Texas Focus: True Stories on 35mm
Programs
June 9, 2016 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Celebrate the unconventional side of Texas with a special screening of True Stories and Q&A with Tito Larriva and Joe Dishner.
Truly quirky, this film is part musical, part farce, and completely wonderful. David Byrne (lead singer of the Talking Heads) writes, directs, and stars in this 1986 tour of the fictional town of Virgil, Texas, and its eccentric citizens.
Event Details
Join the Bullock Museum for a screening and conversation about True Stories as part of the Bullock's Texas Focus film series.
- This film will be shown in 35mm.
- Film screening from 7:00 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.
- Q&A following the screening with Tito Larriva and Joe Dishner.
Rating: PG
Runtime: 90 minutes
Director: David Byrne
Writers: David Byrne, Beth Henley, Stephen Tobolowsky
Principal Actors: David Byrne, John Goodman, Kay Culver, Jo Harvey Allen
Genre: Musical, Comedy
Talking Heads singer David Byrne plays host to tabloid-inspired tales, set in the fictional town of Virgil, Texas. Cruising the streets in his cherry-red drop-top, Byrne introduces viewers to the local eccentrics gearing up for the town's 150th anniversary. They include a community leader with a thing for veggies, a woman so lazy she won't leave her bed, a lovelorn country singer and more!
This film was shot in multiple Texas locations including Dallas, Allen, McKinney and Red Oak and was to be an homage to Texas independence from Mexico in 1836.
Much of the soundtrack to the film was written by David Byrne himself and performed by his band Talking Heads.
David Byrne, composer, songwriter and singer, best known for being front man of the new wave/punk band Talking Heads, active between 1975 and 1991, began his musical career in a high school band. Byrne, a native of Scotland, was raised in Maryland and attended art school for two years before dropping out to pursue music.
Byrne soon formed the band Talking Heads in 1975 with a former bandmate and his girlfriend. The band was one of the major acts of the new wave in the 1970s. Byrne won an Oscar and a Grammy Award for his soundtrack to the movie The Last Emperor (1987) the same year Talking Heads' members went their own ways. Except for a brief reunion in 1991, the band stopped recording together in 1988 as Byrne launched a thriving solo career. Talking Heads were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
Byrne began his career in the visual medium when scoring music for a Broadway production called "The Catherine Wheel". His work has been used extensively in film soundtracks as well.
Byrne became involved in True Stories after Stephen Tobolowsky and Beth Henley invited him to be a part of a podcast, where concepts of the film unearthed. Byrne encouraged the movie idea that came about because of scrapbooked images of tabloids, and the rest is history.
Stephen Tobolowsky, born in Dallas, Texas, is an actor, author, musician and most recently a podcast host of a popular show, The Tobolowsky Files. Tobolowsky has been nominated for a Tony Award.
Beth Henley, native to Jackson, Mississippi, is a dramatist of the Southern Gothic genre whose writing comments on women's and family issues with a running theme of the identity of self. Henley has been nominated for a Tony Award and an Oscar.
The Texas Spirit Theater located on the Bullock Museum's second floor is one of the most beautiful film experiences in Austin and features multi-sensory special effects such as lightning, rain, and other surprises.
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