HEADING INTO THE HEARTLAND

“Huh! Toasters on the tables! No wonder the place smells like toast.”

David Byrne’s response to the profusion of toasters in Ship’s coffee shop is a blend of delight and duty. “Well, I guess I gotta have some toast,” he says, taking a seat at a table.

That same process--a little cultural oddity and Byrne’s bemused response--is at the heart of “True Stories,” a sometimes surreal, gently satirical study of changing times in Texas. The movie, which has just opened in Los Angeles, marks Byrne’s debut as a screenwriter and feature-film director.

Fueled by an oddball humor and plenty of music from Byrne’s band Talking Heads, the movie follows some residents of the fictional community of Virgil as they negotiate a brave new world of silicon chips and shopping-mall fashion shows.

The flat, endless plain is fertile soil for housing tracts, metal-box buildings and conspiracy theories, and there are new ways of looking for love and old-fashioned magic spells for getting it.

The medium might be new for Byrne, but rock fans who’ve followed Talking Heads for the past decade should be familiar with the themes.

“It’s something that I’ve always asked myself--Why do people live the way they do?” said Byrne after ordering soup, beer and, for the toaster, wheat bread.

“I think ‘True Stories’ is proposing a little kind of utopian view, a way of looking at contemporary life where it has a lot of possibilities,” he said of the film.

“I guess that’s what it’s about--taking things that are usually left in the background and saying this is what’s really unique, this is the real avant-garde, this is where the real creation is going on.

“People are experimenting with the ways they’re living and the structures they live in and their social behavior, and they’re doing it all there, they’re not doing it in New York or someplace like that--it’s not the people who think they’re being creative. It’s these people out in the middle of nowhere that are doing it, inventing a way of living.”

In keeping with Byrne’s penchant for the unorthodox, “True Stories” began with articles from supermarket tabloids and other magazines he gathered while Talking Heads was on its “Stop Making Sense” tour in 1983. The pieces triggered visual ideas that he turned into story boards before bringing in two Texans, playwright Beth Henley and actor-director-writer Stephen Tobolowsky, to collaborate on the script.

The result is part whimsical documentary and part episodic character study. There’s sweet-natured Louis Fyne (played by John Goodman), the lovesick bear of a man whose search for a mate takes him from an imaginative advertising campaign to the chambers of a curandero , or folk healer, portrayed by gospel singer Pops Staples.

Swoosie Kurtz is the Lazy Woman, who spends her life in bed, and L.A. rocker Tito Larriva of Cruzados is a Latino musician and computer company assembly-line worker who picks up radio signals from people’s heads.

The danger was that Byrne would be condescending toward these characters--New York intellectual drops in on the common folk and makes fun of them.

“Yeah,” Byrne agreed, “my feeling was if that came across, then I was in for trouble. Then it could be a big mistake, ‘cause it’d be like taking a cheap shot.

“But it just wasn’t what I felt. I can laugh at other people as much as the next guy. But in general I’ve been feeling a lot more generous. So it was kind of just what I was feeling.”

Not everyone is seeing it that way.

“I’ve noticed it really depends on the audience,” said Byrne, who’s sat in on several screenings. “Some audiences are so biased against the kind of people that are in the movie that they assume that it’s a satire and they assume that I share their attitude and I’m making fun. And it’s meant to be funny, but they’re reading more satire into it than what’s intended.”

Byrne pushed a button on the toaster, ejecting his wheat bread. “Doing all right,” he said approvingly. “Just lightly toasted.”

In his loose, tunic-style white shirt, Byrne, 34, only vaguely resembles the deadpan dude-ranch cowboy who narrates “True Stories,” guiding the viewer through Virgil from the driver’s seat of a red convertible.

In addition to providing a voice for his perspective, Byrne found that the role gave him a chance to modify the public’s perception of him.

“People see me as a real serious kind of guy,” he said. “It was important to me that some humor came across. More and more I chose takes where that was coming across rather than ones where my delivery was real straightforward. I chose ones where there was something funny about the delivery.

“I think my image has changed a little bit, but to me it seems always a little bit askew from the way I see myself. . . .

“I think I have a sense of humor. Granted, it may be sort of an offbeat sense of humor, but I think I have a sense of humor, and I think a lot of people aren’t aware of that. They think I’m real serious and arty all the time.

“A lot of the things I’ve read about myself stress how odd I am, or how much I am like a visitor from another planet or whatever. That’s kind of an odd thing to read about yourself. It must be a really odd thing for your parents to read about you.”

Maybe so, but it’s also a big part of the mystique that’s helped Byrne and Talking Heads move from New York’s mid-’70s underground rock scene to a secure position as one of rock’s most critically admired and commercially popular bands, culminating in the broad success the 1984 concert film “Stop Making Sense.”

While managing that transition, Byrne has also kept his credibility in the art world alive, composing a score for choreographer Twyla Tharp, and providing the mutated New Orleans band music for theater experimentalist Robert Wilson’s “The Knee Plays.” This week’s Time magazine cover of Byrne labels him “Rock’s Renaissance Man.”

While Byrne’s confidence has grown with the increased acceptance, he says he’s essentially a private person. So the increasing visibility is a mixed blessing.

“Most of the time it’s pretty nice,” he said. “Most of the time it’s just sign an autograph or say ‘Hi,’ or people saying that they like what you do or whatever--which is still a shock. It’s still a surprise to have a stranger come up and say that to me.

“So far my privacy hasn’t been invaded that much, so it’s pretty bearable. . . . Some things I feel like I can’t do. I’d feel very self-conscious if I went to a club and danced to a band. So I usually go to Latin clubs for dancing. I think the music is better for dancing anyway.”

Byrne and his girlfriend Adelle Lutz, who designed some of the wiggy outfits in “True Stories’ ” fashion show, divide their time between homes in New York’s SoHo district and L.A.’s Laurel Canyon. They’ve been together three years, and Byrne says the subject of marriage comes up once a year. “We haven’t decided. . . . I figure it’ll just come to me at some point. I’ll say, ‘Now it’s time to do this.’ ”

Same goes for children--even though the little creatures have become more and more prominent in Talking Heads songs and videos.

“I think it’s because a lot of people my age are having kids,” noted Byrne, “so they’re around a lot, so I’m noticing them. I think other times they work as a metaphor--rebirth and renewal and all that kind of stuff. They work as symbols rather than as real people.

“Friends that I know that have children seem to really have a good time with them. They talk about how it looks like it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s really a lot of fun and it’s the most exciting thing they’ve ever done. And I believe them.”

As for his own prospects of parenthood: “My assumption is that somehow this overwhelming urge is gonna sweep over me and I’m gonna say, ‘I’ve got to make a little one and it’s time to do it.’ Until that urge sweeps over me, then I might be doing it before it’s time. The kid might pop out and I’d go, ‘Wait a minute--I don’t feel like dealing with this now. I’ve got a record to do.’ ”

The new “True Stories” LP provides another unconventional twist for Talking Heads. In the film, most of the songs are sung by the characters, while the album features Talking Heads’ renditions of the same songs. (Those movie versions will show up on the flip sides of upcoming Talking Heads singles, and another album--”Sounds From ‘True Stories’ “--will feature the film’s incidental music.)

“I felt like the Talking Heads’ versions were like cover versions, and the characters’ versions were the real ones,” said Byrne.

“We released (the band’s versions) because the consensus seemed to be that people might get really upset if they were offered a Talking Heads record that hardly had me singing on it at all. . . .

“I had kind of mixed feelings about it. The songs were really made for specific situations and places and characters, and I wasn’t sure how they sounded with me singing them.”

Despite Byrne’s misgivings, the “True Stories” LP and the single, “Wild Wild Life,” show no sign of breaking Talking Heads’ string of critical praise and commercial success with an audience that ranges from MTV kids to upscale baby boomers. In fact, the group has been referred to as the ultimate yuppie band--a description that both amuses and disturbs Byrne.

“It’s weird to me--this yuppie thing seems to have caught on so fast.

“It sounds horrible. I think what’s implied by the term is pure greed--careerism and greed, and it’s totally derogatory. Of course, when you say we’ve been called a yuppie band . . . I can’t deny it. I’m sure a great part of our audience are those folks.

“As unpleasant as the archetypal yuppie may appear, they’re not stupid, and sometimes they have good taste. They like good food and they like quality clothes. So I would like to think that they like us because they have good taste. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because their friends like us.”

In any case, there are uncertainties ahead. The group won’t be touring in the near future, and while Byrne is on a Brazilian holiday, the group’s other wings will be releasing their own projects: a second solo LP from keyboardist-guitarist Jerry Harrison and another Tom Tom Club album from the husband-and-wife team of drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth.

So what’s next for the band?

“We’ve been talking about it, but we can’t figure out what to do,” said Byrne. “ ‘Stop Making Sense,’ that whole show and that whole way of performing, has kind of been put into a time capsule, so we all feel our best bet is to do something very different than that.

“I keep asking myself, ‘If I wanted to go see a show, what would I want to see?’ We haven’t come up with a real answer yet.”

Byrne hasn’t come up with the answer to another big question either: Will his budding career as a director present a conflict with Talking Heads?

He considered thoughtfully for a moment. “I like directing a lot,” he said. “So far I’ve tried to incorporate Talking Heads into it in some form. I’d love to be able to continue doing both. It’s a shame that movies take so long to do--at least the way that I do them they take a long time. . . . Yeah, (a conflict) is possible. But we’ll see.”