Jonathan Demme (1944-2017) was an American director who rose from Roger Corman’s B-movies to The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.
Quick Specs
| Born | Robert Jonathan Demme, February 22, 1944, Baldwin, New York |
| Died | April 26, 2017, Manhattan, aged 73 |
| Directorial debut | Caged Heat (1974) |
| Horror | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) |
| Other key films | Melvin and Howard (1980), Stop Making Sense (1984), Something Wild (1986), Philadelphia (1993), Rachel Getting Married (2008) |
| Honors | Academy Award, DGA Award and Berlin Silver Bear for Best Director, all for The Silence of the Lambs |
| Key collaborator | cinematographer Tak Fujimoto |
Who He Is
Robert Jonathan Demme was born in Baldwin, New York, on February 22, 1944, the son of Dorothy Louise Rogers and Robert Eugene Demme, a public-relations executive. He grew up in Rockville Centre, New York, and in Miami, and graduated from Southwest Miami High School.
He spent years preparing to be a veterinarian. At the University of Florida in Gainesville the sciences defeated him, and he dropped out. What he had instead was film criticism, first for the student paper and then for small papers. His father showed producer Joseph E. Levine his rave review of Zulu, which Levine had produced, and Levine hired him as a publicity writer. Demme later met Roger Corman while publicizing Von Richthofen and Brown (1971), and Corman became his teacher, mentor and friend.
The Work, and What He Did in It
Demme started for Corman as a writer and producer, not a director. He co-wrote and produced the biker film Angels Hard as They Come (1971) and worked on The Hot Box (1972). As Demme told it, he had no plans to direct until Corman, producing The Hot Box in the Philippines in monsoon weather, told him he would have to shoot second unit himself.
Caged Heat (1974) was his directorial debut, a women-in-prison film he wrote for Corman’s New World Pictures on a reported $180,000, with horror icon Barbara Steele as the prison’s warden. Two credits announce the whole career: cinematography by Tak Fujimoto, and a score by John Cale with guitar by Mike Bloomfield. Inside the exploitation formula, Demme made the prisoners strong individuals who free themselves together.
Crazy Mama (1975): Demme replaced Shirley Clarke, who was fired ten days before shooting began, on condition that his wife Evelyn Purcell direct second unit. The script ended in a bloodbath. Demme let the outlaws live and added an epilogue with the survivors running a hamburger stand. “They escaped! You’ve got no ending!” Corman protested.
Fighting Mad (1976), his last Corman film as director, starred Peter Fonda as an Arkansas farmer fighting a strip-mining company. Corman wanted a redneck revenge film; Demme based the script on news stories of sabotage against mining companies.
Citizens Band (1977), his first film away from Corman, was a Nebraska ensemble comedy about the CB radio craze. Paramount retitled it Handle with Care, and it still made only about $815,000, but The New York Times later named it one of the best 1,000 movies ever made. After a Columbo episode and the Hitchcock homage Last Embrace (1979), Demme made Melvin and Howard (1980), the story of Melvin Dummar, the gas-station owner who said he gave Howard Hughes a ride and was later named in a disputed will. Demme and writer Bo Goldman never decide whether Dummar was lying. The film won Oscars for Goldman’s screenplay and for Mary Steenburgen, and Pauline Kael called it “an almost flawless act of sympathetic imagination.”
Swing Shift (1984) broke him. Demme’s cut centered the friendship between Goldie Hawn’s and Christine Lahti’s characters; Hawn wanted the romance with Kurt Russell up front. New scenes were written, Demme refused to shoot them, and the film was recut by others. Hawn’s side said they were only trying to make the movie work. Demme called it the worst experience of his career and renounced the finished film.
The same year he stepped back and made Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert film shot over several nights in December 1983 at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. David Byrne walks out alone with “Psycho Killer,” and the band, instruments and set are added song by song. Demme threw out the concert-film grammar: no interviews, almost no crowd shots, just the performance building into a story. It is widely called the greatest concert film ever made and entered the National Film Registry in 2021.
Something Wild (1986) starts as a road comedy with Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith and turns into a thriller when Ray Liotta walks in. It was Liotta’s breakthrough, though not his film debut. The Feelies play the reunion band as “The Willies.” Swimming to Cambodia (1987) took Spalding Gray’s four-hour, two-night monologue and condensed it into 85 minutes of a man at a desk with a glass of water. Married to the Mob (1988) starred Michelle Pfeiffer and earned Dean Stockwell an Oscar nomination.
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is the centerpiece. Gene Hackman and Orion had bought Thomas Harris’s novel with Hackman set to direct. When Hackman stepped down in 1989, Orion sent the book to Demme. Pfeiffer was the reported frontrunner for Clarice Starling and did not take it; contemporary reporting cited salary, later accounts cite the material’s darkness. Jodie Foster had wanted the role from the start and pitched Demme on the story as one strong woman saving another. He adopted the idea and named his production company for the film Strong Heart. For Hannibal Lecter, Jack Nicholson was in negotiations and Orion reportedly preferred Robert Duvall, but Demme fought for Anthony Hopkins.
Shooting began November 15, 1989, in Washington, D.C., with scenes at the FBI Academy at Quantico, and wrapped in Pittsburgh. Ted Tally’s screenplay locks the film to Clarice’s point of view. Demme said at the time that violence “was not that necessary an element within the film. The terror is represented through characterization.” Tally had scripted flashbacks of young Clarice and the lambs, costed at about $1 million. After seeing Foster tell the story to Lecter, Demme dropped them: “she’s telling us the entire story in her face.” Ted Levine improvised Buffalo Bill’s dance.
The film cost $19 million and made more than $270 million worldwide. At the Oscars on March 30, 1992, it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay, only the third film ever to sweep the big five and the last to do it. It is still the only horror film to win Best Picture. Hopkins won Best Actor with a little more than 16 minutes on screen, one of the shortest lead performances ever to win, by Guinness World Records’ count. Roger Corman has a cameo as FBI Director Hayden Burke. Demme did not return for the sequel, Hannibal (2001), which Ridley Scott directed.
Philadelphia (1993), which he directed and produced, put Tom Hanks as a gay lawyer with AIDS opposite Denzel Washington as the homophobic attorney who takes his case. It was not the first film about AIDS, but it was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to face AIDS and homophobia directly. Demme aimed it at people who didn’t know anyone with AIDS: “We wanted to reach people who don’t know people with AIDS, who look down on people with AIDS.” It grossed $206.7 million worldwide, won Oscars for Hanks and for Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia,” and joined the National Film Registry in 2025.
Beloved (1998), with Oprah Winfrey from Toni Morrison’s novel, was a commercial failure that divided critics, grossing about $22.85 million domestically on a cost reported between roughly $53 million and $80 million. The Manchurian Candidate (2004) recovered: Demme moved the brainwashing to the Gulf War and replaced the communist plot with Manchurian Global, a private war contractor. Rachel Getting Married (2008), shot handheld like a home movie, brought Anne Hathaway her first Oscar nomination. He also made a Neil Young concert trilogy (2006 to 2011), a Hurricane Katrina documentary, I’m Carolyn Parker (2011), his final narrative feature, Ricki and the Flash (2015), with Meryl Streep, and a last concert film, Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (2016).
Demme died at home in Manhattan on April 26, 2017, from complications of esophageal cancer and heart disease. He was 73.
Cool Verified Facts
- Singer Q Lazzarus played him a demo of “Goodbye Horses” while driving him in her taxi. He used it in Married to the Mob and again for Buffalo Bill’s dance in The Silence of the Lambs, which made it a cult classic.
- He gave Roger Corman cameos in most of his later films as a mark of affection.
- He collected Haitian art, calling it “an addiction.” It took him to Haiti in 1986, he learned Creole, and he made Haiti: Dreams of Democracy (1988) and The Agronomist (2003), about assassinated radio journalist Jean Dominique. In 2014 he auctioned more than 900 pieces.
- He directed the “Sun City” anti-apartheid video in 1985.
- His nephew was director Ted Demme.
Signatures, Habits and Behind the Scenes
- The direct-address close-up. He and Fujimoto put the camera where the other character’s eyes are. “Maybe by using subjective camera in ordinary dialogue situations, we can bring the audience that deeply into the film,” he said. In The Silence of the Lambs the men Clarice faces look straight into the lens, at us.
- No pure villains. “It gets harder for me to have pure villains in my films,” he said in 2004. It starts with letting the outlaws live in Crazy Mama and runs to a Lecter played as someone who cares.
- Music is casting. John Cale, David Byrne, the Feelies, Laurie Anderson and Q Lazzarus all run through the films, and in Rachel Getting Married the musicians live in the house.
- The same company, film after film: Fujimoto, editor Craig McKay, Charles Napier and producer Edward Saxon, his partner in Clinica Estetico from 1987.
Why He Matters
A Corman-school director who shot a women-in-prison picture for $180,000 made the only horror film ever to win Best Picture, 17 years later, and it swept the big five. Demme also made the concert film every concert film is measured against, and took AIDS and homophobia into the multiplex on purpose. His range ran from CB-radio comedy to Toni Morrison to Neil Young, but the close-up, the company and the empathy stayed recognizably his. Paul Thomas Anderson has joked that his three biggest influences are Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Demme and Jonathan Demme.