True Stories

Is a movie which pretty much says what it's about when, just after the title screen, in large white letters on a black background, the words "This is a film about a bunch of people in the town of Virgil, Texas" appear. They take up the entire screen. There is no sarcasm intended. The narrator, David Byrne, is the world's most deadpan human being. This is a film about Virgil, Texas, which has one stoplight and an accordian band and Shriners and a microelectronics corporation and a shopping mall and is the town you grew up in, if you grew up in a small town in America. The exact town you grew up in. Good points, and bad points, and boring days, and boring scenery, and gorgeous sunsets, and young lovers, and little identical concrete-box houses, and high school marching bands. People who maybe drink a little much, and people who maybe you don't trust, and preachers who are maybe a bit enthusiastic with the conspiracy theory. Subtle racism and the deadness of commercial culture and the mall lifestyle; materialism and greed and abuse of power. But David Byrne has a point to make, about the history of this small town, which has been lived in over the last few millennia by dinosaurs, Native Americans, Spaniards, oil opportunists, and Vericorp, Inc., and which is still, somehow, in its quiet, poetic, flat way, strange and wondrous and beautiful. The only thing I have ever seen which reminds me of True Stories is Twin Peaks, but Twin Peaks is about the presence of evil, while True Stories-- it's not a romanticization of small-town life; if anything, the opposite. But it shows that the reality is all the romanticization you'll ever need. The identical concrete boxes hold their own glow, because we made them.

It really is the ending credits song, "City of Dreams", that stays with me about this movie, and so I'll let it finish out the essay:

We live/
in the city of dreams/
We ride/
on a highway of fire...
If we awake, and find it gone/
Remember this, our favorite town.
--David Byrne

True Stories

Is a movie which pretty much says what it's about when, just after the title screen, in large white letters on a black background, the words "This is a film about a bunch of people in the town of Virgil, Texas" appear. They take up the entire screen. There is no sarcasm intended. The narrator, David Byrne, is the world's most deadpan human being. This is a film about Virgil, Texas, which has one stoplight and an accordian band and Shriners and a microelectronics corporation and a shopping mall and is the town you grew up in, if you grew up in a small town in America. The exact town you grew up in. Good points, and bad points, and boring days, and boring scenery, and gorgeous sunsets, and young lovers, and little identical concrete-box houses, and high school marching bands. People who maybe drink a little much, and people who maybe you don't trust, and preachers who are maybe a bit enthusiastic with the conspiracy theory. Subtle racism and the deadness of commercial culture and the mall lifestyle; materialism and greed and abuse of power. But David Byrne has a point to make, about the history of this small town, which has been lived in over the last few millennia by dinosaurs, Native Americans, Spaniards, oil opportunists, and Vericorp, Inc., and which is still, somehow, in its quiet, poetic, flat way, strange and wondrous and beautiful. The only thing I have ever seen which reminds me of True Stories is Twin Peaks, but Twin Peaks is about the presence of evil, while True Stories-- it's not a romanticization of small-town life; if anything, the opposite. But it shows that the reality is all the romanticization you'll ever need. The identical concrete boxes hold their own glow, because we made them.

It really is the ending credits song, "City of Dreams", that stays with me about this movie, and so I'll let it finish out the essay:

We live/
in the city of dreams/
We ride/
on a highway of fire...
If we awake, and find it gone/
Remember this, our favorite town.
--David Byrne