Hey, guys. Quint here. We got the sad news today that Jonathan Demme passed away from a battle with cancer.
Demme was a versatile filmmaker who was never content in his comfort zone. Perhaps that started with his early days making B-movies with Roger Corman. He jumped from schlock to drama to documentary to horror to comedy. Sometimes with great success, sometimes missing the mark, but always with a focus on real, relatable human characters.
His work always offered something to chew on, but he was never better than his one-two punch of The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.
The Silence of the Lambs is one of the best genre films ever made and was rewarded for it with a major Oscar sweep, including a Best Director statue for Jonathan Demme himself.
Demme wasn't nominated for Philadelphia, but he did direct Tom Hanks to his first Oscar in a rather important movie. I remember this time period well. It took seeing someone like Tom Hanks dying of AIDS to really get the populace behind this as a general health epidemic and not just a “gay problem.” This movie, along with the very public work of Ryan White and his parents, was instrumental in changing the national discourse on the topic of HIV/AIDS. Not a lot of directors can claim to make a truly important movie, but Demme absolutely did.
You might not have pegged him for such an important filmmaker with his earlier work. I mean, you and I know how awesome Caged Heat is, but I doubt critics at the time saw the latest Corman Women In Prison movie and thought to themselves “I think that director is going to make important movies one day.”
As much fun as Caged Heat is, I think my favorite of his Corman work is Crazy Mama, a sort of tongue-in-cheek look at the romanticized 1950s starring Cloris Leachman as a bank robber who works with her mother and pregnant daughter. It's got a goofy flick and ridiculously fun.
He also made a Peter Fonda flick for Corman called Fighting Mad that I know I've seen, but don't remember too much of.
Demme dipped his toe into big studio thrillers with a movie called Last Embrace, starring Roy Scheider, John Glover, Christopher Walken and Charles Napier. I'd say it's a movie that has a better poster than story, but it's still a trip watching it just to see that cast playing together at that time.
Demme's first huge breakthrough came with Melvin and Howard, a financially and critically successful drama/comedy about a down on his luck man who is willed a chunk of Howard Hughes' estate and the chaos that brings to him. Written by One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest's Bo Goldman, this flick won some Oscar gold (one for Goldman and one supporting actress Mary Steenburgen) and established Demme as a star director and really kicked off a hell of a hot streak.
After that success, Demme directed the Talking Heads concert film STOP MAKING SENSE and Swing Shift, the film Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell met on.
His next really big flick was Something Wild, an atypical romantic comedy starring Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith and Ray Liotta, that has grown in stature over the years, recently getting a Criterion release.
Demme's success continued with one of my personal favorites, Married to the Mob. This thing was constantly on HBO when I was a kid and was one of my first introductions to the cinematic screwball style that I would fall in love with as my movie tastes grew.
He followed that up with the movie he'll be most remembered for: Silence of the Lambs.
Silence of the Lambs was very important for me. I was the tender age of 10 when it saw release, but already really into horror. Even as a kid I knew that horror was looked down upon as a genre. Everybody I knew seemed to love horror movies... my mom, my teachers, my school friends, but it was never considered to be anything more than bottom of the barrel entertainment for some reason. Maybe not in the whole of filmdom, but definitely in my little bubble.
Silence of the Lambs changed that. Not only was it a successful horror movie, it was a pop culture sensation. Everybody had a Hannibal Lecter impersonation. It was all over ET and the regular news channels at it made tons of money and started winning awards. To this day it's still the only horror movie to win best picture.
And don't give me any crap about how it's a thriller, not a horror movie. Semantics, but it's still about dude that eats people helping an FBI agent track down another dude that's making a woman suit out of real women. It might be well done, A-list horror, but it's horror. That's like saying Alien isn't a sci-fi movie because it's done with class.
Silence of the Lambs is an all-timer and that solidified Jonathan Demme's place in the pantheon of great filmmakers.
After Lambs and Philadelphia, Demme seemed to take a step back. He did some shorts, documentaries and TV, but didn't come back to the big screen for a few years and when he did he brought Beloved, which isn't a very good movie. It has a great cast and an interesting premise, but wholly misses the mark.
That would describe most of Demme's late-career offerings, but there is one shining exception and that was a small film he did amongst some fizzled remakes of Manchurian Candidate and The Truth About Charlie. That movie is called Rachel Getting Married, a fantastic character study about a troubled young woman who returns home for her sister's marriage.
It's the movie that pulled Anne Hathaway out of her goodie two shoes Disney beginnings and the last front to back great movie Demme would give us.
I met Demme only one time. It was at an Austin fest, either AFF or SXSW, and I believe he was doing a panel on The Truth About Charlie. He hung around afterwards and I got to talk to him a little bit, mostly about Ted Demme, his nephew, who also happened to be one of the first big Hollywood types to befriend me when I started doing this movie blogging thing.
Teddy died tragically young and Jonathan was exceedingly warm to me in our brief chat as we shared some stories about him.
It was so long ago the details of the conversation escape me, but I do remember him being engaging, kind and personable.
The man's impact as an artist is undeniable. He changed the dialogue in cinema and in the greater world with his work. He will be sorely missed. Tonight my thoughts will be with Mr. Demme's friends, family and fans.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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