WBEZ Chicago is celebrating 40 years of one of the greatest concert films of all time, Stop Making Sense, at the Studebaker Theater in downtown Chicago’s Fine Arts Building.

I love this movie. Every Sunday when my son was a toddler, he’d nap as his father studied, and I’d go to the movies. When he was old enough, we went to the movies together, especially on Christmas Day after the divorces, and it was just the two of us. At seventeen, he convinced me to see the Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense at the same Studebaker Theater.

“I don’t like punk rock,” I said.

“It’s not punk. It’s different. You’ll like it,” he convinced me.

He had his own band at the time and knew his music, so I trusted him. He was right. I blasted the Stop Making Sense cassette on my car radio until the tape wore out.

The film documents the legendary rock band Talking Heads performing at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in December 1983. David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison perform alongside an ecstatic ensemble of supporting musicians.

When my movie buddy Marca Bristo was alive, we went to the movies nearly every Saturday. We’d mull the pros and cons of what we had just seen in the quiet theater afterward before going off to a coffee shop to talk about politics.  Marca died in September 2019. The releases that year included Little Women, 1917, and It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Part of mourning Marca meant slacking off on movie-going. I saw only one movie for the rest of the year,  Just Mercy, which tells the true story of defense attorney Bryan Stevenson and his client, a black man falsely accused of murder. It was my quiet tribute to Marca, a powerful advocate for disability rights.

These days, I’m wary of catching Covid and all manner of infectious diseases so I’ve been in only one movie theater since March 2020 to see Caste.

But I may have to venture into the old Studebaker theater with its high ceiling and wide aisles to see this old film with old friends who love the old Talking Heads. There’s just nothing like being in a room full of people who love what you love.

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Stop Making Sense Tickets

Regan Burke's avatar
Regan Burke's book, "In That Number" was a finalist for Chicago Writers Association non-fiction Book of the Year. Her brief memoirs and personal essays appear in the Christian Science Monitor, Sun Magazine, Chicago History Museum "In This Together" Project, City Creatures, Safe 'n Sound, Easter Seals Blog. Chaleur, Rise Up Review, Bird Garden's Murder of Writers and Writing Out Loud. She lives on Potawatomi land in downtown Chicago with Elsa, the West Highland Terrier. Her main activity is reducing the weight of the here and now.

18 thoughts on “Stop Making Sense”

  1. I too am a Talking Heads fan. When I lived on Maui I was in the outdoor shower one night singing Burnin’ Down the House. What I did not know was the fact that my landlord lady was listening to me, and the words. She became a bit concerned and spoke to me the following day. I assured her that I would not burn down the house and I had no future plans to do so. That was pretty funny. Anyway here are a couple of videos you might like……

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2CfqA9P0Y

    https://youtu.be/eQ0oKlICHQc

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  2. Lovely, sensitive story.  Thank you. 

    Cristina Benitez 

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  3. Hi Regan – Greetings from your fellow Beth Finke memoir class writer. Except for “The Last Waltz” by The Band (with Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ne

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    2. Neither. My second favorite song to dance to is Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House.” My favorite song to dance to is “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones. That IS punk rock, and I was quite the pogo-er back in the day. I had a boyfriend in the late 1970s/early 1980s and we decided that would be the song we would dance to at our wedding. Alas, he lived in Boston and I lived in Chicago. Geography did us in, so he married someone else. I still regret it.

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  9. I’ve actually never seen this movie, but I’ve listened to the album 1000 times. The idea of watching a concert film seems boring to me. Since it’s so easy to see a movie these days, I should probably just suck it up and watch, yeah?

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