What Have I Done?

I am Ted Kulczycky. This site is dedicated to Stop Making Sense Project. What is Stop Making Sense Project? It is tempting to describe it as a multimedia exploration of the movie, Stop Making Sense. The conceptual ideal project will include (but is not limited to) books, academic articles, fanfic, music, moving images, toy mods, social media, podcasts, a sci-fi tv show, and public exhibitions; all of which will be about, derived from or inspired by the Jonathan Demme/Talking Heads movie, Stop Making Sense.

However, I have come to the conclusion that conceptions of “media” and “subject,” might not always apply to the same sorts of things, so “multimedia” is maybe inaccurate. I dabbled with lots of areas I’m interested in. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of person I’m really meant to be. Am I a film-nerd? Filmmaker? Critic? Theorist? Music-geek? DJ? Musician? Karaoke host? Philosopher? Archivist? Early in the pandemic, I returned to college to finish my degree. In the margins of my 4000-level “Philosophy of Time” notebook, I started developing a time-travel mini-series. The protagonist is given a limited number of tokens for time-travel to the past. He loves Talking Heads, but was too young to ever see them perform live. So he frets about whether to use his tokens for “the good of the universe” or to go see old Talking Heads concerts. He tries to do both, but unexpected consequences keep occurring. He prevents the holocaust, but then Talking Heads never existed (or they sucked). Or he did see some shows, but then Donald Trump becomes the President. I interpreted everything I was learning about the philosophy of time in terms of how it applied to Stop Making Sense. I wasn’t a philosophy student examining Stop Making Sense. I was a Stop Making Sense guy, studying philosophy.

This led to the realization that whatever I’m doing—playing music—bartending—writing film theory—studying philosophy—whatever—I do it by thinking about how it relates to Stop Making Sense. So my true calling came to me fairly late. It turns out that I am not a film nerd, not a music geek nor a philosopher. I’m a Stop Making Sense person. So in a sense, Stop Making Sense is my chosen medium.

What kind of Stop Making Sense are you doing today, Ted?

Today I’m Stop Making Sense-researching. Thanks for asking.

Ted, any plans for the weekend?

Well I was going to spend all day Saturday Stop Making Sense-writing, but I don’t have plans for the evening. Do you want to join me for playing with Stop Making Sense action figures?

At this point, you won’t be shocked to learn that I’m somewhere on the ASD spectrum, although tests have given mixed results. I first saw Stop Making Sense in 1985. My passion for it has grown steadily ever since. In 2014, I began the Stop Making Sense Project in earnest but it has been developing in fits and spurts. In the summer of 2023, I double-downed on Stop Making Sense-writing, with hopes to complete the first book project this year. On August 22, I was struck by an automobile after disembarking a public transit vehicle. My injuries were quite extensive, and I’ve had to refocus the whole Project.

I am currently concentrating entirely on Stop Making Sense healing.

The previous fits and spurts of this website are available below for perusal, and please subscribe to my Instagram feed for more regular updates. You can contact me at stopmakingsensebook@gmail.com

  • ALL of the Making Flippy Floppy SLIDES!!!

    Demme’s genius was to not be seduced by crude ideas about what constitutes “cinematic.” For this reason, the film focuses on the people, and not the special effects included in the concerts he filmed. This was a wise choice, but it does mean that I’ve spent 40 years wondering about the other word slides for…

  • My good friend Cory wrote about me…

    In addition to all the attention from the Globe article, Cory wrote about our adventures on his site, and deftly wove it into his larger point about the trajectory of our cities. He’s a really good writer, and a very innovative thinker and I’m proud to know him. Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow Of…

  • I was in the newspaper!!

    Canada’s national newspaper profiled my unique approach to healing. Here is a link to the article. Here is a PDF of the online article.