Blu-ray, DVD Release: True Stories

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Nov. 20, 2018
Price: DVD $17.97, Blu-ray $23.11
Studio: Criterion

Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make 1986’s True Stories, 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 offbeat comedy-musical finds Byrne playing a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness.

As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman (The Virgin Suicides), 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.

Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film include the following:

* New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director David Byrne and cinematographer Ed Lachman, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, supervised by Byrne, on the Blu-ray
* New documentary about the film’s production, featuring Byrne, Lachman, writer Stephen Tobolowsky, executive producer Ed Pressman, coproducer Karen Murphy, fashion-show costume designer Adelle Lutz, consultant Christina Patoski, actor Jo Harvey Allen, and musician Terry Allen
* CD with 23 songs, containing the film’s complete soundtrack compiled here for the first time (Blu-ray only)
* 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 program about designer Tibor Kalman and his influence on Byrne and role in the film, featuring Byrne and Kalman’s wife, artist Maira Kalman
* Deleted scenes
* Trailer
* An essay by critic Rebecca Bengal, along with, for the Blu-ray edition, new pieces by journalist and author Joe Nick Patoski and Byrne, a 1986 piece by actor Spalding Gray on the film’s production, some of the tabloid stories that inspired the film, and a selection of Byrne’s preproduction photography and writing about the film’s visual motifs