convey candid realism”, the cinéma vérité synthesizes traditional documentary visual language with the conventions of fictional filmmaking. In this specific film then, there are several narratives which emerge, not as predominant storylines but rather as a series of isolated yet simultaneous events which are traversed by the primary voice of the film; which is Byrne himself. In the role of the narrator, this unnamed character acts as a reporter, providing initial background information on the history of the region (as manifested by the sesquicentennial celebration), the technological progression of the society(shown as the computer factory) as well as the continuing expansion of the city (as indicated by the construction of new subdivisions). As a result, the viewer is immediately inundated with a number of subject matters with which to root their readings of the film. The use of "affinity" becomes interesting as Byrne attempts to weave themes of nostalgia as a very blatant cinematic tool.  Each of these fragments is then augmented by a series of smaller, more character motivated sub-sub-stories. Plot lines of romantic longing, of ethnic and religious tradition , and community involvement refrain from being sedimentary and the narrator is left to break his role, and the “fourth wall” of the performance, to interact with

all characters to provide some semblance of a coherent structure.
An equally important theme that also emerges from this film, is Byrne’s specific visual reference to  real-world capitalist and consumer culture based social constructions. With the use

an MTV montage aesthetic he is inviting the subjective comparison of the viewers own lifestyle.

“MTV-style editing in contemporary movies is another example of …self-conscious commentary, and it is certainly the case that music videos...have exercised a strong influence on contemporary film…it is also surely the case that the increasing fragmentation of contemporary motion pictures has not simply been ‘caused’ by the popularity of MTV-style music videos-both of these media respond to larger historical forces…it is clear that the fragmentation of most postmodern films merely reflects-or even celebrates- the fragmentation of contemporary life, more in the mode implied by [Fredric] Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism” (Booker, 2007, 6)

It is really a hard task to say what this film is specifically presenting. Dominant themes of town pride, modernization and progress, personal development and character growth are subsequently aligned with harsher cultural undertones. Overall, this film does not project any formidable theme of madness- as defined in the traditional sense, but rather by using a vehicle of self-referentiality(embodied in this case by each characters relation to the town festival and the use of the film itself as a landscape), it does present a parodist, stereotypical commentary on the spectacle of American cultural traditions.

“The city, our great modern form, is soft, amenable to the dazzling and libidinous variety of lives, dreams, interpretations. But the very plastic qualities which make the great city the liberator of human identity also cause it to be especially vulnerable to psychosis and totalitarian nightmare” Jonathan Raban, twentieth century novelist “
(Harvey, 1990, 6)

With the meta-narrative structure of the modernist age thusly disintegrating, a particular quality of the postmodern film became the ambiguous oscillation between different micro-narratives. What this style allowed for was a method of providing multiple opportunities for the individuated experience and interpretation of the story. David Byrne’s True Stories is an excellent example of how to achieve this narrative fragmentation.

Set in the 1980’s, fictional town of Virgil, Texas, Byrne’s film exists somewhere between the purely documentary and the cinéma vérité style.Defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the art or technique of filming a motion picture so as to