Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jonathan Demme
Produced by	Gary Goetzman
Written by	Talking Heads Jonathan Demme
Starring	Talking Heads
Music by	Talking Heads
Cinematography	Jordan Cronenweth
Edited by	Lisa Day
Production company	Arnold Stiefel Company
Distributed by	Cinecom Pictures Palm Pictures
Release date	April 24, 1984 (1984-04-24)
Running time	88 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,200,000 US

Stop Making Sense is a 1984 concert film featuring a live performance by Talking Heads. Directed by Jonathan Demme, it was shot over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December 1983, as the group was touring to promote their new album Speaking in Tongues. The movie is notable for being the first made entirely using digital audio techniques. The band raised the budget of $1.2 million themselves. The title comes from the lyrics of the song "Girlfriend Is Better": "As we get older and stop making sense...". The film has been hailed by Leonard Maltin as "one of the greatest rock movies ever made", and Pauline Kael of The New Yorker described it as "...close to perfection."

The film begins with the opening credits, using a style similar to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (the movie trailer also makes references to Dr. Strangelove). Title designer Pablo Ferro was responsible for both title sequences.

Lead singer David Byrne walks on to a bare stage (seen from the feet only initially) with a portable cassette tape player and an acoustic guitar. He introduces "Psycho Killer" by saying he wants to play a cassette tape, ostensibly from the boom box. In reality, the tick-tock drum machine was a Roland TR-808 played from the mixing board. During the song, the drum machine "fires" machine gun riffs that cause Byrne to stagger "like Jean-Paul Belmondo in the final minutes of 'Breathless,' a hero succumbing, surprised, to violence that he'd thought he was prepared for."