Jerry Harrison, the longtime guitarist and keyboardist for Talking Heads, is heading to downtown Cleveland to introduce a newly re-released 4K screening of the band's landmark concert film “Stop Making Sense” on October 3. Harrison will deliver remarks before and after the screening and answer audience questions, giving fans a rare chance to hear directly from a band member about the making of the 1984 film.
The screening takes place at Playhouse Square's 1,000-seat Mimi Ohio Theatre, with tickets on sale now ranging from $39 to $49, according to Playhouse Square. The show starts at 8 p.m. As reported by Cleveland.com, Harrison will speak both before and after the film rolls, framing the evening as part conversation, part concert film revival.
A Concert Film Born From Four Nights in Hollywood
“Stop Making Sense” was filmed during Talking Heads' four-night stand at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre in December 1983, capturing the band touring behind its fifth album, “Speaking in Tongues,” per the Cleveland.com report. Directed by Jonathan Demme, the film opens with “Psycho Killer” and builds into a full-band spectacle, eventually featuring Talking Heads augmented by touring musicians for songs including “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime.” The October screening will present a newly re-released 4K version of the film, the outlet notes.
Harrison isn't new to talking through the film's legacy in person. He participated in a Q&A session at “A Night of 'Stop Making Sense'” at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles in June 2024, according to the same Cleveland.com account, suggesting the Playhouse Square stop continues a format he's used before to walk audiences through the film's history.
Cleveland's Own Ties to Talking Heads
The city hosting Harrison's appearance already has a documented connection to the band. Talking Heads was inducted into the Cleveland-headquartered Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on March 18, 2002, when Harrison, David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, and Chris Frantz performed a four-song set that marked their only live performance together since 1984, according to Axios Cleveland. At the ceremony, the band played “Psycho Killer,” “Burning Down the House,” “Life During Wartime” and “Take Me to the River.”
That 2002 set stands out because the four original members have remained largely apart since Talking Heads split in the early 1990s. They did reunite onstage on September 11, 2023, for a Spike Lee-moderated Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival following the premiere of the film's 4K restoration, per School of Rock, marking their first joint public appearance in 21 years. That reunion was for conversation only; the four have not resumed performing live together since.
A Restoration That Broke Box Office Records
The renewed interest driving screenings like Cleveland's traces back to A24's 40th-anniversary 4K IMAX release of the film on that same September day in 2023. It set a record as the highest-grossing IMAX Live event of all time, earning $640,839 across 165 North American locations and London during its single-day premiere, according to Boxoffice Pro. The film had already earned institutional recognition two years earlier, when the Library of Congress selected it in 2021 for preservation in the National Film Registry as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Harrison's Life Before and After Talking Heads
Before joining Talking Heads in 1977, Harrison got his start in 1971 as a member of Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers, playing keyboards on their self-titled 1976 debut album, an early record now considered a major precursor to punk rock, per TIDAL Magazine. After Talking Heads dissolved, he built a second career as a multi-platinum producer, helming Live's eight-times-platinum 1994 album “Throwing Copper” and Crash Test Dummies' 1993 record “God Shuffled His Feet.”
More recently, between 2022 and 2024, Harrison returned to touring, performing Talking Heads' 1980 album “Remain in Light” across North America with guitarist Adrian Belew and a 12-piece band, the outlet reports. Belew had been a prominent guest guitarist on the original 1980 recording and its supporting tour.
Inside a Restored Cleveland Landmark
The venue hosting Harrison's appearance carries its own local history. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb, the Mimi Ohio Theatre opened in 1921 and survived a disastrous 1964 fire that destroyed its original lobby before being fully restored and reopened in 1982. Community activists saved the historic theater from planned demolition in the 1970s. It's one of 11 performance spaces within Playhouse Square, which is the second-largest performing arts center in the country after New York's Lincoln Center, presenting more than 1,000 annual performances and maintaining the largest Broadway season-ticket subscriber base in North America.
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