Talking Heads will reunite for a live Q&A in honor of the 40th anniversary of their concert film Stop Making Sense. This is the first time all four members —David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison — have appeared together in more than two decades.
The conversation, moderated by filmmaker Spike Lee, will take place at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 11, following a screening of the movie. (A representative confirmed to UCR that there will be “no performance.”) It will be broadcast live in select IMAX theaters around the world. “To me, Stop Making Sense has remained relevant because the staging and lighting techniques could have been created in a much earlier time period,” Harrison said in an earlier statement.
“The absence of interviews, combined with the elegant and timeless lighting, created a film that can be watched over and over.”
Stop Making Sense will also return to theaters this year on Sept. 22, newly remastered in 4K. An expanded edition of the movie’s soundtrack will be released on Aug. 18, featuring the full set list plus two previously unreleased songs.
The last time Talking Heads played together was in 2002 at their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. Since then, all four members, who have each embarked on solo careers, have expressed that another reunion is unlikely. “It would be nice if it could happen because unlike many of our contemporaries, we’re all still alive,” Frantz told Rolling Stone in 2020.
“I realized after a while that I was very happy doing the kind of wide variety of things that I was doing and the different kinds of music that I was doing,” Byrne explained in 2023. “And I thought, ‘Why should I trade in my happiness for some cash?’”
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For the decade and a half that they held it together, Talking Heads led a charmed musical career.
