No Jugglers. No Mimes. No Musicians. No Rock Bands.
November 19, 2025
Nature of Things at Spacy DTX

Exhibition Text

This story takes place in Virgil, Texas. In fact, it is many stories. Ones you may have read about in the Weekly World News or other supermarket tabloids. And what if they were true? Maybe they are. One character is a country singer desperately seeking matrimony. Another character hasn’t left her bed since we don’t know when. One woman can’t help but lie about everything (she stole a spaceship). And everyone is ready to celebrate the State’s Sesquicentennial, which really does take place in 1986. True Story.

From what I hear, there was a David Byrne-shaped current that rippled around these parts, the Dallas- Fort Worth Metroplex, in 1985. Byrne was gearing up for a directorial debut, and his only narrative film to date, to be titled True Stories, shortly following his touring success of the Jonathan Demme film, Stop Making Sense, which, speaking of, is currently on tour again and will be stopping here in Dallas at the Texas Theatre on November 15th. Byrne and his team filmed around Dallas, the NorthPark Mall, Allen, McKinney, Mesquite, Midlothian, and Red Oak. He even filmed in the legendary house of Willard “The Texas Kid” Watson, who just so happens to be from Louisiana.

Over the years Byrne had gathered clippings of sensationalized stories from tabloids, as stories to be told, and he made imaginative drawings from them. Eventually he showed them to his friends Beth Henley and Stephen Tobolowsky, and they made a story out of them. He didn’t know that the stories would be told in Texas, until there seemed like there was no more perfect place with its open horizon lines, ample characters of the eccentric sort, and general acceptance of such.

What resulted is part musical, part comedy, part satire (of small-town America? Maybe not. Of the city snobs? Maybe so), featuring music written by Byrne and songs by the Talking Heads (and Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band), and a Byrne-narrated ride through the old town parades, newfangled rock clubs, avant-garde fashion shows at towny shopping malls, a church, a talent show, all exploring and elevating the seemingly mundane moments in Suburbia, America.

The title of the exhibition, which will coincide with the screening of True Stories, came from a classified ad for “TALENT PAGEANT AUDITIONS” around the DFW area, posted to discover local talent for Byrne’s Texas Sesquicentennial celebration (the talent show that closes out the film). The audition took place on August 25, 1985, at the Arcadia Theater located at 2005 Greenville Ave, Dallas. ONE DAY ONLY. The main rules were simple: “No Jugglers. No Mimes. No Musicians. No Rock Bands.”

At first, I wanted to include artists in this exhibition that worked on the film. A lot of them are now in their 70’s and don’t respond to Facebook messages. But I knew Gene Pool was the man in the grass suit in the fashion show that was filmed at NorthPark Mall, and that Harrod Blank had photographed him with his grass car and his grass bus, and even in his aluminum can suit, and a cork suit. The fashion show in True Stories was arranged by David Byrne’s girlfriend at the time, Adelle Lutz. They later got married, and even later got divorced. Lutz, like Gene Pool, created sculptural and wearable works of art. Gene Pool went on to do a Super Bowl commercial and gained brief fame.

I also knew the film True Stories, and especially the “Laziest Woman in the World” was really influential to the artist Mia Ardito in art school. I know she made a video where she recreated the song “Dream Operator” by David Byrne and recreated scenes by actress Swoosie Kurtz. So, I included that video as well.

Certain scenes in the film were, as mentioned before, filmed in Willard “The Texas Kid” Watson’s house. He lived over by Love Field Airport in Dallas and had a very distinctive, maximalist folk style that spilled out into his front lawn and was unusual to see in the city (certain neighbors also tried to get him shut down by the City of Dallas). I knew he made drawings, and I found some and am including them. He is not in the film, but his home and his wife are. Jonathan Demme ended up buying drawings from the Texas Kid. His house was apparently a fun hangout spot when they were filming True Stories.

Kristen Cochran reminded me of the way David Byrne sees the world, with an eagle’s-eye of egalitarian curiosity. I ended up finding in her studio a series that she made of famous female artists, where she photoshopped out everything but their work shirt, and then drew amorphous bodies, collaged on top. It made me think of the way a costume department puts together ideas for film. Cochran draws an anonymous figure in its ‘studio costume’ which is used to protect the body while performing the labor. It is also the many layered and mediated aspects within film, a tabloid story that becomes a drawing that becomes a plot line that becomes a character acted by an actor.

And I thought of Casey Leone, too, because her photographs are appropriated and coded, redacting characters in film stills through collaged rectangles. This series is taken from the Jean-Luc Godard film from 1966, Masculin Féminin. The rectangle blocks are white for woman, black for man. David Byrne said in his book about True Stories “Movie making is a trick. Song writing is a trick. If a song is done really well, the trick works. If not, people can see through it right away… Most movies [are] edited in a way that tells you what you’re supposed to be looking at before you decide that’s what you want to be looking at. It’s a trick, and when it doesn’t work, it’s really offensive, because you know someone’s trying to trick you, and they think you can’t tell.” Leone shows us where are eye is directed. A little bit of the magic trick laid bare. And by removing the bodies, our gaze moves to the surroundings. This series and True Stories have some great sets.

And all together, in the hallway at Tyler Street Station, back in the same town as the fictional Virgil, Texas (for our very own America’s Aeneid), for one day only, and there are no jugglers, no mimes, no musicians, and no rock bands. True Story.