The Men Who Make the Music combines concert footage from Devo's 1978 tour with music videos and interstitials featuring a vague story about Devo's rocky relationship with "Big Entertainment". The majority of this story line is contained in a long segment called "Roll Out the Barrel" or "Rod Rooter's Big Ream"/"Rod's Big Reamer". This particular segment was shown as an intermission during Devo's 1979 tour and audio recordings appear on bootlegs from this tour. Part of this film also appears on The Complete Truth About De-Evolution. The other interstitials involve General Boy (Robert Mothersbaugh, Sr.) discussing Devo's influence on the world and their philosophy. Members of Devo also make speeches during these interstitials.