David Byrne's 1986 film True Stories has to be one of the strangest films that a major studio (Warner Bros.) has ever paid money for. Written and directed by Byrne and cowritten by Beth Henley and Stephen Tobolowsky, True Stories was a companion to the Talking Heads' album of the same name. That album, the band's next-to-last studio effort, contains some of Byrne's most emotionally direct songs. If there's no "Once In A Lifetime" here that's because the album's best songs live up to the title; these are songs that everyday people could write or even sing in their most vulnerable moments.
True Stories the film is a mockumentary of sorts with Byrne as a host and narrator character. The setting is Virgil, Texas,a quiet town beginning to sprawl where the mall is a center of civic life and one company provides most of the jobs. There are several plot threads, most notably the story of a gentle bachelor (a young John Goodman) who advertises for a wife on television. Spalding Gray appears briefly as a town leader whose dinner table speech eerily foretells what working life will be like for many Americans ("There is no concept of weekends anymore") in 2010. Everything culminates in a town-wide "Celebration of Specialness," a talent show where Goodman's character triumphs by singing the country ballad "People Like Us." Goodman's performance may actually top the album version of the song; there's also Pops Staples as a voodoo priest singing "Papa Legba."
The film's deadpan sweetness is hard to describe but for me was formative. The album and film of True Stories (when viewed at age 14) marked my realization that you could like something other than what you were told to like. It led me to Talking Heads other music, Spin magazine, R.E.M, "alternative v. mainstream," etc., and the rest is history. If True Stories had been arch or snide how would the beginning of my cultural literacy have been different? It's an unanswerable question really, but looking back I'm glad that this gentle act of defiance against Reagan-era blandness was my jumping off point into all the rest of it.
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