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True Stories Can Be Stranger Than Fiction [Extra Extra ]
Wednesday July 8
The Texas Spirit Theater in Bob Bullock Museum (1800 N. Congress Avenue)
7:30pm
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Well, now’s your chance to see this incredibly interesting, oddball (and totally fictional) town in David Byrne’s musical feature film, True Stories. The Austin Film Festival screens this 1986 cult classic as part of their Made in Texas Film series. The film screens at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum’s Texas Spirit Theater tonight at 7:30.
The film, written and directed by the head Talking Head himself, stars many recognizable actors, like John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz, and Stephen Tobolowsky (you know his face if not his name, which is super fun to type, btw) as the residents of this strange town, and Byrne himself as the gawky narrator in a ten gallon hat.
There are definitely some Talking Heads songs in the movie, most memorably “Wild Wild Life,” so you’ll get to rock out a little, and the other Heads even make cameos, so keep your eyes peeled. But make no mistake, the big draw for this movie is its quirky weirdness; a celebration of special-ness you won’t find anywhere but Texas. Just…you know…the fictional one.
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Great flick - watched it again about a year ago, but I find its subject matter passe now compared when I first saw it. The Church of the Subgenius aspects of it seemed pretty edgy in 1986, for example. But if 9/11 was the End of Irony, the ensuing seven years saw the End of Satire. When current events become stranger than fiction, comedians and satirists have their work cut out for them.