At one point during this film, the camera follows a lone sheet of newspaper floating across the lawns of some bland suburban houses. David Byrne narrates: "Look at that - who can say it isn't beautiful?", and through the eyes of TRUE STORIES, it is. It's a sort of meditation on progress, told with one of the most natural and unforced displays of strangeness I've ever seen. Gone is the underlying fear and cynicism of a lot of Talking Heads' music, replaced by an almost childlike sense of wonder and excitement for the future - the future of technology, the future of love, the way our lives might change for the better.

Watching TRUE STORIES as a kid might be…

David Byrne proves to be as eccentric a filmmaker as he does a musician. This movie is a glorious spectacle, a celebration of America (inadvertently fitting considering the date I watched it), and a sly commentary on commercialism, industrialisation, and modern America at the same time. In part, it is a cross between David Lynch and John Waters and Wim Wenders, capturing small town, Middle America with an understanding of the quirks, kitsch, and expanses, but it is more than that. It has a musical soul and an appreciation of romance, and a glossy, neon eye for the absurd, that shows how the off-kilter persona Byrne has could be derived from the deceptive homogeneity of small town life.

It also…

You could accuse David Byrne of being a Pollyanna in that True Stories countenances some troubling aspects of rural America in the stylized Texas town of Virgil — track house isolation, corporate control, a church of conspiracy theories not unlike the towers of internet bullshit that our current president sits on — without ever breaking its fun music video tone or flinching at the darkness. Its got the dreamlike camp absurdity of David Lynch without the corresponding nightmare as it floats through a handful of tales that are mostly setups for musical numbers. But Byrne’s brand of benevolent irony is so humane and fun you feel like that the positivity is kind of the point. He’s a loopy zen guide…

"Look! I personally believe... I can see Forth Worth from here!"

Incredible. Magical. Surreal.

This is only my second time seeing this but I know in my heart of hearts this is a movie that I love dearly. It's so offbeat and clever...Much like many images from the movie every one of David Byrne's lines is simultaneously poetic, and probably something you'd find off the back of a chewing gum wrapper. Watching all of the shallow, farcical, but also very real people talking to each other, revealing their hopes and dreams and inner workings, is something that excites my brain in a way that very few other movies accomplish.

When I think of Synechdoche, New York, I think of my…