“I think you’ve actually hit it right on the nose: we were having so much fun on stage that the audience couldn’t resist ing us and having fun. There was such a communication between us as musicians and between the audience and us. That’s one of the reasons it’s had such lasting power, you walk away smiling and going, ‘God that was a lot of fun.’”

Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads has just been informed that Stop Making Sense is one of the most obsessively rewatched films among Letterboxd , and that countless reviews of the Jonathan Demme-directed masterpiece exude joy in superlative measure. Moments away from the IMAX world premiere of the stunning restoration of Stop Making Sense, we are in a bar called heaven. Actually, it’s a hospitality room at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto, but it feels like a divine gathering.

Harrison and his bandmates David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz are here along with the film’s producer Gary Goetzman as well as Spike Lee, who will moderate the post-screening Q&A. This Toronto International Film Festival event is the first of many to reunite the band over the coming weeks, all in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the December 1983 concerts at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater, artfully captured by Demme and now restored in a thrilling new print courtesy of A24.  

The vibe in the room is relaxed and convivial, but just a few steps away, inside the sold-out IMAX Theater, the fizzing audience is already setting off sparks. Once the film starts, they’re on their feet. It doesn’t matter where or with whom or how many times you’ve seen Stop Making Sense; if you’re a fan, every time is like the first. And a screening with the of the band? This absolutely must be the place. 

The majority of concert films tend to be directed by people with television backgrounds who are trained in multi-camera live events or documentaries. Occasionally, a narrative auteur slips through. Martin Scorsese and The Rolling Stones (and The Band, and Bob Dylan). Michael Lindsay-Hogg and Simon & Garfunkel. Peter Jackson and The Beatles. Even Spike Lee has had a go, directing the filmed version of David Byrne’s American Utopia. And then there’s Demme, who would go on to make several films with Neil Young, including the sweet and warm Heart of Gold. 

Long before his concert films, a 1980 comedic drama brought the director to the band’s attention, Weymouth re: “The very first time he approached us, we had seen his film in London—we saw it very belatedly—Melvin and Howard, and we thought, ‘Why didn’t we get to see this?’ I guess we were on tour. But we said, ‘This is brilliant,’ and then got to meet him and said, ‘Oh my, [bowing], this is too much!’ 

“He was amazing, because he really listened to us when he said, ‘I wanna film this concert,’ he talked to us and we were able to share everything that we thought—‘Please, be like a sensitive eye for the audience without calling attention to the camera’—and he did that brilliantly.”

These are the moments the film’s fans really pay attention to. One of Adejuyigbe’s many reviews (not his most recent one from the Vidiots screening—with! Talking! Heads! in! the! house!) notes “the little moments where David Byrne is trying to perform stone-faced but can’t help but smile could power me for weeks.” 思莹 writes that they “noticed a couple moments of Alex Weir just being himself and cracking up the other like David and Tina mid-song, or him dancing cheekily with Bernie out of focus, in the background.”

Harrison knows what we’re all talking about, praising Demme’s attention to detail and kinetic cameras (lensed by a team headed up by Jordan Cronenweth). “He personalized it by not having such distant shots all the time,” the guitarist and keyboard player explains. “He showed everybody in the band and I think that’s also why it brings the joy out because you see the smiles, they’re big smiles—and it will be very big in IMAX—and you get to know each person, as if he’s doing character development as he’s shooting the concert.” 

Demme, who died in 2017, had music in his veins. A rock critic in his youth, a downtown New York gig-goer, he infused all his films with an unmistakable rhythm. And with actual musicians: The Feelies performing David Bowie’s ‘Fame’ in Something Wild; Rick Springfield, Bernie Worrall and friends playing fictional musicians in Ricki and the Flash; TV On the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe—among many other musical collaborators—in Rachel Getting Married. 

From Caged Heat to Swing Shift to The Silence of the Lambs, Demme championed complex, dynamic women characters. Even in the presence of Stop Making Sense’s magnetic frontman David Byrne, he ensured that Weymouth and singers Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt get the focus and spotlight they deserve. (Worrell, Weir and Steve Scales complete the nonet of musicians in the show.) This is yet another piece of the magic that makes the film so beloved, so eminently rewatchable. All are welcome—in the audience and on stage. 

Weymouth, in particular, has captured many a Stop Making Sense fan’s heart—we submit to her, as evidence, a series of Letterboxd reviews: “Tina Weymouth is such a beast”; “TINA WEYMOUTH MOTHER”; “Tina Weymouth is a goddess!”; “I believe in Tina Weymouth supremacy”; “Tina Weymouth crab-stomping into my heart.”

“Yeah, well,” she sighs, “I long ago when the movie first came out, there was one lady who complained to the BBC: ‘How dare you put such a film on with such an ugly dance? A woman does an ugly dance, it made me drop all my knitting stitches!’”

“I don’t think she was really our audience,” says Frantz. 

“No. No. But that was my spider-dance!”

Hopefully it’s not the same as it ever was, and gold ballet slippers will be in high demand in the coming weeks. 

When we ask the band to share their four favorite films, several of Demme’s features come up. “Just the other night, Jonathan Demme’s Married to the Mob was on, with Michelle Pfeiffer. She was just so cute,” says Weymouth. “I love Something Wild,” says Frantz. “Melanie Griffith at her peak, I would say. One of her many peaks. And Ray Liotta was in that… Jeff Daniels… I loved it when she handcuffed him to the bed and then made him call his boss and tell him that he was gonna be late for work,” he laughs.

Harrison, in fact, provided several songs for the Something Wild soundtrack. It was, he says, a nice conclusion to a conundrum: Demme had looked at including one of his solo songs in Stop Making Sense but “he couldn’t figure out the timing of making it happen.” (A Tom Tom Club number, ‘Genius of Love’, made the final cut.) 

Finally, with an IMAXful of fans waiting, the enigmatic David Byrne delivers his four favorite films (he loves a documentary before bedtime) and we ask if he has a message for the many Letterboxd lovers of this treasured film, whether they have just one viewing or 50 under their belts (we see you, Carol). 

“A message? A message. It took a long time for this to come back out in this new print, new sound mix, everything. I think it’s worth waiting for, yeah.” 

So do we, David. What a day that was.