversary. Through the eyes of Byrne's naif stranger, we meet the inhabitants, from John Goodman's Louis Fyne, a self-confessed teddy bear of a man just looking for love, to Jo Harvey Allen's Lying Woman, a modern-day counterpart to the legendary Baron Munchausen. We peer into their lives, watching for a week as they prepare for a climactic Saturday parade and talent show. The whole thing is, of course, liberally soundtracked by the music of Talking Heads, sometimes as background but more often as interludes sung by the characters themselves.

The good

You really won't see anything else like this, I swear it. I suppose the closest equivalent would be Christopher Guest's work on the likes of Best in Show or A Mighty Wind, but True Stories is at once much more naturalistic and much, much odder. Slightly episodic in nature, it allows all the main players to have their chance to shine, even if Byrne's unnamed narrator sometimes has to coax it out of them.

There's so many high spots here I can't even begin to catalogue them, from performance artist Spalding Gray describing technological progress by manipulating objects on the family dinner table to John Ingle as a preacher in a church devoted to conspiracy theories, a segment which makes particularly great use of Talking Heads' tendency to use religious musical idiom for decidedly non-religious themes. 

And the music really is everything here, or almost. It sets the mood early on in a karaoke bar scene where people of every size, shape and colour jump on stage one at a time to lip-synch to Wild, Wild Life. It's an upbeat song, and it's an upbeat scene, warm and humane and inclusive, explaining wordlessly that this is a space where everybody is welcome and everybody can be happy. Even the blistering sun and cloudless skies of the flat Texas landscape eventually start to look open and friendly, and so inviting that I pine for the place every single time after the end credits have rolled.

This is a film about weird people, and it carries the message that yes, you're weird too, and that's okay. In our current social climate, I feel this is more powerful than ever, and more necessary.

The bad

There's so very much I feel I've missed out in the section above - scenes I've loved, wholeheartedly, and want to tell you about in the hope you'll take the trouble to track the film down, too.

With all that said...

Yes, it's probably a bit arthouse. Not a criticism, not in any way, but lovers of standard multiplex fodder might be left slightly adrift by the floaty narrative structure and stylised characterisation. It took me a couple of viewings to feel as though I really got the movie, which doesn't waste time on unnecessary exposition. There's a dreamlike quality to the whole affair, emphasized by the two scenes that bookend it, and which are voiced by vocal artist Meredith Monk. 

Honestly, the worst I can really say about this one is that if the music of Talking Heads annoys you, maybe you should consider looking elsewhere.

The Verdict

Another film that proves that Christopher Guest doesn't have the monopoly on the mockumentary format, not even the musical sort.  Coming back to this one after a few years away felt like coming home, and I'm thoroughly glad I made the journey.