Music

David Byrne Ready to Start Making Sense in Trailer for A24 ‘Stop Making Sense’ Theatrical Re-Release

David Byrne is getting the enormous suit out of storage. The Talking Heads frontman stars in a new promo video from studio A24 revealing that director Jonathan Demme’s landmark 1994 concert film, Stop Making Sense, is getting a reboot via 4K technology.

In the trailer, Byrne, 70, visits his neighborhood dry cleaners with a wrinkled ticket — number A24, naturally — to see if they still have his signature gigantic outfit from the film that many consider to be one of the most eye-catching and important concert movies of all time.

“Hi, I’m picking up. It’s been here for a while,” he tells the cleaner’s owner. “Yeah that’s it!” Byrne enthuses when the plastic-wrapped outfit is pulled from the back. After riding his bike through the New York streets to get his prize home, Byrne slips back into the enormous suit originally built by costume designer Gail Blacker and practices some bendy choreography in a mirror to the strains of “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” from the band’s 1983 Speaking in Tongues album.

The scene then splits to the original, in which the singer does some of his patented herky-jerky dance moves on stage before the camera seamlessly pans back to his well-lit apartment and the screen reads, “Stop Making Sense 2023.” The original was shot over three nights during four shows at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles in December 1983 and has since been added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

It features the group — including bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz and guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison — performing such now-classics as “Psycho Killer,” “Slippery People,” “Burning Down the House,” “Life During Wartime” and “Once in a Lifetime,” as well as Frantz/Weymouth side project Tom Tom Club’s oft-sampled “Genius of Love” on a spare stage.

A24 celebrated the success of its multiverse dramedy Everything Everywhere All At Once at last weekend’s Academy Awards.

Check out the Stop Making Sense 2023 trailer below.

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