Stop Making Sense

The 1983 Stop Making Sense tour ended at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, where four shows were filmed by director Jonathan Demme and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth with a $1.2 million dollar budget raised by the band themselves.

Eight camera's were used and the sound was recorded on a twenty-fout-track Sony digital recorder - the first all-digital film sound in history.

"The show was unusually constructed. It had a beginning and a middle and an end, and just as the stage build, the music build and the characters arrived", Jerry Harrisonn said.

"Stop Making Sense" was premiered April 24, 1984, at the twenty-seventh San Francisco Interantional Film Festival. In attendance were Demme, Byrne, Harrison, singer Lynn Mabry and producer Gary Goetzman. Demme introduced Byrne before the screening began. "There are some funny parts", byrne said softly. "I hope you laugh in the right places".

In 1985 the film was released on VHS - most European and all US tapes included three songs nog used in the theatre version: "Cities", "I Zimbra" and "Big Business". A limited edition laserdisc was only released in Japan and is almost impossible to find these days.

In 1999, a restored and remastered version of both the film and the soundtrack were released. The film opened again at the San Francisco film festival, and played in selected theatres throughout the United States, followed by a long-awaited re-release on VHS and DVD.

The DVD has some very interesting bonus features, such as three different Dolby Digital audio mixes (2 Dolby 5.1 mixes and PCM stereo), a commentary track with all four original members and director Jonathan Demme (the band recorded their commentaries seperately, and they were later mixed together), re-release trailer, Storyboard-to-film comparison, three bonus songs ("Cities", "I Zimbra/Big Business") and a David Byrne self-interview, that was originally filmed to promote "Stop Making Sense" in 1984.

Links

• "Stop Making Sense" 1984 CD
• "Stop Making Sense" 1999 CD
• Press release (April 29, 1999)
• Press release (Aug 4, 1999)

See the archive for more articles and reviews.

Tracks:

1. Psycho Killer
2. Heaven
3. Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
4. Found A Job
5. Slippery People
6. Cities *
7. Burning Down The House
8. Life During Wartime
9. Making Flippy Floppy
10. Swamp
11. What A Day That Was
12. Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)
13. Once In A Lifetime
14. Big Business *
15. I Zimbra *
16. Genius Of Love (Tom Tom Club)
17. Girlfriend Is Better
18. Take Me To The River
19. Crosseyed And Painless

*) Bonus tracks, not in the original theatrical release. On DVD, these bonus tracks play after "Crosseyed and Painless".