A few years ago someone told me that they had seen a film about snake handlers in an anthropology class. The film was made around 1970 and at one point one of the snake handling preachers gave a sermon that consisted, more or less, of the words to “Once In A Lifetime” by Talking Heads, which came out in 1980. (“And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack…”) I don’t have any problem believing this since it fits right in with what I know about David Byrne’s sense of humor, but I’ve been trying to find out about the movie and can’t find anything about it on the Internet. Has anyone here seen it? Do you know the title of it?
I suggest you try a Google search under “snake handling documentary” and then sort through them to find the one you’re thinking of. Evidently lots of people have been making documentaries on the subject.
http://www.google.com
And then, of course, you could go at it from the other direction, and look for discussions of the Talking Heads song itself.
http://www.talking-heads.net/lyrics_best.html
Somewhere along the line he may have discussed his lyrics.
I think the movie’s called Holy Ghost People and it was directed by Peter Adair.
Or you could go to this page, a different section of the same site that Duck Duck Goose cites, and start a discussion about it:
I suspect you’re right. That title came up in my web searching, but I couldn’t link it to Talking Heads. And it was made in 1967, which is about the right time frame. Now I just need to figure out where I can find it.
I could go to the Talking Heads website to find out about Talking Heads! Why didn’t I think of that?