Stuff and Nonsense

The concert film of the 70s was David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. But in the 80s it was Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, which captured the art-school sensibilities of New York band Talking Heads at a Hollywood Theatre in 1984. The film deconstructs the standard concert format, with painfully visible camera crews deployed on stage throughout, and a new band member joining the stage for each song. Best of all, lead singer David Byrne sports an enormous white linen suit, dancing like a deranged preacher. Twenty-five years on, the film still looks modern, and this week is released in a new digitally re-mixed version by Palm Pictures.