The “Virgil” in Virgil, Texas, does double duty in True Stories. It's both the film's idyllic 'burb and the role of David Byrne, our Virgil for a tour of middle America's “specialness.” The product of successive booms, this fatted plain of shopping malls, nightclubs, and housing tracts is like a mirage of optimism. Yet, upon close inspection, the inhabitants of this “normal” Texas town are loonies from a closeout bin: the ever-lonely Louis Fyne (John Goodman), a.k.a. The Dancing Bear; Miss Rollings (Swoosie Kurtz), who never leaves her bed; The Lying Woman (Jo Harvey Allen), who knew the “real” Rambo; Earl Culver (Spalding Gray), a spiritual entrepreneur. What's eccentric about this energetic musical is how Byrne and the Talking Heads use songs not to explain Virgil's oddballs, but to capture cultural quirks-the false history of “City of Dreams,” the conspiracy theories of “Puzzlin' Evidence,” the conservative hedonism of “Wild Wild Life.” Byrne's surface tone may be wry, but his underlying affection for the heartland is “growing big as a house.”