‎True Stories (1986) directed by David Byrne • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

True Stories

1986 Directed by David Byrne

A Completely Cool, Multi-Purpose Movie.

A small but growing Texas town, filled with strange and musical characters, celebrates its sesquicentennial and converge on a local parade and talent show.

David Byrne John Goodman Swoosie Kurtz Spalding Gray Annie McEnroe Jo Harvey Allen Alix Elias Roebuck 'Pops' Staples Tito Larriva John Ingle Jerry Harrison Chris Frantz Tina Weymouth

90 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by sydney ★★★★★ 4

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…
Review by Justin Peterson ★★★½

Criterion Collection Spine #951

I don't think I have ever been so pleasantly perplexed about movie.

True Stories is a very quirky look at a bunch of people in the small Texas town of Virgil, presented by Director David Byrne from the band Talking Heads. Byrne acts of the narrator of the story as he goes around the town in his cowboy hat and suit, as preparations are being made for their big sesquicentennial anniversary celebration, that will include a parade and talent show.

Beyond the main loose plot, the story is made up of vignettes touching on several topics including modernization in the 80s, religion and politics, consumerism, and has plenty of observational humor and musical performances.

"I have…
Review by Sally Jane Black 2

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…
Review by Joe ★★★★½ 1

Literally everything David Byrne says in this movie can serve as a quote in a Letterboxd review, you pick one.

Tempting to read this as pure satire, but if that's what it is it's extraordinarily condescending and unilluminating - instead I think the view voiced by Byrne, that suburban sprawl, shopping malls, prefabricated buildings, TV commercials, and even giant corporations can all be beautiful is more or less what's being expressed by the movie, albeit in a very funny tongue-in-cheek mode that should seem faintly familiar to fans of his band. And then there's the stuff that probably was intended as satire in 1986, like the "Puzzling Evidence" religion based on an unending conspiracy narrative, that have basically come true in the intervening 30 years. Extremely hard not to love.
Review by Raul Marques ★★★★½ 6

If there's anything like this, I haven’t seen it. A character study of a fictional town, a video essay and a concert film, where Byrne takes this role of a quietly inquisitive anthropologist that contemplates this microcosm of human life with the same kind of estrangement and fascination usually reserved to 'exotic’ societies. At the same time, his physical presence as the narrator seems to will that universe into existence, a world in which anecdotal tales may in fact be true, because they are, even when they don’t, they reveal something about the people that proclaim them - and what is western civilization if not that. Plus, you get young John Goodman and a bunch of great songs.
Review by sydney ★★★★★

utterly crazy seeing this in the front row of a theater, finally just as big as it has always felt in my mind, like i could lean forward and fall inside of it or bathe in it until i swell up & pop. i've been driving fast through the texas countryside at night in very dangerous weather conditions every day all week and even though i was terrified i was going to fly off the road and die in a ball of fire, or run through a field and straight off the edge of the world, i also thought of spalding gray telling his story about how god got lazy and created people who love it here, and knew that dying is the only thing that could ever make me leave

Recent reviews

Review by Thos Brown ★★★★

A little masturbatory but I fuck with it
Review by Justin Peterson ★★★½

Criterion Collection Spine #951

I don't think I have ever been so pleasantly perplexed about movie.

True Stories is a very quirky look at a bunch of people in the small Texas town of Virgil, presented by Director David Byrne from the band Talking Heads. Byrne acts of the narrator of the story as he goes around the town in his cowboy hat and suit, as preparations are being made for their big sesquicentennial anniversary celebration, that will include a parade and talent show.

Beyond the main loose plot, the story is made up of vignettes touching on several topics including modernization in the 80s, religion and politics, consumerism, and has plenty of observational humor and musical performances.

"I have…
Review by Tyler ★★★★★

God! What a feeling! Sitting there in the dark with these huge colors right there in front of you, thinking to yourself, "The movie I'm watching right now is one of the very best movies I've ever watched." How often do you get that feeling?

Why did it take me until I was thirty to see this movie? People have been recommending it to me since 2006, when I moved to the Midwest and my being from Texas became a very mildly exotic fact to drop into innocuous small talk conversations. I held a valid unrevoked Texas drivers license until March 2017 and that's probably only because the Powers That Be didn't know I had never seen True Stories.

I…
Review by Brian Belak ★★★★

There are many beautifully human moments in this film, but my favorite remains the community lip sync to "Wild Wild Life." An extended sequence of pure joy.

Bonus points for the flash of recognition when John Goodman spoke the words later sampled in the song "Dream on Cortelyou" by WHY?.
Review by bloodcafe ★★★★½

Really wish David had done more like True Stories. An equally contemptuous and fascinated look at what goes on in this dude's head. Weird to think that 30 years ago shopping malls were a threat.
Review by Royce Yun ★★★

The Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago, IL) @ 6pm.

“Music is easy.. I wrote Billie Jean.”

The humor is a little too dry for my tastes, but light and entertaining overall with a few dull moments interspersed. The music was pleasant.
Remember Walden Bookstores??
Review by Jack ★★★★

Positively heartwarming. There’s really nothing else like this. Just quaint slice-of-life stuff with an incredibly human and empathetic approach to character. Not the biggest Talking Heads fan, but the soundtrack rocks, too.
Review by Mikey Brzezinski ★★★★

35mm

Exactly what you would expect and want out of a film directed by David Byrne. A chill, surreal and meditative look at the natural progress of life and civilization built with tabloid stories and mass consummerism with a delightful sense of charm and humor. It moves with a most unusual daydream-esque pace with some of the most infectious musical numbers ever put to celluloid. Hard to pin down upon just one viewing but I will most certainly be picking up a copy of the Criterion in November.
Review by Ron Kelland ★★★★★

Ever watch a film and have a hard time trying to figure out if it is a work of staggering genius or an example of unadulterated lunacy? That is how I feel after watching True Stories, but I am coming down pretty hard on the genius aspect. Made by David Byrne of the Talking Heads, at its most basic the film views like an extended Talking Heads music video - and if that was all it is, it would still be worth well worth watching. The music is fantastic, firmly rooted 1980s , experimental, alt-rock kind of fantastic. However the film is more than just that.

It is set in a small Texas town. A kind of white-breadiest of all…