Demme’s last fiction film, “Ricki and the Flash,” was perhaps his ultimate fusion of music in a fiction film. Timberlake, a passionate fan of “Stop Making Sense,” sought out Demme to direct it. “Jonathan was a true keeper of souls, and now we must celebrate his.”ĭemme last year released his latest concert film, “Justin Timberlake and the Tennessee Kids,” on Netflix. Fictional or actual, he caught so many lives and glimpses of lives and framed them for others to enjoy,” Hitchcock said Thursday. “Jonathan was a born movie-maker: He loved people and he loved filming them. In “Storefront Hitchcock,” the British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock performed in a storefront window. They have at it and we get to respond in the best way possible to what they’re doing up there.”ĭemme also made films with Neil Young (“Heart of Gold,” ”Neil Young Trunk Show,” ”Neil Young Journeys”), Bruce Springsteen, the Pretenders, and documented Spalding Grey performing a monologue (“Swimming to Cambodia”). It’s not a documentary, so you don’t have to wonder where this story is going and what we can use. “I’ve come to believe, and I kind of felt this when we did ‘Stop Making Sense,’ that shooting live music is kind of like the purest form of filmmaking,” Demme told The Associated Press last year. His deftly observed 1984 film “Stop Making Sense” began with David Byrne with a guitar and a boom box on a bare stage and swelled into an art-funk spectacular. Demme acknowledged that while he was talentless when it came to playing an instrument, he found he could join the acts he documented with his camera. If there was one commonality in Demme’s varied filmography, it was music. It remains a landmark film in the portrayal of gay life and injustice, subjects Hollywood has previously largely turned a blind eye toward. He followed that up with “Philadelphia” (1993), with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, the first major Hollywood film to confront the AIDS crisis. Yet his most famous films were a pair of Oscar-winners “The Silence of the Lambs,” the 1991 thriller starring Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster as an FBI analyst, earned him a directing Oscar, as well as best picture.
His hopscotching career spanned documentaries, screwball comedies and tales of social justice.
Demme died from complications from esophageal cancer, she said.ĭemme broke into moviemaking under the B-movie master Roger Corman in the early 1970s, and his prodigious, wide-ranging body of work always kept the spirited, agile curiosity of a low-budget independent filmmaker.
He was 73.ĭemme’s publicist, Annalee Paulo, said Demme died Wednesday morning in his New York apartment, surrounded by his wife, Joanna, and three children. Let's imagine a world where there is no Jodie Foster and see who else was in the running to play Clarice.NEW YORK - Jonathan Demme, the eclectic, ever-enthusiastic filmmaker behind the Oscar winners “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Philadelphia,” and the director of one of the most seminal concert films ever made, the Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense,” has died. I know it's hard to believe, but Demme wasn't sure if Foster was right for the role, even though she had already won an Academy Award in 1988 for The Accused. Not to mention the fact that the film's lines and plot have spawned multiple spin-offs and jokes that remain forever embedded in American pop culture.
I'm sure everyone involved with the film is happy of the outcome - Silence of the Lambs is the only horror film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (only four others- The Sixth Sense, The Exorcist, Jaws, and Black Swan, have even been nominated) and only the third film to completely sweep the ceremony - that is, winning Oscars for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Screenplay (Adapted). Can you really picture anyone but Jodie Foster going toe-to-toe with Anthony Hopkins' totally creepy Hannibal Lecter? Funnily enough, Jodie Foster was not director Jonathan Demme's first choice to play the strong-willed FBI agent. Clarice Sterling, principal character in Silence of the Lambs, is one of those roles. Some movies stay in your subconscious - from the writing to the directing, there are films that become part of the general lexicon, and roles in them that you can't imagine being played by anyone else.
0 kommentar(er)
