Stop Making Sense (1984) on Netflix

NR19841h 28mDocumentary Music

A singer walks onto a bare stage with a cassette player and an acoustic guitar. One by one, the other members of his band come out to join him.

Netflix4.7/5
IMDb8.7/1024,544 votes
Rotten Tomatoes100%

Trailer

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Plot summary

At the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles, a rock band plays a set during the tour for its album Speaking in Tongues. The singer begins alone on an empty stage with a cassette player and an acoustic guitar, and says he wants to play a tape. Each new song brings out one more member: first the bassist, then the drummer, then the guitarist. Extra equipment is wheeled out to make room for them, and the audience stays mostly unseen.

Cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Stop Making Sense (1984)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Talking Heads' David Byrne got the idea for the "big suit" he wears in Stop Making Sense while in Japan between tours, studying Kabuki, Noh and Bunraku. A fashion designer friend, Jurgen Lehl, told him "everything is bigger on stage", and Byrne applied the idea to a businessman's suit.
Byrne asked the band to wear neutral-colored clothes so the stage lights would not pick out anything distinctive, but drummer Chris Frantz's laundry had not come back in time for the first Pantages show, so he wore a turquoise polo shirt for all three nights for continuity.
Jonathan Demme wanted more shots of the audience, but the extra lighting it required killed their energy and made the band feel insecure, leading to what they called "the worst Talking Heads performance in the history of the band's career"; the only direct audience shots come at the very end, during "Crosseyed and Painless".
When the film was restored for its 2023 re-release, the original negative was missing because earlier distributors had simply scanned screening prints. An extensive search turned it up in an MGM film vault, even though MGM had not been involved in making the film.
For the 2023 restoration, Jerry Harrison and Eric Thorngren needed the original audience tracks. Todd-AO, which stored the audio, had gone out of business and its building was demolished, but Sony had claimed the collection and shipped it to a warehouse in Kansas, where the tracks were found in time.
Melbourne's Astor Theatre has made a tradition of a "Stop Making Sense Dance Party" every January since 2016, with dancing and audience participation encouraged and many people turning up in costume and bringing props.