Citizens Band, Something Wild, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia …
Jonathan Demme (1944-2017): A talented filmmaker and a victim of stagnant times
By
David Walsh
13 May 2017
American filmmaker Jonathan Demme died April 26 in New York City from complications stemming from esophageal cancer and heart disease. He was 73.
Demme directed some 18 feature films over the course of forty years, the best known of which are Melvin and Howard (1980), Something Wild (1986), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993), the second version of The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and Rachel Getting Married (2008). However, his best-known films are not necessarily his best films.
In addition, Demme made short and feature-length films with various musicians and bands, including Talking Heads (Stop Making Sense, 1984), Robyn Hitchcock (Storefront Hitchcock, 1998), Neil Young (three concert films in 2006, 2009 and 2012) and Justin Timberlake (Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids, 2016).
He also directed a number of documentaries on social and political questions, of a generally left-liberal character, including Haiti: Dreams of Democracy (1987), Cousin Bobby (1992), The Agronomist (2003), Man from Plains (about former president Jimmy Carter, 2007), I’m Carolyn Parker (about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 2011) and What’s Motivating Hayes (about persecuted biologist Tyrone Hayes, 2015).
If anecdotes, interviews and memoirs are to be believed, Demme was a thoroughly decent man, a far cry from our stereotyped image of the film director as manipulative bully or egomaniac, or both. Moreover, he maintained over the course of his career a genuine interest in and sympathy for the lives and…