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True Stories
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by Warner Home Video
Sales Rank: 8218
Price: $7.99
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Truly quirky, this mock documentary is part musical, part farce, and completely, oddly innocent. This is a one-man-band job for David Byrne (lead singer of the Talking Heads), who writes, stars, and directs, It's ostensibly about the sesquicentennial celebration of a small Texas town, but it's really about strange characters and strange attitudes. Byrne is our guide, driving us around and giving tour information about Texas in an innocuous patter, frequently running into Louis Fyne (John Goodman), a lonely man looking for love. At various times, and with little provocation, the film swoons into a Talking Heads number with preachers and bar patrons belting out tunes. If you make room for it, however, <I>True Stories</I> can surprise and delight with its inventiveness and its unconventional treatment of the residents. A scene in which a construction worker launches into an aria, on a makeshift stage when no one else is around, is but one example of numerous such moments in this bizarre, delightful, and benign film. Any Talking Heads fan who doesn't own it should. <I>--Keith Simanton</I>
Viewer Reviews
The extremely influential band Talking Heads had begun to self-destruct by 1986, and in truth the film TRUE STORIES is more a David Byrne project than a Talking Heads project--but regardless of who-what-where-when it is a quietly bizarre satire of all things Texas, as any one who has spent time in a small Texas town can attest.
The town in question is Virgil, a community experiencing growing pains due to the advent of the computer industry and a new mall that is drawing folks away from the downtown area. The Texas Sesquicentennial provides a loose theme: promoted as a "Celebration Of Specialness," events include a fashion show, a parade, and most importantly a talent show. Along the way Byrne, acting as a sort of niave visitor-interviewer-narrator, more or less introduces us to the more eccentric locals: the love-lorn Louis (John Goodman); the Civic Leader (Spalding Gray) and his wife (Annie McEnroe), happily married although they have not spoken in years; Miss Rollings (Swoozie Kurtz), so rich she can't even be bothered to leave her bed.
The main thrust of the film follows Louis' efforts to find a wife. So desperate that he advertises on television, Louis draws everything from new-age-yoga practictioners to a woman with a dozen children. Most particularly he encounters The Lying Woman (Jo Harvey Allen) and The Cute Woman (Alix Elias), both of whom are running characters throughout the film. There is also The Computer Guy (Matthew Posey), who is sending signals straight up in the hopes of contacting space aliens; The Preacher (John Ingle), who is convinced that an unspecified conspiracy is taking over the world; Ramon (Tito Larriva), who thinks he can read your mind through your nose; and a Voodoo priest (Pop Staples), who claims to be able bless you with love and wealth.
This being, in theory at least, a Talking Heads film, music pops up from time to time. The score for TRUE STORIES is very underrated by most fans of the band, who complain "it isn't Talking Heads, it's David Byrne!" Well, if it isn't Talking Heads its a very good imitation of it; the real annoyance seems to be that the music serves the nature of the film: deeply ironic and tinged with a Texan plantiveness. Pieces such as "Love For Sale," "Radio Head," "Dream Operator," "City of Dreams," and "Wild Wild Life" (which was a top forty hit) are memorably ironic, witty, and strange in the best traditions of the band.
Now, TRUE STORIES is indeed a cult film in the classic sense: a movie that provokes an extremely positive response in a minority of viewers. The key word is "minority." Most people aren't going to like the film. It's glitchy. It's odd. It's moody. It has a certain sadness. But for those who have an eye for it, TRUE STORIES is charming, witty, clever. The DVD is tiresome--the transfer and sound are merely okay and it is "formatted to fit your screen"--but even so, strongly recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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