Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense to be re-released in theaters by A24

Jonathan Demme (the great movie director) was born in December 1983. Silence of the LambsHe spent three nights shooting Talking Heads, an art-rock group at Los Angeles’ theater. He cut the footage together, being careful to preserve the shape of the band’s very theatrical show, and released it as the concert movie Make Sense. Most critics agree it’s the greatest concert film of all time.

A24 Movie Studios has purchased the rights to this 1984 movie and will be releasing a 4K restoration in theaters late in the year.

A24 shared a sweet video featuring Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne, who took the suit, which was featured in the film, from dry cleaners. Then, he tried it on and practiced his lean-and-wobble moves. (Byrne is fresh off an Oscar nomination for his song for A24’s Best Picture winner, You Can Have Everything at Once.)

How do you make it work? Make Sense! special? It caught Talking Heads at the perfect moment in their career, still on the upswing, but with a great many of their canonical classics on the setlist: songs like ‘Psycho Killer,’ ‘Burning Down the House,’ and ‘Once in a Lifetime.’ The band’s unique, propulsive sound and Byrne’s surreal lyrics have aged incredibly well, and retain their modernist cool almost 40 years later. They’re agelessly, gloriously weird.

For his part, Demme discards a lot of the typical visual language of concert films, like crowd reaction shots, keeping his focus entirely on the band’s dynamic performance, which gradually builds from a minimal, bare stage with Byrne performing solo to a big ensemble sweating through high-energy dance numbers. And then there’s the unforgettable suit, which gives Byrne the appearance of somehow puppeteering his own body.

Demme made every effort to give viewers the feeling they were there at the live event. Make Sense! will surely be a special, time-warp treat to watch — and, just as importantly, hear — in movie theaters.

Rhino Records will publish a new album of the soundtrack on digital and vinyl in conjunction with this release on August 18th. This is reportedly the complete concert.

Fresh from winning all six categories of the Oscars, A24 is back Everything is Everywhere WhaleThe company is looking for new opportunities to release classics from American indie cinema. It has also acquired the rights to Darren Aronofsky’s first feature PiEarlier in the week, a new restoration of the film was presented in IMAX theaters during a limited-time event.

Byrne is still exploring the interplay of theater and rock music. You can catch Spike Lee’s film of his great Broadway show David Byrne’s American UtopiaYou can watch it right now at HBO Max