(Nicole Cepeda • The Student Life)
In 1986, David Byrne made a movie. I don’t know if that’s common knowledge or not. I saw it for the first time only a month ago, but in the weeks since, it’s wriggled its way deep into my psyche and for the life of me, I can’t get it to leave.
The movie in question is called “True Stories” — an odd little cinematic earworm that could only come from the mind of the New Wave’s most whimsical frontman.
It’s really not much more than a smattering of vignettes — tabloid snippets documenting the unusual denizens of a tight-knit Texas town as they skitter about their lives in preparation for their community’s sesquicentennial “Celebration of Special-ness.”
There is, of course, the wealthy woman who never leaves her bed, the rabidly conspiratorial preacher and the compulsive liar allegedly responsible for half of Elvis’s catalog. These are the eccentrics around whom the film orbits, a townful of side characters promoted to major players.
Perhaps the most curious character is Byrne’s, who — draped in his finest rodeo threads — narrates the film; an observant out-of-towner made small against the grand Texas prairie by his expansive hat and proximity to John Goodman’s unwavering panda-bear frame. He is our gussied-up Texas tour guide, the glue that sticks these loosely bound scenes together and a veritable wellspring of charming comments and contemplative observations.
There are musical numbers and church sermons and dinner table theatrics. There is an auctioneering contest and a procession of shriners in their little red buggies. There are no grand narratives and few full-circle arcs. These disordered sights and sounds are connected by a solid throughline of kitsch sensibilities, an abiding dedication to meditation and a road-trip compulsion to pull aside and soak in the sights.
And frankly, that’s more than enough. “True Stories” begs an intriguing question: Can a movie really just be a bunch of odd characters and good quotes and musical numbers? Is that enough?
It answers itself in turn with a resounding “Yeah, why couldn’t it?”
I think sometimes we, as film watchers and filmmakers and film-talk-abouters, have a proclivity to apotheosize plots — strong, sound, lean ones where no thread gets left untied and no hero goes un-journeyed.
There’s value in that I suppose — you can make good things from good molds — but, to use a folksy colloquialism of my own, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
I make movies in my free time, just short films. It’s something I enjoy despite the gray hairs it gives me. I like to write. I want to write better. I’ve turned to books on writing, YouTube, screenwriting gurus, people who speak with a sense of authority on the rubrics of good storytelling.
“It’s really not much more than a smattering of vignettes — tabloid snippets documenting the unusual denizens of a tight-knit Texas town as they skitter about their lives in preparation for their community’s sesquicentennial “Celebration of Special-ness.”
Truth be told, there’s something that always feels mildly poisonous about it. The more I seek to understand the secret rules of storytelling, the more writing as a practice feels rigid and self-conscious and uninspiring. I think that the more I do it, the more I run the risk of never being able to make something like “True Stories.”
David Byrne never made a narrative feature film before or after this. His role as a filmmaker is tertiary to his roles as a musician and wearer of big suits, though I don’t think “True Stories” is as brilliant as it is in spite of that. A first-time filmmaker nursed on the tenets of “the great stories” could never make this. It’s too unencumbered, too lyrical.
It’s filmmaking through musicianship. It’s got the structure of a song — a conglomerate of great seemingly disparate verses welded together by thematic coherence and a unified sound.
What a wonderful way to tell a story.
The tagline for the film describes it as “a completely cool, multipurpose movie,” and I think that’s an apt description. “True Stories” is a catalog of music videos. It’s a bundle of memorable quotes and thoughtful musings. It’s a playful, surrealist satire on middle-America kitsch and ’80s consumer optimism. It’s so disarmingly fond of the people and places it’s prodding that it serves double-duty as a love letter.
It’s also a reminder, if for nobody else but me, that exceptional stories take the form they need to. In that regard, “True Stories” is, perhaps, the greatest kind of art there is — the kind that makes great art seem more worth making.
I think about John Goodman singing “People Like Us” almost every single day. It keeps me going.
Gerrit Punt PO ’24 is a lifelong fan of David Byrne and big cowboy hats. This is his last article for The Student Life. He hopes you enjoyed it.
Facebook Comments