Screenshot from Stop Making Sense.
Talking Heads will reunite at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival for a Q+A about their 1984 film Stop Making Sense. The Q+A will be moderated by Oscar-winner Spike Lee and will mark a rare joint appearance by the band’s classic line-up, following years of acrimony and public spats.
The band — David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison — will appear together at the premiere of a newly restored version of Stop Making Sense next month. A24 secured the rights to the Jonathan Demme-directed concert movie earlier this year and have given it a 4K restoration. The updated version of the film will premiere at TIFF on September 11, with IMAX theaters around the world also screening it (and the Q+A) at the same time. The film will have a full theatrical release on September 22.
Talking Heads split in 1991 after releasing the classic albums Fear of Music and Remain In Light. The end of the band was a bitter one, with Byrne taking legal action against his former colleagues in 1996 to stop them using the name The Heads for a project (he eventually dropped the lawsuit). They briefly reunited in 2002 when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
As recently as 2020, though, relations between the former band mates were frosty, with drummer Chris Frantz writing negatively about Byrne in his book Remain in Love. “His brain is wired in such a way that he doesn’t know where he ends and other people begin,” Frantz told The Guardian. “He can’t imagine that anyone else would be important.”
