Trivia / True Stories

• Acting for Two:
  • In addition to the Narrator, David Byrne plays the lip-sync contestant with a garish suit and pencil moustache during the “Wild Wild Life” sequence, and himself as a member of Talking Heads in the “Love For Sale” segment.
  • Fellow Talking Head Jerry Harrison plays not just himself in the band, but two lip-sync contestants: the one who looks like Billy Idol and the one who looks like Prince.
• Actor Allusion: Spalding Gray's monologue wouldn't be out of place in any of his one man shows. A year after True Stories, Gray's Swimming to Cambodia was released.
• Black Sheep Hit: "Wild Wild Life" is a more straightforward rock song than Talking Heads were usually known for.
• Box Office Bomb: While the film's budget remains undisclosed today, its box office gross of $2,545,142 was considered enough of a commercial disappointment to drive the film into obscurity before it picked up a cult following through reruns on HBO.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: The Talking Heads album and its singles, especially "Wild Wild Life", were more successful than the film itself and still the most-remembered part of the project. The video for "Wild Wild Life", which is taken directly from the movie (with a few re-edited bits), was in high rotation on MTV in the autumn of 1986.
• California Doubling: Averted; filmed entirely on the outskirts of the DFW Metroplex.
• The Cast Showoff: John Goodman belts out his country song "People Like Us".
• Cast the Expert
  • All of the musicians seen on film are actual local musicians. While they were miming to backing tracks recorded by other musicians, the casting director insisted on having performers on-screen who could do it accurately.
  • With the exception of John Goodman and Tito Larriva, the talent show all consists of real local talents from Fort Worth. To ensure that only the most esoteric acts would show up, the recruitment flyer specified "no mimes, no jugglers, no magicians, no rock acts" (line dancers and cheerleaders aren't that unusual, but they're distinctly Texan).
• Creator Backlash: David Byrne did not care for the tie-in album that Talking Heads were forced to make, feeling it deprived the film's lyrical songs from their proper context and that the definitive versions were the ones that were sung by the cast members in-character.
• Creator Couple: There were several of these involved in the production, including David Byrne and Adelle Lutz (who designed the outfits for the fashion show; Byrne and Lutz were married shortly after the film's release), credited screenwriters Stephen Tobolowsky and Beth Henley, and Annie McEnroe (who played Kay Culver) is the wife of executive producer Edward Pressman. And, of course, Talking Heads husband-and-wife rhythm section Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, who play on the accompanying album and appear in the film.
• Development Gag: Some of the Narrator's random observations, such as mentioning how good the radio reception is, were taking from remarks David Byrne would make while location scouting for the film.
• Executive Meddling: Warner Bros., the parent company of their American label Sire Records, insisted that a Talking Heads album, featuring the band playing the film's songs, be released to coincide with the film, despite David Byrne insisting that this was a musical, and the characters singing the songs were the "official" version. WB didn't let up. An official complete soundtrack would eventually be released in 2018 to coincide with the film's release on The Criterion Collection.
• Follow the Leader:
  • The film is sort of an ersatz Nashville; David Byrne has admitted as much. There are a couple of direct connections, in fact—Nashville writer Joan Tewkesbury was a consultant for Byrne on the screenplay (and gets a "special thanks" credit), and Allan Nicholls, who'd been in Nashville as an actor, was the executive in charge of production.
  • It also plays a bit like an Americanized Amarcord, since it's likewise a vignette-based film about a Quirky Town featuring an onscreen narrator.
  • No doubt the success of Purple Rain played a role in Warner Bros. deciding to greenlight another music star's Vanity Project.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Jo Harvey Allen (The Lying Woman) was allowed to write her character into scenes where she didn't appear in the screenplay, such as the church scene. Other times, she'd simply be dropped into a scene and be allowed to ad lib.
• He Also Did:
  • Stephen Tobolowsky is credited with the screenplay, along with playwright Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart, who was in a Creator Couple with Tobolowsky at the time) and Byrne. Tobolowsky later explained his involvement in more detail. He'd met Byrne at a screening of Stop Making Sense and they became friends, then Byrne presented Tobolowsky and Henley with all the characters and concepts he'd put together, and they wrote an initial screenplay draft. But by the time it actually went before the cameras, Byrne basically rewrote everything except a few lines. However, he was worried about it getting dismissed as Vanity Project, so he asked Tobolowsky and Henley if he could give them co-writing credit. Some of their influence still remains in the finished film. Dallas native Tobolowsky came up with the Texas setting and the state's sesquicentennial as a story framework, while some of the female characters (Kay Culver, The Lying Woman, The Cute Woman) would fit perfectly into a Henley play.
  • John Ingle (The Preacher) was a drama teacher at Hollywood High School before he turned to acting full-time, and one of his students was Swoosie Kurtz (The Lazy Woman).
• Referenced by...: Radiohead named themselves after one of the songs in the film. During his speech for Radiohead's induction at the 2019 Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, David Byrne stated that he was always bemused by this fact, as the song was his least favorite on an album he already regards with contempt, dismissing it as a "Tex-Mex ditty." However, the band was in love with Ramon's impromptu, a capella singing of it on the assembly line in the film.
• Vanilla Edition: The first DVD was put out in 1999, when expectations for the format were far lower than they are today, and as such is incredibly minimalist in presentation compared to DVD releases just a few years later. The 2018 DVD and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection, meanwhile, are far more elaborate in content.
• Vindicated by Cable: HBO was very good to the film.
• What Could Have Been
  • David Byrne wanted Joan Tewkesbury, the screenwriter for Nashville (which was a noticeable influence on True Stories), to write the script. She turned the offer down, but stayed in touch with Byrne to give him writing tips.
  • Before Byrne himself ultimately played the narrator, he considered folksy newscaster Paul Harvey (reportedly one of the character's inspirations) for the role. Equally folksy Today Show weatherman Willard Scott^note Also a trivia notable for having originated the role of Ronald McDonald in the first McDonald's commercials was also considered.
  • David Byrne wanted to end the film with the "a death, a funeral and a wedding" in addition to the talent show as a Grand Finale. The death in this case was of the Cute Woman, who would have died in an accident during the parade. They even found a pink fur casket for her. But everyone agreed that it was too sad and the scene was cut (said scene is now viewable under the Deleted Scenes featurette in the afore-mentioned Criterion Collection release). She does fall off the stage during the fashion show but is apparently unhurt.
  • Talking Heads considered supporting the resulting album with a tour of drive-in theaters. This would have been their first time playing live since the tour supporting Speaking in Tongues, captured in Stop Making Sense. Performances would naturally have also included a screening of the titular film.
  • Because of David Byrne's commitments with shooting the film, Talking Heads had to put activity on hold for a short while, which resulted in them being unable to perform at Live Aid.
• Write What You Know: David Byrne used to clip and collect tabloid newspaper stories while on tour. All of the oddball characters and bizarre stories came from him imagining what it would be like if all those fabricated stories were true.

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