True Stories Blu-ray

'True Stories' Director: David Byrne (1986) Criterion Collection Blu-ray | 4K digital transfer

Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make his sole foray into feature-film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind.

The Talking Heads front man plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its sesquicentennial celebrations. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings.

In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show—all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience.

Special features include:
- New documentary about the film's production, including cast and crew
- CD containing the film’s complete soundtrack, compiled here for the first time
- Real Life (1986), a short documentary by Pamela Yates and Newton Thomas Sigel made on the set of the film
- No Time to Look Back, a new homage to Virgil, Texas, the fictional town where True Stories is set
- New documentary about designer Tibor Kalman and his influence on Byrne and work on the film, featuring Byrne and artist Maira Kalman, Tibor’s widow
- Deleted scenes
- Essays by critic Rebecca Bengal and journalist and author Joe Nick Patoski, along with an essay by Byrne; a 1986 piece by actor Spalding Gray on the film’s production; and a selection of production photography, along with Byrne’s tabloid clippings and writing about the film’s visual motifs