The Talking Heads perform in Stop Making Sense
photo by A24
This month, the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX Theater is hosting a long-awaited remaster of one of the greatest concert films ever made, offering fans a second chance to see the year’s highest-grossing film.
Fans of new wave music, critics, and film buffs alike have long considered Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense to be one of the all-time greats in the concert film genre. Later this month, the Aquarium is offering a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to see this 1984 masterpiece, newly remastered for the giant screen.
This 40th anniversary remaster applies modern spit and polish to footage captured during a trio of live performances by the Talking Heads in Hollywood’s Pantages Theater at the close of 1983.
Stop Making Sense’s return to the silver screen coincides with Stop Making Sense: The IMAX Live Experience, which fans can attend at 6 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 11. After the screening, a live-streamed Q&A hosted by renowned filmmaker Spike Lee will include interviews with original Talking Heads members David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison from the Toronto International Film Festival.
Two weeks later, the remastered film will be shown exclusively in IMAX (without the Q&A) from Sept. 22-24 at 8:30 p.m.
As you watch Byrne strut his unironically awkward dance moves across the giant screen in the year 2023, you may ask yourself, “Well … how did I get here?”
Apart from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2002, Byrne and his bandmates famously haven’t appeared together since the band’s breakup in 1991. The anniversary of Stop Making Sense brings the band members together for their first group appearance in more than 20 years to share insights into the making of a film that Rolling Stone describes as “a joyous marriage of New Wave, funk and Bryne’s inspired, demented stagecraft.”
Stop Making Sense captures the Heads at the peak of their success. The film’s standout moments include Byrne’s notorious dance moves — with a lamp and, even more famously, while wearing a “big suit” — along with consummate performances of Talking Heads hits like “Once in a Lifetime,” “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down the House.”
Chattanooga’s largest screen will also offer a special giant-screen reprisal to Barbie, which recently eclipsed The Super Mario Bros. Movie as 2023’s highest-grossing film. Barbie returns for a one-week run beginning Sept. 21 at 6:15 p.m., proving that, even though white may be out, you can still wear pink after Labor Day.
Longtime Barbie fans who missed their first chance to turn their viewing experience into a pink-powered celebration will get another opportunity to see Margot Robbie’s portrayal of the quintessential toy in this clever comedy that entertains and uplifts.
Stop Making Sense, Stop Making Sense: The IMAX Live Experience and Barbie will all be screened in 2D.
Tickets to Stop Making Sense: The IMAX Live Experience are $25. Tickets to the film’s screenings later in the month will be $15.
For more information, including a screening schedule and advance ticketing purchases, visit tnaqua.org/imax/
Stop Making Sense: The IMAX Live Experience
Sept. 11, at 6 p.m.
Barbie
Sept. 21–22 at 6: 15 p.m.
Sept. 23–24 at 3:45 p.m. and 6:15 p.m.
Sept. 25–28 at 6:15 p.m.
Stop Making Sense
Sept. 22–24 at 8:30 p.m.
Barbie (Margot Robbie), right, and Ken (Ryan Gosling) in Barbie
photo by Warner Bros. Entertainment