R.I.P. Jonathan Demme

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Big Magilla
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Re: R.I.P. Jonathan Demme

Post by Big Magilla »

dws1982 wrote:His original cut of Swing Shift was supposedly a great film that got butchered by the studio. If I remember right, there had been hopes of putting it back together, but when Demme was asked about it, he said that as far as he knew the original negatives no longer existed.
The blame at the time was alleged interference from the film's star, Goldie Hawn, whose main complaint was that Christine Lahti was stealing the film from her. The screenplay, which was a mess, was credited to a non-existent Rob Morton, an amalgam of Bo Goldman, Ron Nyswaner and Nancy Dowd. No one could have saved that thing from itself.
Heksagon
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Re: R.I.P. Jonathan Demme

Post by Heksagon »

I wasn't expecting him to die yet. He was a good director, who directed a bunch of entertaining films and he was especially an excellent acting director. Still, there is one film that he directed which is towering over the rest - The Silence of the Lambs, a seminal crime/suspense film of its era. Together with JFK, it feels like those films changed the whole genre for the rest of the decade - and probably even more for television than for film.

Demme directed four actors to Oscar wins - three of them in lead - and eight to nominations, a very impressive achievement considering that his own time at the "peak" was relatively short and that he rarely worked with top critically acclaimed actors. Mary Steenburgen, Christine Lahti and Dean Stockwell got their only acting nominations for working with Demme, and Anthony Hopkins and Anne Hathaway got their first nominations for his films.
dws1982
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Re: R.I.P. Jonathan Demme

Post by dws1982 »

His original cut of Swing Shift was supposedly a great film that got butchered by the studio. If I remember right, there had been hopes of putting it back together, but when Demme was asked about it, he said that as far as he knew the original negatives no longer existed.

I haven't seen a lot of his early work, except for Melvin and Howard (it's good but I didn't quite see the masterpiece that others did) and Something Wild. I know his post-Oscar career seems like a disappointment in some ways, but I think he made some great films--I'm a big fan of Beloved and The Manchurian Candidate, as well as his episodes of HBO's Enlightened. (I've a Blu-Ray of A Master Builder sitting here unwatched; maybe I'll watch it this weekend in tribute.)

Ironically, his final directing credit airs on TV tonight--an episode of the Fox series Shots Fired.
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Re: R.I.P. Jonathan Demme

Post by Mister Tee »

Some are saying there was word he was sick, but I never heard it, so this comes as a great shock.

Based on the first decade or so of his films I saw -- Handle with Care, Melvin and Howard, Swing Shift, Something Wild, Married to the Mob -- I'd never have guessed he would have ascended to the Oscar winners' circle. I liked most of those movies (except Swing Shift, which was notoriously recut at Hawn's direction), but in a minor way; it didn't feel like he had the sharp focus to make anything truly major (I know, there were critics who thought Melvin and Howard. especially, WAS major, but I respectfully disagreed, and hold to that position).

All of which made Silence of the Lambs an utter shock. It turned out, his humane take on behavior -- one thing that was clear in his early films -- was just the right element to turn a serial killer thriller into something bigger and more powerful. He also showed -- for the first time, it seemed to me -- exceptional visual talent: those scenes between Hopkins and Foster aren't just powerfully written/performed, they're perfectly framed; and the suspenseful scenes are shot in un-cliched ways that keep the audience gripped without feeling familiar.

Philadelphia was a lesser script -- it was widely seen as courting the mainstream by pulling punches -- but it, too, was very well shot, and is moving despite its limitations. And Beloved, lumpy though it is, has some strong moments and memorable performances, especially from Kimberly Elise.

Most of his later career was either wasteful (needless remakes of Charade and The Manchurian Candidate) or limited to documentary (a virtual second arena for him), with the exception of Rachel Getting Married, which had some of the zing of his earlier work and gave Anne Hathaway her best role by far.

All in all, a creditable resume. And I've never heard anything about him as a person that wasn't in glowing territory. A truly sad loss.
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R.I.P. Jonathan Demme

Post by Reza »

Jonathan Demme, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ Director, Dies at 73

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April 26, 2017 | 08:10AM PT Variety by Carmel Dagan, Brent Lang

Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme has died of cancer complications, his publicist told Variety. He was 73 years old.

Demme is best known for directing “The Silence of the Lambs,” the 1991 horror-thriller that was a box office smash and a critical triumph. The story of an FBI analyst (Jodie Foster) who uses a charismatic serial killer (Anthony Hopkins) to track a murderer became only the third film in history to win Academy Awards in all the top five categories ( picture, actor, actress, director, and adapted screenplay), joining the ranks of “It Happened One Night” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Though he had his greatest success terrifying audiences, most of Demme’s work was looser and quirkier. He showed a great humanism and empathy for outsiders in the likes of “Melvin and Howard,” the story of a service station owner who claimed to have been a beneficiary of Howard Hughes, and “Something Wild,” a screwball comedy about a banker whose life is turned upside down by a kooky woman. He also scored with “Married to the Mob” and oversaw “Stop Making Sense,” a documentary about the Talking Heads that is considered to be a seminal concert film.

Following “The Silence of the Lambs,” Demme used his clout to make “Philadelphia,” one of the first major studio films to tackle the AIDS crisis and a movie that won Tom Hanks his first Oscar for playing a gay lawyer.

The director most recently made 2015’s “Ricki and the Flash,” starring Meryl Streep as an aging rocker who must return home to Indiana due to a family crisis. The film disappointed at the box office and reviews were muted.

Demme’s commercial prowess waned in the late 1990’s and early aughts. “Beloved,” a 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison’s award-winning book, received some critical support, but was a massive bomb and failed to attract much Oscar attention. Then there was an ill-advised 2002 “Charade” remake “The Truth About Charlie,” which starred Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton and proved a disservice to the classic Stanley Donen original.

He also failed to convince critics that his 2004’s big-budget, high-profile remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” needed to be made. The film starred Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber and Meryl Streep, which hit in the middle of a contentious presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, but despite the political climate, it didn’t make much of a splash.

In addition to “Stop Making Sense,” Demme did documentaries on the Pretenders, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, and he also directed quite a number of music videos, drawing a Grammy nomination in 1987 for best long form music video for “Sun City: Artists United Against Apartheid.”

Demme’s non-fiction work also dipped into politics and social issues, profiling the likes of Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela. He made two documentaries about Haiti, 1988’s “Haiti Dreams of Democracy” and 2003’s critically acclaimed “The Agronomist.” Of the latter the New York Times said, “The turbulence that led to the removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti’s presidency gives ‘The Agronomist,’ a superb new documentary by Jonathan Demme, a melancholy timeliness. Its hero, Jean Dominique, embodies the fragile, perpetual hope that Haiti might someday nurture a just and decent political order.”

Demme came to the attention of Hollywood with the 1980 film “Melvin and Howard,” in which Jason Robards starred as a bearded, bedraggled Hughes encountered by struggling Melvin Dumont, who helps Howard out — only to be left $156 million in a Hughes will of dubious authenticity. The film worked because it was not about Hughes but about Dumont, played by Paul Le Mat (one of Demme’s favorite actors). The film drew three Oscar nominations, winning for best supporting actress (Mary Steenburgen) and original screenplay (Bo Goldman), while Robards also drew a nomination.

The 1984 film “Swing Shift,” a romantic dramedy set on the homefront during WWII and starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, was directed by Demme but taken out of his hands by the studio and recut, reportedly to make Hawn’s characterization more flattering. Director and star clashed during the production with Hawn wanting a more conventional romantic comedy and Demme preferring something with rougher edges.

The same year, however, he also directed Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense.” Reviewing it when it was re-released in 1999, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of the “tingle of satisfaction” that comes “when a piece of entertainment is so infectious, so original and so correct in its judgments that a viewer can sink into his seat — secure in the knowledge that you’re in good hands. Has there ever been a live concert film as vibrant or as brilliantly realized?”

In 1986 Demme perfectly paired Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffiths in the offbeat, New Wave-flavored indie comedy “Something Wild” and drew an erotically anarchical performance from Griffiths — she quickly convinces Daniels’ ordinary business guy that she’s capable of anything. The film featured an impressive debut from Ray Liotta as Griffiths’ lunatic ex-boyfriend.

Demme next shot monologuist Spalding Gray’s “Swimming to Cambodia” for the screen, with excellent results all around. The Austin Chronicle said, “Laurie Anderson’s tribal score and Demme’s perfectly executed direction take us right inside the mind of this eccentric genius.”

The director’s 1988 comedy “Married to the Mob,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer, replete with loud hair and a thick New York accent, and Alec Baldwin, with excellent supporting performances by Dean Stockwell as the Mafia boss and Mercedes Ruehl as his far fiercer wife, was a critical and popular success.

The 2008 film “Rachel Getting Married,” was a return to form for Demme, and served as an excellent vehicle for Anne Hathaway to demonstrate acting ability in a largely unsympathetic but intriguing role of a young woman, out of rehab long enough to attend the wedding of the sister she’s jealous of.

Demme directed an adaptation of the Ibsen play “The Master Builder,” penned by and starring Wallace Shawn, in 2013. In 2015, in addition to “Ricki and the Flash,” he directed the docu-series “The New Yorker Presents,” bringing to life the iconic magazine.

Robert Jonathan Demme was born in Baldwin, Long Island, New York, and attended the University of Florida. Like John Sayles, he began his directing career in Roger Corman’s stable, helming women’s prison exploitation film “Caged Heat” in 1974; nostalgic road trip film “Crazy Mama,” starring Cloris Leachman, in 1975; and Peter Fonda action film “Fighting Mad” in 1976.

The Altman-esque look at small town residents who are CB radio users “Handle With Care” (aka “Citizens Band”) (1977), starring Le Mat and Candy Clark, earned a review (albeit not a glowing one) in the New York Times: “Handle With Care” is “so clever that its seams show. Mr. Demme’s tidiest parallels and most purposeful compositions are such attention-getters that the film has a hard time turning serious for its finale, in which characters who couldn’t communicate directly come to understand one another at long last.”

He followed “Handle With Care” with the Hitchcockian thriller “Last Embrace,” starring Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin, but his next film, “Melvin and Howard” shared the sensibility of “Handle With Care” but showed an assured, mature director, and the acclaim it received firmly established Demme’s Hollywood career.

In 2006 Demme was presented with the National Board of Review’s Billy Wilder Award. Demme’s nephew, director Ted Demme, died in 2002 at age 38.

Demme was married to director-producer Evelyn Purcell. He is survived by second wife Joanne Howard and their three children: Ramona, Brooklyn and Jos.
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