True Stories (1986)

 

Director: David Bryne

Screenplay: Stephen Tobolowsky, Beth Henley and David Byrne

Cast: David Byrne as The Narrator; John Goodman as Louis Fyne; Spalding Gray as Earl Culver; Annie McEnroe as Kay Culver; Swoosie Kurtz as Miss Rollings, The Lazy Woman; Pops Staples as Mr. Tucker; John Ingle as The Preacher; Tito Larriva as Ramon; Jo Harvey Allen as The Lying Woman

An Abstract Candidate

 

I'm a dancing bear!

David Bryne's celebration of Virgil, Texas, which begins with the tumultous history over centuries of Texas becoming to be, from the founding of the United States to microchip factories, was a cult title lost from wide access. Some idiosyncratic projects were financed in the eighties, and musicians were among those who got chances during the era. Prince was able to direct Under the Cherry Moon (1986), after the success of Purple Rain (1984), with mind that the soundtrack LP for the film is likely one of Prince's best records. Neil Young co-directed, with Dean Stockwell of all people, Human Highway (1982), which starred members of Devo, Dennis Hopper and Stockwell himself, a film which few probably even know exist. David Bryne had already had been on screen, with the Jonathan Demme helmed Stop Making Sense (1984), held as one of the best concert films ever made involving Bryne and the band Talking Heads, but with True Stories, as with the musicians already mentioned, Bryne got to sit in the directors' chair. It would be his only theatrical feature and is a curiosity to actually watch, especially now it has been made available in the best condition from Criterion, which is a significant boost in terms of them pushing the film, and a fascinating as this would be approached by those even fans of Talking Heads as a work from under the radar.  

Neither fish nor fowl, True Stories is a series of vignettes all tied around Virgil, a small Texas town. Beyond Bryne himself as the Narrator, an outsider in a cowboy hat looking around, the closest thing to a lead among an ensemble would be John Goodman as Louis Fyne; the ever reliable actor here is a lovable man who just wants to find a woman to fall in love with and marry. The film is certainly quirky, but Bryne (born in Dumbarton, Scotland originally but moved to the United States at a very young age) however is also taking a loving eye for quaint and eccentric Americana, from the tabloids obsessed with UFO and Elvis sightings, to Shriners in their tiny cars and fez headgear. It feels such an alien film when, in the modern day, cynicism would have tainted some of these subjects seen wide eyed here, especially its look at industry and corporations here which see them with a whimsy. Even in mind there is a person here who does raise the concern of too much power in corporate hands, from a Church minister of all people, the archetype of the preacher who would be a potentially scornful figure in a more modern film too, the film still finds an optimism that feels out of reach and surprising to see. One of the huge virtues to this tone still working is that Bryne also, with the help of the production team and cinematographer Ed Lachman, has a visual eye, which is really an advantage in fleshing out this world of distinct images.

True Stories is strange when it wishes to - a reoccurring character, an older woman (Jo Harvey Allen) whose pathological lying is a series of comically tall tales would make Baron Munchausen proud, allows this film to evoke the image of your mother keeping your removed tail from birth in a fruit jar. It is however more gracious as a film, open and kind to Middle America in its quirks, without anyone being dismissed. There is mild satire, or at least an eye to the world at the time, most connected to the theme of connectivity in all its quirks. Even content like television, which would be criticised as demonic in another film at the time, is seen with a playful curiosity even if with an extended parody of commercials as a music video at one point. Bryne's nameless narrator learns of this place with characters as we see snapshots of Virgil, merely an eye looking at the likes of television and modernity as eccentric. Even characters who would be depicted as grotesque or to be criticised, such as a well off woman so comfortable in wealth she can live her her life in bed with robot and human help, watching television, is treated with warmed. It is a film which even when showing some strange imagery and having fun with this on purpose, such as an elephant using an iron in one of the commercials on her television, True Stories is immensely sympathetic to all the characters onscreen. Even the businessman played by Spalding Gray, the highly regarded creative figure, gains Gray's prescience here in a small role, too humble and affable to make his corporate man, who laments that people now want to work all the time, hateable.  

The production design is exceptional; evoking this quirky world, it is all again without cynicism even when there is an intentional sense of humour there. A lobster on a bed of cucumber looks beautiful, part of a larger metaphor of a business-technological future that is completely alien to the more suspicious examples from tech giants in the days decades after, actually wholesome with utopian ideals than raising alarm bells. Seeing people dancing, secretly at night in their offices, and have lives in and out of the work place is itself more hopeful even in the modern day, that human beings (even in their eccentricities) can lead interesting lives. That in itself shows the distinction here in tone, a film that is both sweet and strange, to see a film without an ounce of darkness to its veins, all of humble town life where even business advances is not from heartlessness but a naive sense of American personality, not even getting into the anti-Reaganomics other films from this era touched on. The film's visual eye, and its lovable cast with Goodman always strong, is matched by the music, by the Talking Heads but sung by others too, with music videos and vignettes as striking to match. Early on, a fashion show with green Astroturf clothes among others, one of the songs sung by others, really emphasises the playfulness of the film alongside its qualities. Even the one piece explicitly with the Talking Heads is that TV advertisement parody, an incredible piece of work in itself, in splicing the band with ads, even having chocolate moulded versions of David Bryne and others for the confectionary section.

It is easy to see why True Stories was a maligned production at first, something very unconventional, and not a critique or satirical comedy either, too loving and quiet for that, and too loose and unconventional for the mainstream. Alongside this being where Radiohead got their band name from however, True Stories did clearly have enough traction until its eventual 2018 Criterion release, from a certain point of view a true cult film that took a while to get recognition but won it in the end. Even when proudly odd, having duelling cattle merchants contrasted by a male yodeller in the middle of them for a Virgil town celebration, it is contrasted unlike other films which would have found this ridiculous with a legitimate sense of admiration for this world onscreen.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None