David Byrne’s ‘True Stories’ Coming to Blu-ray
David Byrne’s 1986 movie True Stories will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on Nov. 20. It will be accompanied by an expanded soundtrack album, with details of that release coming soon.
Starring Byrne, John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz and Spalding Gray, the film was described as “60 Minutes on acid” at the time of its original release. “David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make True Stories, his sole foray into feature film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind,” Nonesuch Records said in a statement.
“Byrne plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces the audience to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings. In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show-all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience. "
The former Talking Heads frontman supervised the movie’s transfer to 4K digital for the Blu-Ray special edition, along with a 5.1 surround version of the soundtrack. Also included is a new documentary about the film’s production, featuring Byrne and others, and No Time to Look Back, a “new homage to the fictional town Virgil.”
Other extras include the short documentary Real Life made at the time, deleted scenes, essays, examples of the newspaper stories that inspired the film and some of Byrne’s photos from the pre-production phase.
Talking Heads released an album called True Stories in 1986, featuring the band’s versions of music taken from the movie. The single “Wild Wild Life” used scenes from the movie and won two music video awards the following year. Byrne released his own album, Sounds from True Stories, later that year, featuring incidental music from the soundtrack. But the soundtrack itself, featuring the actors singing, has never been released.