In 1983, director Jonathan Demme filmed new wave band Talking Heads at its commercial peak during a three-night run of performances at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The resulting film, 1984’s Stop Making Sense, is considered by many to be one of the greatest concert movies ever made.
This year, the classic film was restored to 4K resolution with the help of indie production company A24. The remaster of Stop Making Sense opens at Milwaukee Film’s Oriental Theatre this weekend, and on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Talking Heads guitarist and Milwaukee native Jerry Harrison will be attending.
Harrison will take part in a live audience Q&A on Sept. 30 after the 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. screenings and give an extended introduction before the 10 p.m. showing. On Oct. 1, he’ll give both an introduction and Q&A at the 7 p.m. presentation.
This is far from the first time the film will be shown at The Oriental: Stop Making Sense has been a mainstay of the Milwaukee Film Festival since 2013, often with dance parties during the showings. The film has drawn a small cult following similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with audiences attending many showings of the film.
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In an interview with Milwaukee Magazine, Harrison said, “We always knew our goal was that we wanted people to watch carefully, but we also wanted people to lose themselves in the music. If we succeeded in that, people would want to go see it more than once. And that proved to be true. We were fortunate enough to sort of join The Rocky Horror Picture Show as a film that would be often shown, sort of at the end of the evening, on a Friday or Saturday. Something that people would come to over and over again, because of the camaraderie of the audience interacting in a different way, getting up and dancing.”
With the remaster of the film, Harrison said he hopes that it will bring back memories for those who saw the original shows or the film when it first came out. “But also, because of this sort of added fidelity and added clarity of the picture you see new things and you hear new things that you maybe didn’t see. Even if you streamed it two weeks ago, you’ll still see something new.”
But he said he also hopes that audiences new to the film or Talking Heads will be introduced through the re-release.
“I think there is going to be a whole new generation of people who may see it for the first time,” Harrison said. “It’s a great introduction to everything that we have done because it’s it stands by itself as a wonderful piece of art. Strangely, some of the lyrics that David [Byrne] wrote seem even more sort of appropriate to the time period we’re living in, than maybe they once did.”
After attending screenings in Toronto, New York and Los Angeles, Harrison said he’s seen the film seven times in just the past week and a half – but it hasn’t gotten old.
“It’s been interesting seeing it in you know, different environments,” said Harrison. “And I’m happy to say that the mix works and sounds really good in every theater I’ve been in … when we played the Toronto Film Festival, it was simulcast in IMAX theaters all over the world. There’s a picture from the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood – basically, people just sort of stormed the stage and were up on the stage dancing.”
Harrison played at The Oriental when it still hosted live performances. “And actually, my father had performed there back in the ’30s,” he said. “Just that whole part of town is, you know, a favorite of mine. When I came back to Milwaukee, that’s sort of where entertainment was.”
Growing up in Milwaukee, Harrison attended Shorewood High School and played keyboard in a band called The Walkers. He recalled performing at high school youth centers after basketball and football games: “There was the home team who would host the dance after the game, and usually, the fans of the other team would come. And it meant that there was a sort of a need for you know, a number of bands to play all of these after-game shows.”
Harrison thinks back on that time as a heyday for local music among young people in Milwaukee. Bands competed against one another but also had a strong sense of camaraderie, loaning equipment and attending one another’s shows.
After high school, Harrison wasn’t the only one from The Walkers to pursue music as a career. Their guitar player, Bob Metzger, went on to play with Leonard Cohen for 25 years. Bass player Jon Paris performed with Johnny Winter and Bo Diddly. “But it’s the idea that so many people from a band from Shorewood would actually have real careers in the music business is sort of amazing,” Harrison said.
When asked about his favorite places to go back to when visiting, Harrison immediately mentioned Serbian restaurant Three Brothers in Bay View. “It’s unbelievably great,” Harrison said. “And it’s also sort of like you’ve gone back in time. There was a moment when I was growing up when you’d go into restaurants and stores in the Eastern European communities when you always felt like you were in a different country. You felt transported. This has been kept, and that’s really cool.”
This weekend’s hometown showings of Stop Making Sense will be nostalgic for Harrison, but his tour of screening over the last month has been marked by reunion and reminiscing.
“[Keyboardist] Bernie Worrell and I were really close friends,” he said. “He passed away a number of years ago, and it just makes me miss him. And what was wonderful at one of the screenings in LA, [vocalist] Lynn Mabry and [percussionist] Steve Scales came. It was so much fun to see them and to reconnect. I had conversations with [guitarist] Alex Weir – it was great to talk to him.
“I just encourage everybody to come and experience this in the theater and not just wait to see it at home,” Harrison said. “Because of the feeling of watching it with other people. And if there’s dancing, which is, you know, a communal and social experience that is very hard to sort of create at your house. I encourage everybody to come and see it and to get up and dance.”
