This video has been around a while, but I think it’s very relevant to our discussion of Telling True Stories. In it, David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) talks to the New York Times about his appreciation for biking, and his disdain for driving. He first articulated these feelings in his non-fiction book Bicycle Diaries, which I happened to find in a little free library last year. In the book he comes to a conclusion similar to the one Katherine Boo comes to in her article “Difficult Journalism that’s Slap-Up Fun.” Like Boo, Byrne believes that we isolate ourselves from stories when we rely on personal automobiles to carry us around town. Unlike Boo though, Byrne rides a bike instead of a bus. That way, he claims, if something catches his eye as he rides, then he has the ability to stop and check it out. For him, this is a way to become more engaged with society, and to get a more informed perception of a city’s faults and features. He would undoubtedly consider us fortunate to be living in Portland, a haven for two wheeled commuters.

The most interesting thing about this video (in my opinion) is that Byrne is interviewed while riding his bike. Some of this footage appears to have been captured using a GoPro that’s attached to Byrne’s handlebars; and I would guess that the rest was captured by someone biking in front of him, probably with a gimbal of some sort. I wish the entire interview had been conducted that way because I think that would have been more visually interesting than cutting back and forth between those shots and shots of him in a more traditional, sit-down style of interview. I also wish Byrne had been mic’d, so that he wouldn’t have had to shout to the camera riding in front of him, but so it goes. I nonetheless enjoy seeing interviews that are conducted in unique or unexpected ways. And for the record, to save us from the groans this would definitely incite, I’m doing my best to abstain from making a pun about filming talking heads.