STOP MAKING SENSE On Just Watch
I was just a kid in the early days of MTV. Back when the channel still played music videos around the clock and transported me to a bigger, stranger world.
Like a lot of kids my age, I was drawn to the motley crew of singers and performers flashing across the screen. Most of them were pinup pretty boys and pretty girls making pop music for the lowest common denominator.
And then there was David Byrne. And Talking Heads.
When “Burning Down the House” landed on MTV, it rocked my little world.
Not just because the song was great. It was. But because I found myself thinking something no other pop act had made me think before: “What the hell is this tall weirdo singing about?”
Byrne wasn’t posing like a rock star. He wasn’t smoldering for the camera. He stood there in his oversized suit, moving like some kind of alien antenna picking up signals the rest of us couldn’t hear. The delivery was dry. The rhythms were infectious. And the whole thing felt slightly…off in the best possible way.
I didn’t fully understand it yet, but something about his strangeness felt familiar.
Like a signal meant for people who didn’t quite fit the mold.
Then came the concert film Stop Making Sense.
Most twelve-year-old boys I knew weren’t begging their dad to take them to see an art-house concert film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring David Byrne.
But I wasn’t like the other boys. I was fascinated by anything wacky, weird, and wild. Luckily, so was my father. So he took me to see the film and I was mesmerized.
The film begins with Byrne walking onto a stage with a boombox and an acoustic guitar. Just one guy and one song. Then, piece by piece, the band joins him. The stage fills up. The music grows bigger. The whole thing slowly transforms into this electrifying machine.
But what really grabbed me was Byrne himself.
His dancing.
His twitchy movements.
His strange gestures that somehow made sense once the music kicked in.
Looking back, I realize what I was seeing wasn’t just performance. It was permission.
Permission to be weird.
Permission to be theatrical.
Permission to be whatever kind of man you wanted to be.
For a gay kid just coming into his own, that mattered more than I knew at the time.
A couple of years later, David Byrne made another film, True Stories.
Parts of the film were shot not far from where I grew up. I was already obsessed with filmmaking, so the proximity made it feel personal. Hollywood didn’t seem quite so far away anymore.
The movie itself was unlike anything else I’d seen. A surreal little tour through a fictional Texas town filled with oddball characters and musical interludes. A satire made with sincere affection, love, and respect.
Like Byrne himself, the film didn’t behave the way movies were “supposed” to behave.
It wandered.
It observed.
It celebrated weirdness instead of sanding it down.
And teenage Clint loved every second of it.
Byrne wasn’t trying to be the coolest guy in the room. He was trying to be the most interesting. And for a kid who already felt like an outsider, his influence was powerful.
Looking back, I realize how lucky I was to encounter artists like David Byrne so young.
Between Stop Making Sense and True Stories, I got a crash course in a few important lessons:
Weird can be wonderful.
Art doesn’t have to follow the rules.
And sometimes the people who seem the most unusual on the surface are the ones quietly expanding the possibilities for everyone else.
Did the straight singer-songwriter-artist David Byrne “make me gay”? Of course not. But he did help me see my otherness as a feature, not a bug. And he demonstrated an alternate version of masculinity that was:
Curious instead of macho.
Expressive instead of guarded.
Intellectual and playful and theatrical all at once.
And for a closeted gay kid watching MTV in the early 80s, that was more than enough.
Keep calm and remember on!
Clint 🌈✌️
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thru 03-25-26
FROM THE ARCHIVES
BORN THIS WAY ON THIS DAY
03-25 = Andrew Goldstein (1983- ) = American athlete 🌈
03-25 = Danton Remoto (1963- ) = Filipino writer, editor, and professor 🌈
03-25 = Elton John (1947- ) = English singer-songwriter 🌈
03-25 = Gene Walsh (1955- ) = American firefighter and activist 🌈
03-25 = Glenn Ligon (1960- ) = American conceptual artist 🌈
03-25 = Lee Pace (1979- ) = American actor 🌈
03-25 = Sheryl Swoopes (1971- ) = American former WNBA player 🌈
03-25 = Susie Bright (1958- ) = American journalist, author, and critic 🌈
MAN CRUSH OF THE DAY
“I’ve dated men. I’ve dated women. I don’t know why anyone would care.”
Lee Pace
“If I’m, like, in a grocery store, I don’t get recognized that much, but it’s like, you know, when someone comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, I’m a big ‘Pushing Daisies’ fan,’ you just feel like, ‘Oh, wow - you’re the one who watched it. So nice to meet you.’”
Lee Pace
Not exactly my era, but I guess I know what you experienced. Flower Power, "Hair," (later Rocky Horror) and the hippy scene gave me "permission" to challenge convention and conservatism. On the pop scene it was Bowie's Ziggy Stardust that triggered me to be more outrageous (outside work - after all I was a professional clinical psychologist by then).