David Byrne and the autis­tic eupho­ria of Stop Mak­ing Sense

In her 1984 review of Stop Mak­ing Sense, Pauline Kael describes David Byrne as hav­ing ​“a with­drawn, dis­em­bod­ied sci-fi qual­i­ty, and though there’s some­thing unknow­able and almost autis­tic about him, he makes autism fun.” While per­haps com­ing off as insen­si­tive now, this sen­ti­ment regard­ing Byrne’s strange­ness was wide­ly shared by both his band­mates and crit­ics alike since Talk­ing Heads’ incep­tion. Byrne’s strug­gle with social con­ven­tions and inter­ac­tions has been a near-impos­si­ble top­ic to avoid when exam­in­ing the oth­er­world­ly genius of the group and their out­sider appeal. Forty years have now passed, and not only has A24 restored and re-released Stop Mak­ing Sense to com­mem­o­rate the con­cert film’s anniver­sary, but the man behind the big suit now proud­ly iden­ti­fies as autis­tic. Reex­am­in­ing the film with Byrne’s neu­ro­di­ver­gence in mind, the film dubbed ​“the great­est con­cert movie of all time” con­cur­rent­ly becomes one of the great­est autis­tic nar­ra­tives ever put to film. 

As Byrne first walks out onto the Pan­tages The­atre stage, acoustic gui­tar and boom­box in hand, two nar­ra­tives simul­ta­ne­ous­ly intro­duce them­selves through the struc­ture of the con­cert itself. The his­to­ry of the band’s for­ma­tion and the con­struc­tion of their sound is visu­al­ly illus­trat­ed through each mem­ber appear­ing on stage one after the oth­er, start­ing with Byrne alone and play­ing Talk­ing Heads’ first sin­gle ​“Psy­cho Killer”, cul­mi­nat­ing with the entire band and guest per­form­ers assem­bled to play their next major hit ​“Burn­ing Down The House”. In a Q&A for the film back in 2014 how­ev­er, Byrne argues that there is anoth­er more ​“psy­cho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive” at play – a sen­ti­ment he has since repeat­ed on Talk­ing Heads’ cur­rent press run. In this nar­ra­tive, the film starts off with an anx­ious man alone in the world, who, through the help of his band mem­bers sur­round­ing and play­ing along­side him, lets go and is lib­er­at­ed, find­ing joy in con­nec­tion through music. ​“It’s a whole cathar­sis thing,” Byrne concludes. 

Byrne’s dif­fi­cul­ties adher­ing to ​“nor­mal” social behav­iour col­ors much of Talk­ing Heads’ lyri­cism, and is the­mat­i­cal­ly employed in Stop Mak­ing Sense to fit this psy­cho­log­i­cal nar­ra­tive. The film is book­end­ed with two songs evok­ing intense anx­i­ety, begin­ning with ​“Psy­cho Killer” includ­ing stress­ful lyrics such as ​“I’m tense and ner­vous and I can’t relax” and ​“Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire”, and end­ing with Byrne yelp­ing ​“Lost my shape try­ing to act casu­al / Can’t stop, I might end up in a hos­pi­tal” in the film’s final num­ber ​“Crosseyed and Pain­less.” Both songs come from the per­spec­tive of a man in cri­sis, but while the first may con­jure up images in the listener’s mind of a knife-wield­ing Nor­man Bates, both can also be inter­pret­ed as an over­whelmed autis­tic man strug­gling to fit into ​“nor­mal” allis­tic soci­ety, tee­ter­ing on the verge of a meltdown. 

Con­trary to the film’s title, it is clear that Byrne is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to make sense of both his feel­ings and the world around him, though he is begin­ning to real­ize that none of it makes sense. The inces­sant ques­tions shout­ed in ​“Once In A Life­time” like ​“How do I work this?” and ​“My God, what have I done?” as Byrne hits him­self on the head and con­vuls­es exem­pli­fy this, strug­gling to wrap his head around and con­form to the social norms laid out in the song. Visu­al­ly this strug­gle is con­veyed in per­for­mances such as ​“Mak­ing Flip­py Flop­py”, where­in the seem­ing­ly ran­dom words pro­ject­ed behind the band mem­bers such as ​“VIDEOGAME, SAND­WICH, DIA­MONDS” and ​“STAR WARS, FACELIFT, PIG” leave us as an audi­ence mys­ti­fied for their mean­ing despite under­stand­ing each con­cept indi­vid­u­al­ly, much like how Byrne feels while nav­i­gat­ing a con­fus­ing neu­rotyp­i­cal world.

Cos­tum­ing is anoth­er way that oth­er­ness is metaphor­i­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ed in the film. Most obvi­ous­ly, in a sea of homog­e­nized grey out­fits worn by every­one on stage (ignor­ing drum­mer Chris Frantz’s blue polo annoy­ing­ly break­ing con­ti­nu­ity), Byrne sticks out like a sore thumb as he jit­ters and shakes in his icon­ic big grey suit. But even before this, when Byrne is in his reg­u­lar clean-cut grey for­mal wear, he, unlike the pro­tag­o­nist of ​“Life Dur­ing Wartime”, is unable to blend in with the crowd. Through Byrne’s cos­tume meta­mor­pho­sis, we wit­ness the pow­er­ful jour­ney of a man unmasking. 

Mask­ing, the sup­pres­sion of neu­ro­di­ver­gent traits and the adop­tion of neu­rotyp­i­cal behav­iour in order to blend in with an allis­tic soci­ety is a stress­ful and exhaust­ing endeav­our that David Byrne seems all too famil­iar with. He strug­gles to main­tain this façade of nor­mal­cy through­out the show thanks to both his lyrics and his uncon­trol­lable repet­i­tive move­ments and nois­es giv­ing him away, at times rem­i­nis­cent of autis­tic stim­ming (Think how much sounds and phras­es are repeat­ed in Talk­ing Heads’ oeu­vre, most famous­ly lines like ​“Same as it ever was”). 

As the show pro­gress­es and Byrne begins to let loose, he unmasks him­self in front of both his band and his audi­ence, reveal­ing his larg­er-than-life per­sona as he emerges from the shad­ows after Tom Tom Club’s inter­lude, tak­ing up space as his ful­ly unique and sil­ly self. Won­der­ful­ly, Byrne has kept up with this motif of dis­play­ing dif­fer­ence proud­ly while reunit­ing with his for­mer band mem­bers dur­ing A24’s cur­rent Stop Mak­ing Sense press run and live Q&As, with Byrne stand­ing out in blue and white suits while the for­mer Heads don all-black. 

Since his ear­ly art school days of play­ing under the name ​“The Artis­tics” (nick­named ​“The Autis­tics” around cam­pus) to his present-day lega­cy sta­tus as an influ­en­tial new wave pio­neer, David Byrne has been unable to escape one ques­tion from onlook­ers his whole career: How can some­one so shy and intro­vert­ed go on a stage and do what he does? In ret­ro­spect, Byrne knows the answer, explain­ing in his 2012 book ​‘How Music Works’ that per­form­ing his art was ​“a means of entry into con­ver­sa­tion”, a way to reach out to oth­ers and build com­mu­ni­ty when reg­u­lar face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion was uncom­fort­able for him.

Revis­it­ing Stop Mak­ing Sense forty years lat­er, it feels as though many of the choic­es Byrne con­ceived for the stage (along with Demme’s direc­to­r­i­al choic­es) work to chal­lenge stereo­types regard­ing neu­ro­di­ver­gence while also joy­ous­ly cel­e­brat­ing dif­fer­ence. Here autis­tic peo­ple are ​“strange but not a stranger”, rep­re­sent­ed as being more than capa­ble of express­ing love and con­nect­ing with oth­ers, just doing so in their own unique ways, like singing a love song to a lamp, for instance. The title, Stop Mak­ing Sense, is David Byrne’s plea to you as a view­er to not make your­self palat­able to the social norms of allis­tic soci­ety, and to instead choose hap­pi­ness by unmask­ing and free­ing your­self. As Byrne sweet­ly stat­ed to a fan ask­ing about his autis­tic iden­ti­ty, ​“We all don’t have to be the same.”