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Copyright by Louis Black 2019

The Dissertation Committee for Louis Black Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation:

JONATHAN DEMME: CHAMPION OF THE SOUL

Committee:

Tom Schatz, Supervisor

Horace Newcomb

Paul Stekler

Charles Ramírez-Berg

JONATHAN DEMME: CHAMPION OF THE SOUL

by

Louis Black

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin August 2019 Dedication

For Joanne Howard, Ramona Demme, Brooklyn Demme, Jos Demme, Kristin Casey, and in the treasured memory of Jonathan Demme. Abstract

JONATHAN DEMME: CHAMPION OF THE SOUL

Louis Black, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2019

Supervisor: Tom Schatz

This study offers chronologically organized essays that examine the individual within the context of Jonathan Demme’s authorship. This is not going to be an argument for Demme as an as a biographical or qualitative statement. At best, he does not fit easily into the categorized definitions of auteur. Instead, looking at his body of work and treating it as a whole, despite its inconsistencies, eccentricities, and insistent uniqueness, is absolutely the best way to understand and appreciate the entirety of his work. Rather than using the films to define the filmmaker, it is through the sensibility of the films that they best resonate and make the most meaning.

Each was created on its own terms, carefully crafted to be organic to the purpose, ambition, and intention of the project. Therefore, most of his productions are notably different from one another. What unites them is the clearly identifiable manifestations of the authorial sensibility, present within each work and even more evident when they are considered as a whole – a defined body of work. When dealing with the full range of a director’s output, one should find a context that helps clarify and expand the meaning of the individual works. Seen together, characters, style, and themes should add depth and resonance to the films, individually and as a whole collection. Demme’s work, as always, offers light and hope, not created by groundless or desperate beliefs, but out of an affection for people and their culture, insisting on their potential, embracing possibilities.

v Table of Contents

Author's Note ...... 1

Introduction ...... 25

Chapter 1: Critical Context and Existing Literature ...... 50

Chapter 2: Life Before Corman ...... 76

Chapter 3: Exploitation, Corman, Demme ...... 92

Chapter 4: (1974) ...... 107

Chapter 5: , Humanist Series, Fighting Mad (1975-1976) ...... 128

Chapter 6: Citizen's Band, (1977-1979) ...... 155

Chapter 7: , Who Am I This Time? (1980-1982) ...... 168

Chapter 8: Swing Shift, (1983-1984) ...... 183

Chapter 9: Something Wild, (1985-1987) ...... 214

Chapter 10: (1988) ...... 226

Chapter 11: The Silence of the Lambs (1989-1991) ...... 234

Chapter 12: Philadelphia (1992-1993) ...... 263

Chapter 13: , , (1994 - 2004) ...... 273

Chapter 14: , Ricki & the Flash (2008-2015) ...... 289

Chapter 15: Conclusion ...... 313

Appendix 1: Literature on Other Directors ...... 321

Filmography ...... 330

Bibliography ...... 348

vi Author’s Note

I first met Arthur [Penn] in the early 1960s at the Dixie Drive-In theatre on the outskirts of , where the usual crew of my movie-obsessed buddies and I, beers in hand and under the stars, watched this called at our favorite venue. We were all bowled over by this western, way more intimately scaled than we ordinarily cared for; in , which we were not at all partial to; and, what’s more, painfully lacking in gunplay and brawls we had reasonably come to expect and demand from a western. Yet we were collectively mesmerized and deeply gripped by this utterly unique motion picture! Everything about this movie was different from what we were comfortably accustomed to in this, our collective favorite – even (and especially) the claustrophobic and elliptical visual style in which the story was presented. So even though as a teenager in love with movies I should arguably have known better, and despite the fact I didn’t give a hoot what a director was or did anyway. Arthur Penn had already had an impact on me so powerful that I can still recall in vivid detail the thrill of being swept up in ’s Billy the Kid the night I first met Arthur Penn at the Dixie Drive-In.

– Jonathan Demme 1

Somewhat similarly, I first met Jonathan Demme in 1976 at a drive-in in South

Austin, Texas sitting in a car watching Caged Heat, his directorial debut. This women-in- prison was an unfamiliar genre, but the experience was revelatory and profoundly life changing.

Four decades later, I found myself again sitting in a car, but this time in a New

York cab traveling to St. Mary’s in Harlem, to say a final farewell to Jonathan, who had died days before on April 26, 2017. The church which had been run by is late cousin

Bobby, about whom Demme had made a documentary released in 1992. There at a private, invitation-only gathering of family and friends, guests celebrated and said goodbye to Demme.

Jonathan and I were friends for over thirty-five years. Obviously, our relationship

1 affected how I think about his films. Still, my interest in his work came years before we met. Caged Heat (1974) was so exciting, it led me to out his other films (Crazy

Mama 1975; Fighting Mad 1976) and to catch his new ones as soon as they were released. Eventually, I contacted him which lead to our meeting in 1981. From then until his death we spent a lot of time together, always talking, eating, watching films, and listening to music.

We talked about music as much as we did film. Much like our taste in film, we shared a passionate interest in a wide range of styles and artists. Sometimes he would discuss music as it related to a specific project, and sometimes I would introduce him to artists whose work he ended up using on soundtracks.

During the entirety of our relationship I was the editor at The Austin Chronicle.

Although I never reviewed Demme’s films because of our relationship, I still wrote on his work, including a column on his never released documentary that he requested, in hopes of saving it. Over the years I presented screenings of his new work for the Austin Film Society and (which I co-founded in 1987).

There really is no way for this work not to be personal, given my friendship with

Demme, which flourished because of a shared obsessive passion for film and music. We were both essentially self-taught, having developed a deep interest in film at an early age.

We watched any and every film we could and read whatever we could find (though there were relatively few books about film then).

East Coast 1959 –1975: A Life Watching Movies

2 I was nine years old when I walked across the bedroom at my grandmother’s house and became captivated by what was on the TV (which was always on). I got into her empty bed, intending to watch just a little, but ended up deeply enthralled in what turned out to be ’s Lost Horizon. This ignited an interest that still drives me. Early on this appetite was fed by going to first run movies, kiddie matinees and watching whatever I could find on TV. In Junior High, the ante was raised considerably when I met Leonard

Maltin, now a renowned film historian, critic, and scholar. Living in suburban Teaneck,

NJ, Len and I began to regularly go into City (a quick bus trip away) to watch films at museums, revival houses and film societies. Over the years, we saw hundreds of movies and attended dozens of film events. Although we sampled many classic and current international releases, most of the fare was American films – shorts and features – with a heavy concentration on silents, especially in the early years. Consequently, when I became a UT film graduate student, I had seen more B movies, cartoons, animated features, comedy shorts, serials, silent films, programmers, and established studio classics than most.

Austin, Texas 1977 – 1981: CinemaTexas

When I joined UT’s RTF program in the summer of 1977, my life began to revolve around CinemaTexas (CT). This graduate film student organization programmed films to complement the courses being offered by the RTF department during the semester (this before video was consumer accessible). If there was a Western course, then every

Wednesday would be a Western; , then one night a week of noir films; French

3 New Wave, Italian Neo Realism, and so on.

While I was still just beginning to get to know the other students, Ed Lowry, the director of CinemaTexas, strongly recommended I go to the drive-in to watch Caged

Heat, and I did. The next day, I thanked Ed for the recommendation, but was surprised that he was so subdued about such a great movie. He offered that he didn’t know my tastes or me well enough to really rave, but was as wildly enthusiastic as I was.

Watching the film again just days later with a group of fellow film graduate students and a professor, it more than held up – the performances, plot, music, camera work and editing all skillfully working together.

Discovering Caged Heat was discovering Jonathan Demme, but more. It led to not only a fascination with the movie (itself) and its director (Demme) but also the kind of film it was (exploitation/drive-in), other exploitation directors and, of course, Roger

Corman. These affections gave me focus and purpose, very much defining and propelling my academic career.

In those days before the internet, finding information about films and filmmakers was difficult. We plunged into the collections of old issues of film magazines at the

Undergraduate Library at UT. There was no centralized index or comprehensive reference, but we found publications that offered significant information. Take One was a Canadian film magazine that regularly covered newer directors and exploitation films.

Bright Lights, a based film magazine, offered terrific material but was more auteurist focused and limited in its areas of interest than Take One. The work of writer

Michael Goodwin, in Take One and the Village Voice among other publications, really

4 stood out, as they were some of the best think pieces and critical essays on exploitation films.

There was information on Demme in these sources, though one had to pick them clean to find it all. Tracking down the three other films Demme had directed, Crazy

Mama (1975), Fighting Mad (1976) and Citizen’s Band (AKA Handle With Care, 1977) was not easy. By really stretching to an unreasonable degree we came up with a justification for programming Crazy Mama for a class. We caught Citizen’s Band at a

Dallas, Texas drive-in and finally saw Fighting Mad on TV. Regardless of how much we admired and enjoyed the work, as graduate students we still had to deal with the overriding issue of how these films interacted with and were understood by the audiences for which they were intended.

There were many interests already woven through my life that came together in watching and considering Demme’s films. Politics have always been important to me, though after some brief flirtations, I was neither committed to political party nor established ideology. Eventually I realized that the more structured one’s politics were, the more inherently restrictive. My core beliefs emanated from a comprehensive humanism, along the same lines as Demme’s, though perhaps not as mature, embracing and sophisticated.

Believing all films to be political, what really attracted me to Demme’s work was this casual affectionate populism. Without pretension or dogma, his love for people, who they were and what they did, was so clearly evident in all his work. His work, though centered on individuals, was especially interested in how they interacted with each other

5 as family and community. His portrayal of people created meanings that transcended traditional views and social restrictions.

All his films were invested with his incredible enthusiasm. He was always engaged and easily excited, attitudes that were evident in the full range of his work.

Demme was often sharply critical of the status quo, but in a way that was often more celebratory and lighthearted than scathing. Many Hollywood studio filmmakers either mocked or felt sorry for those of the working class; in Melvin and Howard, Who

Am I This Time? and Swing Shift, Demme celebrated them. While many media creators were trashing yuppies and the suburbs, Demme made Something Wild that granted them substance. Rather than party or ideological adherence, my politics are based on an embracing humanism. Driven more by a passion for people and culture, Demme’s film portrayed a world view that I was not only comfortable with, but shared.

Austin, Texas, 1977, South Austin Drive-In

Watching Caged Heat at the drive-in theater in 1977 proved a pivotal experience, providing inspiration in how I think and write about film, as well as introducing me to

Demme as a filmmaker and later a friend.

In many ways Caged Heat was a film I had long carried in my head without knowing it. A political both feminist and exploitative, it was cinematically savvy and street-wise. This was a women-in-prison genre work, a standardized exploitation/drive-in circuit, that fulfilled its function as Hollywood product, but also evidencing ambitions out of Jean Luc Godard and French Nouvelle Vague

6 films. Unapologetically and explicitly exploitation fare, stubbornly subversive, it was executed with stylistically intoxicating .

When I saw Caged Heat I had been watching films seriously most of my life. I was a film gourmand, however, rather than a gourmet, my approach carnivorous rather than specific. I devoured all kinds of films with precious little distinction. I was not an academic, auteurist, generic specialist, or theorist in any way, but rather just a film fan with a strong interest in film history. Figuring out how to academically deal with Caged

Heat, the films of Demme and exploitation films in general, served to structure my thinking.

Caged Heat proudly wears its politics, an affection for feminism and a distrust of authority. It is a political film executed as a low-budget Western via the women-in-prison genre, draped in the generic affectations of Southern drive-in circuit, car and gun, racing, robbery and violence movies. Almost entirely populated by women, with the few men seen or referenced being villains, it envisioned a new feminist family. Done in a commercial genre where “tits and ass” were featured commodities, it still aggressively championed women, portraying lesbians in a positive light, arguing that women together, armed and dangerous, were not just powerful, but inherently organic. Now such attitudes are evident throughout mainstream culture but in the mid-70s they were unusual and unique.

Caged Heat was a New World assembly line genre film, though I didn’t realize it then. It was so fresh and brash, so unexpectedly startling to me, my assumption was that it owed all its originality to the director. It wasn’t long before I came to realize that

7 crucially the film was a product of ’s , which was an exploitation film production and distribution company. The more of its films I watched, the more obvious was the studio’s importance. In an almost classic way, there was not just a commercial exploitation/drive-in movie style but a specific New World sensibility, which resulted in their films being more interesting and creative.

These exploitation films, new to me, were not all New World, but most of the best were. Still, fascinating works such as Stephanie Rothman’s Terminal Island (1975), Cirio

Santiago’s Black Mama, White Mama (1973) and ’s Private Parts (1972) were released by other exploitation/drive-in companies.

Austin, TX 1981: Meeting Demme

In 1981, Jonathan Demme visited Austin, where we met, thus beginning our friendship. I had sent Demme a packet of articles that others and I had written on him. (It turned out, he told me later, that this material proved especially impressive because it arrived on an otherwise very bad day.) There was no immediate response, but some months later he called the CinemaTexas office to say he was coming to Austin to meet with Bud Shrake about Big Mamou, a script they were working on about Los Alamos. As we talked on the phone, he noted that on his desk was a tape a friend had made for him of Austin punk and new wave bands including The Big Boys, The Next, and The Skunks, among others.

Demme told me that he had more than four hundred locally produced singles from across the country in his collection, while I was regularly writing on punk and new wave music for The Daily Texan, the UT student . We agreed that I would pick him up at

8 the . “Wait. How will we recognize you?” I asked. “I’ll be wearing baby blue sunglasses,” Demme replied.2

As soon as we met it was easy and relaxed. Both of us were driven by passionate and seemingly unlimited interest in all aspects of popular culture from film, to comic books to music. Until Demme’s death, we were regularly and excitedly turning each other on to new discoveries.

Both of us were essentially self-educated in film, our interest and studies driven by voracious appetites. Demme had pointed out, “I didn't go to film school, so my learning was done out in public and showed up on the screen.”3

When we met, Demme was an established director. I had earned an MA in film, and was a PhD student. In both cases these were unexpected developments. Demme frequently pointed out that he had no ambition to be a filmmaker, and when Dr. George

Wead invited me to join the UT RTF Graduate program, my initial thought was, “You don’t study film in college.”

Our bonding was especially intense because we were both, at our cores, wildly enthusiastic fans. One of the great pleasures of our relationship was watching films together.

Demme’s love of films was obvious to so many, writer Peter Travers in his obituary for the director noted:

How to describe his humanity, his humor, his generosity, his lifelong belief in the healing power of music? If you made films, wrote about them or watched them Jonathan was your partner in obsession. He didn't see movies so much as breathe them in. Demme curated a film series at the Jacob Burns Film Center, near my home in Westchester, New York, where he'd often show movies you never heard

9 of – and made you smack yourself for missing them the first time around. Watching a movie with Jonathan was always a trip, his face a mirror of the joy, surprise and enthusiasm he was feeling. 4

On his last night in Austin I asked if he’d like to see some of the work of local filmmakers. He was not just interested but excited, as I screened for him a number of locally shot short films. Demme loved the films, immediately volunteering to host a screening of the program at the Collective for Living Cinema in , where he was on the board. Jonathan Demme Presents Made in Texas: Six New Films From

Austin, played to a sold out house there in October, 1981 (see appendix 1).

Through the ‘80s Demme and I saw each other at least once a year or so. When he shot Something Wild in Gainesville, Florida, a few of us drove from Austin to hang out and be extras, though our scene was cut. We presented another Made in Texas show with new films from Austin but it was not as strong as the first. In 1987 we both got married,

Jonathan to Joanne Howard. Ramona, their first child (of three) was born in 1988. In

1990 our son Eli was born. Both preoccupied with family, there were a number of years where contact was mostly a couple of phone calls a year.

In the late ‘90s we again began to spend more time together. Demme brought

Storefront Hitchcock to SXSW in 1998. Demme flew me to NYC to see The Truth About

Charlie in 2001 to work with him on conceptualizing how to present it. This also lead to

The Chronicle hosting a screening of the film at the Paramount Theater in Austin. On that visit I also saw , though it was not released until 2004, when it was presented at SXSW.

Demme called to tell me he was going to remake The Manchurian Candidate in

10 2003. I tried to talk him out of it, noting that it was the second remake in a row for the most boisterously original and brilliant American storyteller. After receiving similar advice from others, he decided not to do it. However, and Sherry

Lansing talked him back into doing the project.

During pre-production, he sent me a number of full drafts of the script as well as newly written sections of it for comment. My notes on the scripts ran to about 30,000 words spread over a number of emails.

Demme shot in concert for two nights at the Ryman Auditorium in

Nashville, Tennessee in August 2005. I attended the rehearsal as well as both of the shows and helped conceptualize and write the press kit.

Together we developed a couple of film projects and one music album but none of those reached fruition.

Our relationship allowed me ongoing access to his career. We talked about projects in development and production. As his new films were released we discussed them, including how they were received commercially and critically. He regularly gave me scripts to read, often asking for comments. I visited the sets of Something Wild,

Married to the Mob, Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Rachel Getting Married, and , and was an extra in three of these (though I only ended up on the screen in

Ricki and the Flash).

A unique and idiosyncratic filmmaker, Demme was still very much a Hollywood studio director. Budget was not the overwhelming concern that it almost always is with independent productions. On Manchurian Candidate, I watched as he shot ten takes

11 featuring Al Franken that ended up only being shown on television in the background of a scene in the film.

During productions, I was always invited to watch dailies. Post-production visits meant spending time with Jonathan in the editing room. On a few occasions, he asked me to watch and comment on works in progress.

Pleasantville to Upper Nyack, 2005

In May 2005, Demme initiated a series on Rarely Seen Cinema at the Jacob Burns Center in Pleasantville, New York. Chappaqua, Rooks’ eccentric narrative, the first film in the series, was co-presented by Demme and me. Afterwards, heading back across the

Tappan Zee Bridge to his home in Upper Nyack, we talked about his life and work. He knew that I was working on this project. At that time, having lost the forest for the trees, I was taking the first of what would turn out to be two very long breaks from it.

Although I’d interviewed him a number of times over the years, this talk helped focus and inspire me to begin writing again. Consequently, and unfortunately, I wasn’t even taping the discussion.

In the course of the conversation, I said that I thought he was not just an optimistic director, but one of the very few. He thought about his answer before he carefully responded with something along the lines of:

You can have a deep affection for your characters, you can feel that they have a future. Tomorrow has the possibility of being as good or even better than today. In their lives there is always the possibility, as well as, the reality of things getting better. There are, however, many other options for what might happen and how it

12 might be perceived. This, is not really “optimism,” which has to do with naively underestimating the terrible situations and dire circumstances that people confront every day. You can believe and hope without exactly being optimistic. 5

There is so much that is wrong in the world – so much horror, so much darkness – but Demme’s work, while acknowledging this, also resists the idea of hopelessness.

Demme was too fascinated by people and culture to entertain the idea that the best of everything is in the past. Not just seriously excited by today, Demme eagerly anticipated tomorrow.

Fifteen years earlier Demme probably would have loved being labeled an optimist. Even in denying the term “optimism” and its connotations, Demme was not offering a revisionist take on the sensibility of his early films, nor was he denouncing his humanist passions. Rather, it was a semantic concern. Words aside, the body of his work speaks for itself.

Harlem, New York City, April 2016

Driving to the service at St. Mary’s, Sandy (my former partner) looked over at me and noted that even though I had been doing so well, I seemed to be getting very sad. I was. I was thinking about how much Jonathan had changed my life, as he had the lives of so many of our friends. Not only had our three-and-a-half-decade friendship influenced and shaped my life more intrinsically than I had ever considered before, but knowing Demme gave me a certain authority and opened any number of doors for me–people took me more seriously because of our relationship, because Demme took me seriously. It also resulted in meeting any number of creative people, many of whom became close friends,

13 including filmmakers Maggie Renzi, John Styles, Sandy McLeod, Paul Thomas

Anderson, cultural force , and artist Jim Roche.

Arriving at the church, we met up with Michael Barker, co-head of

Classics, Elliot Roberts, Neil Young’s manager, and Fab Five Freddy. The speakers, some well-known and some not, all said the same thing–how important Jonathan had been not just as a friend, an artist, a creative force and a filmmaker, but as an influence, a connector and an ongoing inspiration. The focus of speaker after speaker was not how much they valued working with Demme or how proud they were of what they had done together, but how deeply he affected them, impacted and changed their lives.

His wife, and two of his three children spoke about him, followed by Danny

Glover, , , Fab Five Freddy, and Paul Thomas

Anderson, among others. came out and performed “Philadelphia” and

David Byrne played “Buck Naked.”

Loving life, with an astounding enthusiasm and endless energy, Demme lit up the world around him. He loved his family and friends, film and filmmakers, music and musicians, art and artists. He always fed his outsized appetite by racing madly forward through the culture, sucking everything in, then pouring all of this energy and grace into narratives and documentaries, music videos, performance and concert films, TV and movies. He loved until his heart was full, and loved still more because he cared not for boundaries. He loved until his full heart burst into his work, creating fantastic cinematic firework explosions across the world, still and forever.

Now Jonathan is , life’s rhythm has slowed a couple of beats, breathing is a

14 little harder. Yet, as he would want, there is joy. We survivors, though sad, are still forever blessed by the benedictions of a life so well lived while the body of his extraordinary work is so readily available.

The testimony given by all brought home his incredible enthusiasm, undaunted hope and his unrestricted love and support for so many. Humanist and committed, passionate, ambitious, celebratory and joyous, his work and life one, Demme truly was a champion of the soul. 6

CODA

One morning at the Lisbon Estoril Film Festival, Jonathan and I went to a movie theater near our hotel to watch Bi Gan’s debut, Kaili Blues (2015). It was early for both of us.

While watching the film, we kept turning away from each other, both trying to hide that we couldn't keep our eyes open. But as the film progressed we became more enthralled.

Jonathan, knowing what was coming, began to grin. The scene on the screen kept going on and on, a single take without a cut. After ten minutes he was gently punching my arm.

Twenty minutes in we were both giggling and when the single take reached half an hour, we were giddy. The 41-minute take, such deliciously audacious cinema, left us intoxicated and punch-drunk. Demme would write:

What if a brazen first-time filmmaker decided – beyond audaciously – that they didn’t want to cut from one location to another (all quite distant from each other) for about oh, half their new movie, and instead chose to dare to go with one super- duper-transcendental half-hour plus single take? Answer: you wind up with Bi Gan’s absolutely extraordinary Kaili Blues. Fair warning here: you need to be a seriously open and accessible film buff / cineaste / movie lover to be right for this

15 picture. The cinema muse-deities have inspired and blessed Kaili Blues with a and mystery that is utterly unique. This film is capable of generating giant cinema joyfulness in those who are ready to bring an open heart, mind and eye to this viewing experience. Director Bi Gan won Best Emerging Director and Best First Feature at the 2015 Locarno Film Festival. I had the thrill of seeing this film first at last year’s , and two months later at the Lisbon and Estoril Film Festivals. The screenings I attended gave rise to audience ecstasy in both situations. I loved it even more the second time. 7

Sharing a deep fascination with culture, over the decades of my personal relationship with Jonathan Demme, we were engaged in an ongoing passionate discussion about music and movies by e-mail, phone, and in-person conversation. But the friendship came about because of my love for his films. Since I first saw Caged Heat and continuing to the present, two years after his death, his movies are not only part of my life but crucial tools in my understanding of the world. This work, a serious consideration of Demme’s filmography, therefore is not an abstract academic exercise, but by its very nature a kind of intellectual autobiography. It is not a collection of personal details, but in talking about

Demme’s films it also a story of my ideas, beliefs, ideologies, and world view. I miss my dear friend but what most saddens me is to live in a world where there will be no new

Jonathan Demme films.

16 End Notes

1 Nat Segaloff, Arthur Penn, American Director. Forward by Jonathan Demme University Press of : Lexington, 2011. IX-X.

2 Jonathan Demme, personal conversation, August 1981.

3 Jonathan Demme, https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/jonathan_demme

4 Peter Travers. “The Movie’s Great Humanist,” , April 26, 2017. https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/peter-travers-on-jonathan- demme-the-movies-great-humanist-117538/

5 Jonathan Demme, personal conversation, May 2005.

6 Jodie Foster, “…champion of the soul.” Statement issued by Jodie Foster on the death of Jonathan Demme. April 26, 2017.

7Jonathan Demme, “Single Take, Jonathan Demme on Kaili Blues.” http://grasshopperfilm.com/transmissions-demme/

17 Introduction

I am heartbroken to lose a friend, a mentor, a guy so singular and dynamic you’d have to design a hurricane to contain him, Jonathan was as quirky as his comedies and deep as his dramas. He was pure energy, the unstoppable cheerleader for anyone creative. Just as passionate about music as he was about art, he was and will always be a champion of the soul. JD, most beloved, something wild, brother of love, director of the lambs. Love that guy. Love him so much. –Jodie Foster 1

When people talk about a Jonathan Demme film, it can mean several things. Which Demme Am I This Time? –Gavin Smith 2

The great filmmakers who came to prominence in the - and Jonathan Demme… was one of them - had stylistic traits that made them iconically identifiable. had his multi-character hubbub, had his volcanic rock ‘n’ roll virtuosity, and had his lavishly scaled operatic grandeur. But Demme, vivid and stirring as his filmmaking voice was, had no such obvious signature. You could almost say that he was defined by his lack of signature. –Owen Gleiberman 3

I've always followed my enthusiasm. Whether the pictures have turned out good or not is one thing - but I've always had a lot of enthusiasm for the project at hand. –Jonathan Demme 4

Despite the acknowledged brilliance of many of his efforts, Jonathan Demme’s expansive and eclectic output includes not just studio releases, independent films, narrative features, documentaries, performance and concert films, music videos, television episodes, soundtrack albums, curated art shows, and books, but also Demme produced films for young directors and old friends, as well as, mentored established talents in their film directing debuts (’s True Stories, Tom Hanks’ That Thing

You Do!). He curated retrospective film series and promoted and “presented”

18 independent, international, and art films in order to help them find an audience. This extended and extensive body of work does not invite easy access. This can almost be taken as a statement of fact, given the paucity of such considerations of his work.

The difficulty is that, when viewed separately, his work lacks many of the shared characteristics that mark and define the filmographies of other . Even obvious categorizers like genre, form, cinematic style, and narrative interest are not readily evident in his work. But, with Demme as the focal point, a cohesive and coherent, interrelated and resonant body of work emerges. This Jonathan Demme is not a biographical designation but rather describes the authorial sensibility, as evidenced by the works themselves.

Not a detailing of personal history, this creative sensibility is defined by an aggressive and expansive outlook anchored deeply in compassion and humanism, driven by a prodigious enthusiasm for life, people, and ideas. This voice, with a passion for and communication, was driven by an insatiable appetite for exploration and experimentation. Despite a long career in the film industry, Demme’s focus was not on industry success or career advancement. Instead, intoxicated by ideas (philosophical, observational, cinematic, political, social, and aesthetic), the quest was always for new creative challenges, the excitement of tackling new forms, content, styles, and themes.

Constantly discovering and becoming enthralled by new ideas, sounds, films, music, people, places, and creations, Demme’s greatest thrill was sharing these with audiences.

This study offers chronologically organized essays that examine the individual films within the context of Demme’s authorship. Clearly there are distinctions between a

19 director’s personality, biography, and the way his works make meaning. Trust the tale, not the teller. Except with Demme, it all blends together. Who he was and how he approached the world is right there in his films. Rather than to look at the films to define the auteur, here the auteur is the focus and the avenue by which to consider the body of work.

This is not going to be a case for Jonathan Demme as a classic auteur, as he does not fit easily into that categorized definition, nor is defining Demme as an auteur an effort to offer a qualitative judgement. Instead, the thesis here is that looking at his body of work and treating it as a whole is an important way to understand and appreciate his films. Despite inconsistencies, eccentricities and insistent uniqueness, his filmography is best considered as an interrelated, complementary and cohesive oeuvre.

The high praise he has earned and the lack of scholarly work on him make clear the difficulty of crafting an overview of who he is (as a directorial sensibility) and what he has done. Approaching his output in a more systemized way, through the author, the goal is to provide light on both the individual films as well as the body.

The premise that this starts out with and hopes to fully document is that Demme’s work is of a body, a rich lush garden of inconsistencies that really makes the most sense when considered together and is the most aesthetic and culturally resonant and revealing when so taken. Impossible to prove but an important assumption is that this body of work is comprehensive and idiosyncratic, standing apart from the work of many other filmmakers, thus providing a different and unique view of life and culture for the period during which the films were made. Demme made each film on its own terms and thus despite the catalog of difference there is a defining unity.

20 Auteurism is a way of detailing how directors are evident in their work. It is not uncommon for there to be passing references to the director’s actual personality and career. But the focus is mostly on how the body of work evidences a personality, instead of how the director’s sensibility is a crucial element.

The approach here, with Demme as the focal point, may seem like a deviation but actually it is the best way of exploring an obvious related authorship. Overviews of the body of his work rarely enumerate its qualities of style, content, and ambition. Rather, most offer broad and gushing generalities. When discussing his films, it is most common to include Demme as integral to the work, as referenced in the following obituary excerpts. Demme is not contained in his role as a distanced director, but rather a man, inextricably bound to his films.

Eric Kohn in Indiewire wrote:

Jonathan Demme had such a remarkable range that he defied easy categorization. Even as he made beloved documentaries and Oscar-winning movies, I still get the sense that his career was under appreciated. Everyone knows The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Stop Making Sense, but less widely acknowledged efforts such as The Manchurian Candidate and : demonstrated a masterful awareness of as a layered art form able to convey many meanings at once. 5

While Carrie Rickey in UPROXX noted:

I could talk volumes about how Jonathan’s movies worked because he empathized with his characters. I could write a dissertation about how he was the rare filmmaker of the generation (think Francis Coppola, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese) who imagined a world in which women have active rather than passive roles. I could hold forth about how he gave , Jodie Foster, Oprah Winfrey and Anne Hathaway their most challenging parts…. I could talk about his bottomless empathy, about how profoundly he

21 connected with his characters and thus made it easy for the audience to connect with those unlike themselves. 6

Throughout his career, Demme was considered a talented, visionary filmmaker responsible for a unique and exceptional body of work. This regard was not limited to a single title or two, because so many of his films did well critically. During the entire course of his career, many of those that he directed and/or wrote and/or produced were nominated and often won significant awards from critics, film festivals and the industry.

Yet, there is precious little in the way of serious studies on Demme and his films.

In talking about the man, describes the auteur:

Jonathan Demme was one of cinema’s most contagious enthusiasts…. I thought he’d always be around – or in , which he loved, or documenting a real-life hero or heroine, or traveling with a musician and trying to catch his or her essence on film. His loss is momentous. But I’d like to…hope that his benevolent spirit will watch over our movies, more powerful than ever, reminding us that where there is art, there is hope. 7

As Demme himself offered, “There’s nothing I’d rather do than direct because directing combines three of my favorite things in life: people, imagery, and sound - not just music, but the sounds of life.”8 Unquestionably a “contagious enthusiast,” Jonathan

Demme’s was clearly a “champion of the soul.”

Jonathan Demme’s Body of Work

Jonathan Demme cannot stop making features and documentaries and performance films about humans he finds fascinating, and the features and documentaries and performance films he makes are as involving and joyful and esoteric and vital as their subjects. To accomplish that, to time and again successfully use a (all stripes of filmmaking) to communicate to b (whoever happens to be watching) his argument for why they should be

22 captivated by c (a gas station attendant who may have met /a monologist explaining his relationship with Cambodia/ playing inside a shop/a relapsing addict at a wedding), requires astonishing ability. – Fletcher Walton 9

Most of Demme’s narrative features were major studio productions – he worked with , Warner Bros., Universal, Fox, Orion, Tristar and Paramount.

However, his career began at New World Pictures, an independent studio, and his documentaries and music films were made for or distributed by other Indies including

Cinevista, Cinecom, Abramorama, Island, Palm Pictures and THINKFilm, as well as

HBO and .

His last three narrative films indicate the range of production companies he had worked with more recently. Rachel Getting Married (2008) was produced for Sony

Pictures Classics, Sony’s boutique art/international film distribution arm, while A Master

Builder (2013) was essentially self-produced. Ricki and the Flash (2015), his first major studio production in over a decade, was produced by Tristar. It is important to keep in mind that between Rachel and Ricki he also directed five music documentary features, two documentaries, one performance piece and seven TV episodes.

Throughout his career, getting a film green lit to go into production was an arduous, time-consuming process. Thus, more time was spent developing projects that never got made or were passed on to other directors than actually making movies. Caged

Heat, his directorial debut, was released in 1974, but it was not until The Silence of

Lambs in 1991 that his work achieved notable commercial success. In the decade between Fighting Mad (1976) and Something Wild (1986) he only managed to direct five

23 features (including Stop Making Sense). Even after the spectacular success of The Silence of Lambs, he only directed six more narrative features in the quarter-century before his death in 2017.

His filmography only reflects the films he was able to make, not the films he wanted to (or tried to) make, including some that he had worked on developing for years.

These include Russell Banks’ novel Continental Drift, ’s 11/22/63, Hand

Carved Coffins by Truman Capote, and Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch’s history of the

Civil Rights Movement, which was to be co-produced by .

Always hungry for new challenges in every way (approach, style, genre, tone, narrative, etc.), Demme rarely did the same thing twice, as doing that lacked challenge.

Consequently, the very variety of his work makes offering an organized and unifying overview of it difficult.

Under “Director,” IMDb lists 63 Demme credits – 18 narrative features, 1 feature length performance film, 7 concert features, 5 feature documentaries, 25 music videos, 1 music profile, 2 extended music works, over 10 television episodes and 2 television performance pieces. As “Producer” the list includes 45 credits. 10

Each film was created on its own terms, carefully crafted to be organic to the purpose, ambition and intention of the project. Therefore, most of his productions are notably different from one another. What unites them is the clearly identifiable manifestations of the authorial sensibility, present within each work and even more evident when they are considered as a whole – a defined body of work.

24 The Films of Jonathan Demme

“…love – for people, their environments, their struggles and the art form with which he explored them – informed every frame of Demme’s films, whether they were nonfiction or fiction…Demme might have been the last of the great journeyman directors, as comfortable with bringing his chops and compassion to bear on a weird as on a handsome, straight-ahead drama.”11 –Ann Hornaday

Given how creatively-driven Demme was in terms of his choice of projects, his overall career fits into some very convenient, economically defined categories. As with so many other talents he began as a director working for Roger Corman. During the next phase of his career he was able to work on more ambitious projects, his reputation growing, though there was a significant distance between his films’ critical reception and box office performance. Then came Swing Shift, which in the beginning seemed very likely to be a breakout film for the director but instead proved to be a traumatic experience. Coupled with Stop Making Sense it is a two-film career phase – one being a major aberration and the other a kind of redemption. Finding a home at Orion in 1986, he did some of his best work culminating with an across the board hit, The Silence of Lambs, in 1991. Unfortunately, Orion collapsed but Philadelphia, his next film, was tremendously successful. Oddly the next three films were problematic and difficult.

Finishing the last of those in 2004 with The Manchurian Candidate, Demme was burned out with Hollywood big budget filmmaking. Planning to take time off and consider his options but instead returning to more personal work, he entered into one of his most prolific periods of his career, completing almost a dozen features – narrative, music performance films, and documentaries – before his death in 2016.

25

Corman (1971 – 1976)

Jonathan Demme began his career as a commercial theatrical filmmaker working for

Roger Corman. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Demme never went to film school, instead breaking into the business by working in publicity and public relations first in

New York City, beginning in 1966, then moving to two years later where he continued in publicity and some production. While overseas he heard about a job as unit publicist on Roger Corman’s Von Richthofen and Brown (1971). After interviewing with

Corman, he was hired.

Corman was just launching New World Pictures, an exploitation, drive-in film production and distribution company in 1970. Fortunately for Demme, this meant

Corman needed films for his new company to release. Realizing both Demme’s intelligence and interest in film, Corman recruited him to write a motorcycle movie, which he did with his friend Joe Viola. Corman liked the script and signed up Demme to produce and Viola to direct. Angels Hard as They Come was released by New World in

1971. Continuing in the same roles, the team made The Hot Box, shot in the Philippines.

Working as second unit director on that film got Demme excited about directing a film on his own.

He did just that with Caged Heat which, at its most basic, is a generic work, unapologetically and explicitly fitting in the women-in-prison genre. Rather than being overwhelmed by archetypes and icons, Demme tried for something more complicated.

Following the genre’s accepted conventions, it also subverted them, especially in that the

26 narrative was constructed around the female protagonists. By the film’s climax, each of the women had come into their own as tough and independent characters. Rather than this being done in service to macho fantasies, as was traditional with exploitation films,

Demme instead concentrated on how the women joining together united and empowered them.

After Caged Heat, Demme was well into pre-production on his next film Fighting

Mad, when Corman pressured him to take over as director on Crazy Mama, ten days before it was to start shooting. It focused on a new family unit dominated by women, as had Caged Heat, but was more sardonic, with the protagonists inept, less focused and more daffy than deadly. Despite being forced to direct under protest, Crazy Mama is clearly not just a Demme film but one of his best Corman efforts. Next he finally got to make Fighting Mad. Despite Demme’s passion for the project, the film is surprisingly disappointing. A too-standard ecological--action-fantasy that never transcends its material, the film failed at the box office.

These first directorial efforts of Demme’s were products of a Hollywood independent studio’s assembly line production, tailored for the drive-in / exploitation / inner-city grind house circuit. Demme’s tenure with Corman proved to be his film school, where he not only learned how to make a movie economically, but came to appreciate

Corman’s exploitation aesthetics, which in many ways were integral to Demme’s production strategy.

Opportunity, Disappointments and a Classic (1977 – 1983)

27 Following the career path of many New World alumni, Demme graduated to a more ambitious project. Citizen’s Band (Paramount, 1977, retitled Handle with Care), which had a very low budget by industry standards though still considerably larger than the

Corman films. Citizen’s Band is the most explicit and celebratory work of the first phase of Demme’s career. In , wrote:

It could be that Handle with Care is almost too likable a movie. Maybe it's too evenly directed; maybe it needed to be brought up to a higher pitch at certain points. It might not seem so small a picture if it had been. But its antic charm is in its even, unsurprised tone – in the absence of anger, the reasonableness towards creeps and crazies…. Handle with Care has the consistent vision of a classic comedy; it undercuts all the characters’ illusions without a breath of ill will.12

Though a critical hit, the film was a complete box-office failure, earning less than a million dollars. Consequently, Demme had trouble getting another directing job, until Peter Falk, who liked his work, pushed for him to direct an episode of in

1978.

Demme was then hired by independent producers Michael Taylor and Dan

Wigutow to direct Last Embrace (1979, United Artists). The film was Demme’s clear attempt at a complex Hitchcock , with more than a nod to Henry Hathaway’s

Niagara. Unfortunately, the narrative never really came together, resulting in a critical and commercial failure. Highly regarded for his skill at working with , ironically, his weakest films were a result of bad performances. In this film, though actor Roy

Scheider was on a hot streak, his performance is disappointing.

Before its release, Demme had already begun working on Melvin and Howard

28 (Universal, 1980) with a script by , which came to him when director Mike

Nichols left the project. A truly eccentric effort that celebrates American culture, not in spite of its oddities but because of them, it is perhaps the most classic and resonant of

Demme’s early films. Critically the film marked Demme’s breakout moment, earning two

Academy Awards (Script, Best Supporting Actress) from three nominations. Still, it was a box office failure.

In almost any other director's hands it would have ended up a maudlin tragedy or a way-too-broad buffoonish comedy. But Demme made it into a deeply American comedy about hopes, dreams, love, and just getting by. As Emanuel Levy wrote in

Cinema of Outsiders:

Demme shows a sharp eye for the offbeat in rural America, the subjective perceptions of the American Dream. The movie depicts people's attempt to rise above their limitations; the characters are not fully aware of their class and don't see their background as an obstacle. Although they face one crisis after another, they continue to be hopeful and always land on their feet.13

This success was followed by Demme’s brilliant Television adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Who Am I This Time? (1982), a highlight of this first period of Demme’s work. As Michael Bliss and Christina Banks observe:

[It] is arguably Demme in his most pure form: all his major themes—disguise and ultimate realization of identity, the redemptive power of love, the importance of community – are to the forefront and are developed fully (years before his best films that expand on these concepts, Something Wild and Married to the Mob) in less than an hour.14

29 Over Under Sideways Down (1984)

Swing Shift (Warner Bros., 1984) started as a high for Demme, a return to studio production and a step above anything he had made before, but it ended as a terrible low point.

Star lobbied to get him to direct this ambitious WWII period film, a homage to Rosie the Riveter, about the women who entered the work force as men went off to war. Shooting went smoothly, with starring leads Hawn and actually falling in love. But when the film was finished, Hawn intensely disliked many of the very things that first attracted her to Demme–his understated way of presenting the film's primary romantic triangle and his emphasis on community rather than centering on an individual. Hawn commandeered the film. As Demme explained:

After the picture was shot and edited, Goldie decided that she didn't like our story and made another one out of it. For me, it was the story of a friendship between two women, of the solidarity that's established among all these women working in a factory to contribute to the war effort. Goldie decreed: ‘I've got a better idea. It's going to be a love story between Kurt Russell and me.’ Then she had another script written and some new scenes filmed. The result was a hybrid compromise, completely schizophrenic, between the two approaches.15

During the Swing Shift tsunami, Demme visited Austin to catch some Talking

Heads concerts in preparation for the film Stop Making Sense (Cinecom, 1984). Though we spent time together during this visit, Demme never mentioned his production troubles.

During the hideous experience of having to butcher his own film, Demme steadied himself by shooting Stop Making Sense, The . It

30 earned terrific reviews and did great business for an indie release (around $6 million domestic box office). Almost unanimously regarded as one of the very best concert films, it garnered a National Society of Film Critics Award for Documentary.

Orion Rising (1985 – 1991)

Everything soon changed for Demme after talking to , and co-founder of , at a dinner party in 1985. As a result of their conversation,

Demme entered into a production deal with Orion Pictures, which proved to be one of the best experiences of Demme’s career. The first two features he directed for them,

Something Wild and Married to the Mob, are both a bit difficult to categorize. Unique unto themselves, the former undergoes a uniquely significant change of tone as it progresses from romantic slapstick comedy to tense thriller, while the latter offers a number of different tones – comic and dramatic, gangster and romantic – somewhat nonchalantly woven together.

Something Wild (Orion Pictures, 1986), a very contemporary road film, is a street sharp that unexpectedly evolved into a tense and suspenseful roller coaster ride. Beginning as a classic road trip adventure, it’s focused on a traditional, if unlikely, couple – Charlie and Audrey. When Ray, her ex-husband joins them, the expansion of a traditional unit proves very destructive, unlike how such new familial groupings had been treated in his previous films. David Thomson commented:

It may be said that Demme has not yet made a great film. Maybe, but Something Wild is close to it, a miraculously zigzagging movie where screwball goes into

31 sexpot, romance, and menace (several times) before the wildness settles. This may be Demme's surest tribute to wayward vitality, and it works so well because he enjoys all the characters with the same uncritical wariness.16

His next film, Married to the Mob (Orion Pictures, 1988), opens by depicting the irony of outlaw gangsters married with families, fitting in and conforming to suburban life. The tone of the film begins to spread out in several directions when Angela’s mobster husband is murdered by Tony “The Tiger” Russo, his gang’s boss. Deciding to leave the mob and the suburbs behind, Angela and her son move into the city. The film offers a medley of shifting tones. Emmanuel Levy observed that in the film,

…working-class gangsters live in a fake world, parading around in long white overcoats that serve as a mask for their lack of subtlety. Demme’s America is a colorful place, as in ‘dress-up and be what you want to be, but don't think that clothes by themselves make the person.’17

Those two features were just part of Demme’s prolific output during this period.

Swimming to Cambodia (Cinecom, 1987), his film of ’s performance theater piece, was very well received. Haiti: Dreams of Democracy Part I (Channel Four

Television Corporation, 1988), a documentary he co-produced, wrote and directed with

Jo Menell, premiered on television.

When Talking Heads’ leader David Byrne decided to try his hand at directing it was Demme signing on as a producer that allowed for the production of True Stories

(Warner Bros. 1986). Demme was busy in other avenues of interest as he presented the

Irish film Eat The Peach (released by Scours, 1986), gave money and

32 guidance on her directorial debut, True Love (United Artists, 1989), and he produced his old Corman comrade George Armitages’s adaption of a Charles Williford novel called

Miami Blues (Orion, 1990). Demme continued his ongoing collaboration with Beth

Henley, author of the award winning Crimes of the Hear, as they worked together on A

Family Tree, directed by Demme. The initial episode of six in “Trying Times,” PBS’ first foray into prime time comedy, it starred Rosanna Arquette and David Byrne, along with

Demme regular, Robert Ridgley. Crucial to the arc of his career was meeting Ed Saxon around this time, who came on as his volunteer assistant but soon graduated to being

Demme’s producing partner.

In the wake of Stop Making Sense, Demme’s work directing music videos really took off. He directed over a dozen music videos through 1990, working with acts like

New Order, Suzanne Vega, , and The Neville . The critically celebrated, anti-, long-form “Sun City” came out in 1985. The Fine Young

Cannibals’ “Ever Fallen In Love” was released the next year in conjunction with

Something Wild. Demme directed the Neville Brothers doing “In The Still of the Night” for a segment of Red Hot and Blue, an 1990 AIDS benefit TV compilation of Cole Porter songs. That same year he directed a video with KRS-1 for the rapper’s H.E.A.L. project.

This short phase of Demme’s career saw him being incredibly prolific, while further maturing in terms of abilities as a director.

The Roaring Of The Lambs (1991)

Though respected and admired, the approach of the new decade still found Demme more

33 of a cult hero to filmmakers and critics than a director known to the public. A situation that changed dramatically with his next film, The Silence of the Lambs (Orion Pictures,

1991), adapted by Ted Talley from ’ extraordinary best-selling novel. A commercial blockbuster, earning $130 million domestically and $140 million internationally, it went on to become one of only three films in Academy Award history to sweep the top five Oscars including Best Director for Demme. The success graduated him to the A-list of Hollywood directors but unfortunately came too late to save Orion, which entered into bankruptcy in 1991.

Success? (1992 – 2000)

Demme’s next film (Cinevista, 1992), a documentary about his cousin, who was an Episcopalian minister in Harlem, was well received. Still there was a lot of interest as to what feature he would decide to make following Silence. After his wife’s best friend, Juan Boats, died of AIDS in 1992, Demme decided to tackle the epidemic head on.18 Written by , Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel

Washington, was released by Tri-Star in 1993. A consideration of the consequences of prejudice and inhumanity, Philadelphia, darker and edgier than Demme’s earlier films, evidences far more explicit social consciousness and political awareness. Controversial upon its release, with many gay activists denouncing it, the resulting box office success was a true surprise. Finding a vast and wide audience, it served to introduce much of the world to the dangers of AIDS, in the wake of its success only the most radical and committed activists continued to attack it.

34 During the next few years he released a number of varied projects including a number of music pieces. Complex Sessions, his first collaboration with Neil Young, was thirty minutes long and included four songs from the album Sleeps with Angels. He directed two videos for Bruce Springsteen. Storefront Hitchcock (MGM, 1998) was a feature performance film of singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, playing in a New York

City storefront. Sitting inside with his back to the store’s street windows, passersby peaked in as he played. He executive produced Subway Stories: Tales from Underground, a TV movie featuring ten vignettes, directing one himself, the others were directed by folks like , Abel Ferrara, , Lucas Platt (Demme’s assistant on

Silence who went on to a successful producing career) and Craig McKay (Demme’s long- time editor).

Still, it was still over five years before his next film, Beloved (Touchstone 1998).

Expectations for the film ran high, as it was based on ’s award winning, best-selling novel while producer and star Oprah Winfrey career was on fire. Even though

Demme claimed Beloved as a favorite film, it marked an unwelcome return to box-office failure. The critical reception was more mixed. In Rolling Stone, David Fear commented:

And you can feel how Demme is constantly emphasizing the human pulse beneath the genre’s things-that-go-bump-in-the-night trappings. At the present, it is a curse that cannot be lifted. Rather than providing comfort or refuge, family history, incapable of being forgotten or suppressed, is a malevolent ghost determined to destroy. Attention must be paid.19

Remakes (2000 – 2004)

Unfortunately, this failure served as an omen, as Demme’s career entered its weakest

35 phase. His next film, The Truth About Charlie (2002), a celebration of the French New

Wave, should have been a return to the culturally attuned, freewheeling filmmaking of his early films. It seemed promising enough, but this remake of Charade (Stanley Donna,

1963) suffered a fatal wound even before it began filming. Will Smith, who was originally to star with Thandie Newton, dropped out. Then the studio talked Demme into replacing him with . In order for it to work, the male protagonist had to be the smartest person in the film, which Wahlberg, excellent in action films, was clearly not.

As with so many of his excursions away from Hollywood filmmaking, his documentary The Agronomist (2004) was a cleansing experience that reminded Demme why he began making movies. A labor of love that perhaps he worked on too long, it is powerful and deeply moving.

Agreeing to direct The Manchurian Candidate (2004), he took on not just a new major studio production, but also another remake. As with Beloved, the villain in The

Manchurian Candidate is family. The relationship between Raymond Shaw and his mother, Eleanor, is perverse and unhealthy. Shaw is not just easily manipulated because of the enemies’ brainwashing, but that his free will was essentially already destroyed by the traditional, though more insidious consequences of family. An okay critical success, the film, failing to tap into the country’s zeitgeist of fear and paranoia anywhere near as powerfully as the original had managed, was a box office disappointment.

Rejuvenation (2005 – 2017)

36 In 2005, the year after Manchurian Candidate, Demme’s own children were mostly grown, and he announced he was taking a year off. Instead he had a burst of creative activity in which Demme seemed to again relax into the joy of being a filmmaker, leading with his heart, his passion, and his mind. The year’s never materialized; instead he shot Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006), a performance film, and The Man from Plains

(2007), a documentary on President Jimmy Carter. After Hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2005, he began to regularly visit , and filmed a TV documentary on the effects of the storm over multiple years.

Demme fell into his next major project, Rachel Getting Married (2008), when

Jenny Lumen, granddaughter of his old friend director Sydney Lumet, asked him to read her script. His first narrative feature since 2004 found him working more guerrilla than formal, more independent than studio, telling a story that focused tightly on individual and family. Dealing with disruption and reinvention, destruction and healing, it was purposefully uncomfortable as its story required nothing less. Critically well received and a success on the film-festival circuit, it also did well commercially. The film has a brilliant cast including Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, and Tom Irwin. An evolutionary step forward, it combines the dark subject matter and tones of the later films with the celebration of family and individual of his early work.

This was followed by two more Neil Young films, (2009) and Neil Young Journeys (2011). During this time, he was busy working on the HBO series Enlightened (2010) and directing the for the TV series A Gifted Man (2011).

He also executive-produced six episodes of the series. He continued his documentary

37 work on post-Katrina New Orleans with Right to Return: New Home Movies from the

Lower 9th Ward, released in 2007. During 2010, the TV show Tavis Smiley Reports featured footage from the film every night for a week. Another segment, I'm Carolyn

Parker: The Good, the Mad and the Beautiful, played the festival circuit.

In 2012, Demme directed a performance film, Kenny Chesney: Unstaged, and a music documentary, Enzo Avitabile Music Life. The next year he directed two episodes of

The Killing for cable TV and Line of Sight, a TV movie for AMC.

A Master Builder, a feature adaptation of Ibsen's The Master Builder starring (and written by) , and , with Julie Hegarty, was released in 2013 to mixed reviews. What’s Motivating Hayes, an episode in Alex Gibney’s The New Yorker

Presents series, came out in 2015. At the time Demme was seriously developing an animated version of ’ Zeitoun about the flooding of New

Orleans.

Ricki and the Flash (2015), Demme’s first studio production in over a decade, happened because , who had attached herself to ’s script, insisted on him as director. His last two studio narrative features, Rachel Getting Married

(2008) and Ricki and the Flash, show Demme to be as visionary as ever – each a unique take on American life. Both films focused on family. Though not a return to those freewheeling extended families of his earliest works, there was instead a renewed affection and appreciation of the traditional nuclear unit. Returning to the concert film form, Demme again expanded his stylistic range yet again with and the

Tennessee Kids.

38 There were considerable health issues in his last few years. Still when I visited him in Upper Nyack in June 2016, he had just finished working on drama series, Shots

Fired: Hour Six: The Fire This Time. He told me that he had been prepared to take it easy during filming, depending on his stamina, but when he got on the set he found his energy returning and the shoot exhilarating.21 He was developing a new project when he became too ill to continue.

Conclusion

The diversity of the films made by Jonathan Demme resulted in an expansive and wide- ranging filmography, which makes it is both impressive to contemplate yet unusually difficult to understand, its very breadth leaving it resistant to any kind of comprehensive analytic and critical overview. He not only worked in so many different types of films – narratives, documentaries, performance films, TV episodes, and music videos – but even within those areas he disliked repeating himself creatively so was always looking for new challenges. More than anything he loved making movies and as such would take on many projects that came his way.

In and of itself, the filmography offers a powerful and important consideration of life, work, class, sex roles, occupations, and possibility during the last half-century of this country. His career is fascinating in the projects he made, the economics affecting those choices, and the personality of a committed and passionate observer. A surprising number of his films, including some of his most critically acclaimed works, were box office disappointments if not outright disasters, which scarcely slowed him down and seemed to

39 not at all dent his rising status.

It is hard to see the forest for the trees with Demme’s output, but over time and by taking a couple of steps back it becomes almost obvious that it is an organic and cohesive body of work that clearly defines and details the humanist sensibility and cultural ambitions of its author. Watching and re-watching these films leads to a greater appreciation of their ambitions, aesthetic reach, vitality, and fluidity. Coming back to them over a period of decades finds that the ways we grow, mature, and have a greater range of experiences enriches the viewing experience, serving to make them more complex and resonant. Crafted as voyages of inquisitive discovery, Demme’s films in particular are open-ended rather than contained, questioning rather than certain, and engaged rather than distanced.

Hearing of Demme’s death, Moonlight (2016) director tweeted, “A

MASSIVE soul. He lived in love.”22 He did. Intensely loved, he even more fervently loved – music, art, family, friends, crew, characters, audience, and film. His films, almost always about relationships, were made by a creative team including many both in front of and behind the camera whom he regularly worked with on different projects during the whole course of his career. There are still the films, which are ever more unique, presenting a humanist world view that, today, is out of favor with many, or regarded as simple and naive. Demme’s work, as always, offers light and hope, not created by groundless or desperate beliefs, but out of an affection for people and their culture, insisting on their potential, embracing possibilities.

40 Endnotes

1 Jodie Foster. “…champion of the soul.” Statement issued by Jodie Foster on the death of Jonathan Demme, April 26, 2017.

2 Gavin Smith. “Identity Check: Jonathan Demme Interviewed” Film Comment, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January/February 1991).

3 Owen Gleiberman. “Jonathan Demme: An Appreciation,” Variety, April 26, 2017. https://variety.com/2017/film/columns/jonathan-demme-an-appreciation- 1202399635/

4 Jonathan Demme. “Jonathan Demme (1944 -2017).” Artforum, April 26, 2017. https://www.artforum.com/news/jonathan-demme-1944-2017-68108

5 Eric Kohn. “Remembering Jonathan Demme: Why He Was One of the Great Filmmakers of our time” Indiewire, April 26, 2017. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/remembering-jonathan-demme-why-one- 165423728.html

6 Carrie Rickey. “Jonathan Demme: An Appreciation of a Unique, Humane Filmmaker” Uproxx, April 27, 2017. https://uproxx.com/movies/jonathan-demme-remembrance/.

7 David Edelstein. “Remembering Jonathan Demme, One of Cinema’s Most Contagious Enthusiasts” New York Magazine, Vulture, April 28, 2017.

8 “Jonathan Demme” http://www.theyshootpictures.com/demmejonathan.htm

9 Fletcher Walton. O.S.S. Remembers Jonathan Demme, May 4, 2017. http://onesensationalshot.com/o-s-s-remembers-jonathan-demme/

10 Jonathan Demme, IMDb.

41 11 Ann Hornaday “Jonathan Demme: The Last of the Great Journeyman Directors” Washington Post, April 26, 2017.

12 Pauline Kael. 5001 Nights at the Movies. Henry Holt and Co.: New York, 2001.

13 Emanuel Levy. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American . NYU Press: New York, 1999. p. 157.

14 Michael Bliss, Cristina Banks. What Goes Around Comes Around: The Films of Jonathan Demme. Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale, Edwardsville, 1996.

15 Jonathan Demme. Interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

16 David Thompson. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Martin Stecker & Warburg, Ltd, 1975. p. 220.

17 Emanuel Levy. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. p. 155.

18 Jonathan Demme Interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

19 David Fear. “20 Most Essential Jonathan Demme Movies” Rolling Stone, April 26, 2017. https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-lists/20-most-essential-jonathan- demme-movies-118800/the-silence-of-the-lambs-1991-118914/

20 Michael Barker. Personal conversation: March, 2019.

21 Jonathan Demme Interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

22 Barry Jenkins tweet (April 26, 2017).

42 Chapter 1: Critical and Career Context and Existing Literature

“Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Demme.” – , when asked by in 2013 which three directors influenced his career most. 1

Jonathan Demme is an under-appreciated American Filmmaker who came of age in the 1970s. Other directors who hit their stride during the seventies include Martin Scorsese, , , , , Brian De Palma, Robert Altman and Francis Coppola. Demme’s “youthful infatuation with movies, music and multiculturalism,” writes film critic David Edelstein, has made him “a hipster hero to a generation of filmmakers and film-lovers — a sort of rock “n” roll ” (New York Times, October 27, 2002). But outside this small band of film aficionados, most of whom are film critics, Demme has gone largely unnoticed. – Robert E. Kapsis

Embracing his ever-changing role of producer, director, writer, presenter, and series curator, Jonathan Demme found himself working in a variety of forms and fields.

His wide range of creative ventures included studio narrative features, feature documentaries, performance and music films, music videos and television. He produced soundtracks and an anthology album, collected and curated art, authored and edited articles and wrote introductions for books and film series.

As a director his ambition was never to fit a film into his aesthetic, but rather to respect and organically realize each individual project. He continually reinvented himself, sometimes gradually over the course of a few projects, other times more dramatically from one picture to the next. With great regularity through the course of his career, he tackled new ideas of content, tone, intention, and style.

Casting a shadow on Demme’s career, however, is the lack of extensive studies on his work. Many of his films received terrific reviews, earned industry awards, and captured the admiration of fellow directors. There are numerous articles and reviews of

43 Demme’s films, but there is relatively little in the way of substantive career studies.

It seems likely that at least part of the problem is that though writers find his individual films compelling and of great interest, his collective body of work is much harder to consider in a comprehensive way. When dealing with the full range of a director’s output, one should find a context that helps clarify and expand the meaning of the individual works. Seen together, characters, style and themes should add depth and resonance to the films, individually and as a whole collection. However, when considering Demme’s work, even the first step of deciding what to cover and how exactly to approach it is difficult and complicated because of the range of his filmography.

Literature on Demme

Though Demme was critically successful, respected by his peers, award winning, and creatively influential, having directed at least a half dozen classics, there is only one book length critical study in English, What Goes Around Comes Around: The Films of

Jonathan Demme, written by Michael Bliss and Christina Banks and published by

Southern Illinois University Press. In the footnote of his excellent Senses of Cinema article on Demme, Keith Uhlich accurately notes that there is, “an account of the Swing

Shift debacle in Michael Bliss and Christina Banks’ otherwise worthless book…. It’s a travesty that this is the only English-language study of Demme’s films and it requires immediate remedy.”3

There is also a book of interviews edited by Robert E. Kapsis in the University

Press of Mississippi’s Conversations with Filmmakers series. There are two monographs

44 that were published to accompany Demme retrospectives, A Conversation with Jonathan

Demme, by Anthony Loeb and the already noted Pauline Kael monograph. There are at least two books devoted solely to The Silence of the Lambs, one by Yvonne Tasker in the

“BFI Modern Classics” series and Barry Forshaw in the “Devil’s Advocates” series devoted to exploring the classics of the horror genre. Much of the writing on Demme appeared in contemporary magazine and journal pieces hinged to the release of the films, rather than to the director of the films.

Neither a West Coast (USC, UCLA) or East Coast (NYU) academic nor an outside industry independent filmmaker, he is not considered as part of the Sundance generation. In Rebels on the Backlot by Sharon Waxman4, there is no mention of him and he is only briefly referenced in The Sundance Kids by James Mottram5, although both books are about game-changing directors of the 1990s.

In surveys of his contemporary generations of filmmakers, he’s rarely mentioned.

Demme is not referenced once in Peter Biskind’s definitive study of his contemporary generation, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and mentioned only in passing in Down and Dirty

Pictures, Biskind's “sequel.”6 Though John Pierson’s seminal work book Spike Mike

Slackers & Dykes boasts “a guided tour across a decade of American Independent

Cinema,” Demme is only mentioned in passing.7 But why would he be mentioned? He came up uniquely and then proceeded to track his own visionary career. David

Cronenberg, the , , Martha Coolidge, , and David

Lynch, among many others, are all covered in Donald Lyons’s 1994 Independent Visions, a book about innovative American independent films and filmmakers. Demme earned

45 only one mention.8 Greg Merritt’s Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American

Independent Film offers extended coverage on Robert Altman, John Cassettes, John

Waters, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles and even Oscar Micheaux. Demme? Barely a mention.9

Biographical Film Surveys

Of course, he is covered in many biographical dictionaries and surveys of working directors. The coverage he receives in these is usually at least somewhat approving. Still, the clearly different phases of his career results in considerations often being mixed, the writer favoring one part of his career over another. David Thomson, in The New

Biographical Dictionary of Film, offers:

Around 1990, Demme seemed the most versatile director in America…. He loved the provinces, music of all kinds, character actors, the fusion of comedy and high drama. He had a way of guarding his rather captious integrity in every testing commercial set up. He had not yet stopped surprising us…. He was a natural in an age when so many people made moviemaking feel like a duty or a scam.10

He goes on to say, however, that “Demme's latest years have not been very satisfactory.”11 In Contemporary North American Film Directors, Andrew Syder offers:

In an era of pat sentiment and cynically calculated optimism, few film-makers have infused their films with as much authentic joy and generosity as Jonathan Demme. He seems fascinated with humanity and his films overflow with its celebration, resulting in a body of work as rich, diverse and vibrant as that of any other contemporary director. 12

But adds at the end of the entry:

46

Whereas his previous films seem to have been about the embracing of life, these two films are preoccupied with death and dying – and worse still, seem to have had all the life drained out of them. 13

In the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Norman Miller comments:

Jonathan Demme has proven himself to be one of the more acute observers of the inner life of America during the course of a directorial career…. Demme’s concern with character – focused particularly through the observation of telling eccentricities – is perhaps his trademark, combined with a vitality and willingness to use the frameworks of various to their fullest extent.14

But these are all comprehensive books, covering all of Demme’s contemporaries.

Looking at the situation in detail it becomes even more perplexing. Many directors that began directing during the decade before as well as at much the same time are amply covered.

Francis Ford Coppola’s first important director credit, 1963’s Dementia 13, had

been followed by five features he directed, including , and a few he just

produced, most notably , by the time Caged Heat, Demme’s

directorial debut, was released in May 1974. In November of 1971, Steven Spielberg’s

Duel premiered on television, while his first feature, Sugarland Express, was also

released in May of 1974. Martin Scorsese's Hollywood theatrical directorial debut,

Boxcar Bertha, came out in 1972. (His 1967 feature Who’s That Knocking at My Door,

in terms of career recognition, doesn’t count.) Spending time on these three directors,

one finds many books on each, at least a dozen on Coppola, as well as a number he

47 wrote, with even more on Spielberg and Scorsese.

Even though Terrance Malick’s filmography is not as hefty as others, the interest in him is intense. His feature debut Badlands was released in 1973, right before Demme’s directorial debut. There are at least ten books on him.

The same year as Demme’s Caged Heat, ’s debut, Death Star,

Michael Cimino’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and ’s Seizure were also released. There are at least six books on Carpenter, over a dozen on Oliver Stone, another half dozen on Hooper and Texas Chainsaw

Massacre. There are even two books on Cimino, as well as a couple just on his film,

Heaven’s Gate.

There are at least three dozen books on , counting just those in

English (Tarantino's directorial debut came out in 1992) and well over a dozen books on the Coen brothers. Just looking at my personal library alone, there are a dozen books on Sam Peckinpah and Roger Corman and a half dozen books on John

Sayles and .

Then there is Demme, with just one book of interviews and one book of essays.

One factor as to why there is so little extended coverage may well be that Demme's career does not fit into any easy categorization. His career trajectory doesn’t match many of his contemporaries. Unlike most of his fellow filmmakers, he neither attended film school, nor worked in television early on in his career. Rather, he uniquely began filmmaking through the avenue of a career in film publicity and marketing. Though a Roger Corman protégé, he left Hollywood and was based in New York City.

48 The very diversity of his projects may work against him here too. Exactly how is one to regard him? A studio director? He did often work for studios and he created two mega box-office hits. Still, that was only a segment of his output. Indie Director? Despite a number of independent releases, he doesn’t fit comfortably under that heading either.

Auteur Theory, Authorship, Jonathan Demme

Obviously, the lack of serious extended studies of Demme’s body of work is an important consideration in any study of his career. Why this is the case is a deterring question in thinking about his career. How does one enter his films and consider them as a connected body? There is no easy handle on this. The most common and unifying element is authorship. Yet even dealing with his body of work by way of classic auteurism it is still somewhat of an anomaly.

Intuitively one would think the auteur theory would explain why so much has been written on Demme, only it hasn’t. Instead it provides a tool, perhaps the best one, for dealing with his work.

The auteur theory came about as an analytic tool for critically dealing with the flood of Hollywood releases allowed into after the war years, when the Vichy government had banned them. These films excited the growing community of French film enthusiasts, galvanizing a generation of critics and theorists, many who went on to become filmmakers. Essentially it began as a largely descriptive effort, an analytic tool – how to understand and connect these Hollywood studio productions.

In his 1948 essay The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Style, Alexandre

49 Austruc argued that cameras are like pens, directors are like writers who should not be restricted by traditional storytelling.15 The idea is further developed by Andre Bazin in the French film magazine, Cahiers du Cinema, launched in 1951, and notably in Francois

Truffaut’s essay Une Certain Tendency du Cinéma Français (“A Certain Trend of French

Cinema”).16

The origins of the auteur theory came about in the Post World War II period where

French critics realized that noticeable similarities within the filmographies of certain directors allowed all of the work to be considered in a greater aesthetic and cultural context. Initially, almost all the American films considered under auteur theory were studio productions. The films of auteurs ranging from and to

Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray demonstrate noticeable consistencies of style, tone, character portrayal, narrative strategy, and theme. This lent an ease and coherence not to limited biography but to dealing with each of their works as being authored by a distinct personality.

They were especially attracted to the works of certain directors – studio employees who worked on the Hollywood film assembly line – those listed above, as well as, Howard Hawks, , Anthony Mann, Leo McCary, , Otto

Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch. Concurrently, they found mainstream French cinema disappointing and sterile. Critical enthusiasm for Hollywood combined with disdain for national production proved to be a theoretical incubator.

It wasn’t until Andrew Sarris published “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962” that it really gained currency in the states. By the end of the decade, “auteurism was the

50 dominant mode of aesthetic discourse among American film critics, and its single-author perspective was institutionalized as film study entered the academy during the same period.”17

The theory was positioned as a qualitative determiner. It wasn’t just that certain directors authored their films, but that the worst film of a good auteur was better than the best film of a journeyman director. This because the former was part of a resonant body of work. Sarris pointed out, “the second premise of the auteur theory is the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value.”18

Early on the theory provided blinders by which to view Hollywood productions.

Without exactly denying the obvious – that film is a collaborative art where many contribute – the theory’s basic tenant is that the overall work of the director is the real determiner, rather than the success of any individual film. Sarris noted, “Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serves as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels.” 19

In a way, the auteur theory, though rooted in personality, is counter-biographical.

One does not use the real-life story of the filmmaker to understand the film. The films tell the story of their creators. The guidelines for determining an auteur provide a way of considering the career output of a filmmaker. Studying individual films is a path to understanding the entire body of work. Cinema style, recurring themes, content that may be dissimilar on the surface but apparent, use of actors, and development of characters, are all considered. The quest is to realize a fully conceived portrait of the filmmaker as a

51 way of offering critical judgment and to understand how the film makes meaning.

As an example, consider Sarris’s discussion of Howard Hawks, which begins with the shared output evidenced across his movies:

Hawks has stamped his distinctively bitter view of life on adventure, gangster and private-eye melodramas, Westerns, musicals, and screwball comedies…there is little point in belaboring the point for the few…who maintain that his art is not really Art with a serving of espresso in the lobby. That one can discern the same directorial signature over a wide variety of genres is proof of artistry. 20

Writer Geoff Andrew’s talks about style:

Hawks' visual style was classical, restrained, unpretentious - camera at eye-height, unobtrusive editing, a sparing use of close-ups, camera-movements and emphatic angles - so that the focus was firmly on the often dazzling interplay of words and gestures between characters defined by their actions. 21

Without offering any biological details, a portrait of the creator is achieved.

The theory, in some ways, succeeded perhaps too well. It ignited academic film study while also increasing the importance and prominence of directors. But by observing this situation, the auteur theory profoundly changed it.

Modern Auteurism

As a qualitative categorizing tool, the theory galvanized film studies. The theory went from descriptive and analytical, to predictive and aspirational. Young filmmakers wanted to be auteurs. Directors received greater status.

52 When the writers of Cahiers du Cinema first articulated their understanding of the auteur, particularly the auteur in Hollywood, they had in mind a man whose vision transcended the limitations and restrictions that the studio system imposed upon his films…. However, as the concept of the auteur was developed by Cameron, Sarris, and others, the director became a man who imposed his vision upon the film. And by the ‘70s, he was a man whose vision was not to be restricted, not to be tampered with.22

There were those who weren’t driven to direct but wanted to be directors. The aesthetic and critical controversy over the auteur was misleading; film is a collaborative art. Author and professor Thomas Schatz wryly offers that auturism, “would not be worth bothering with if it hadn’t…effectively [stalled] film history and criticism in a prolonged state of adolescent romanticism.”23

Demme was a generation or two after the classic auteur directors. Beginning to direct only half decade after ’s Easy , though swimming in the chronological tide of the movie brats, Demme was not really one of them.

The films of directors like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and are easily identifiable, given those directors obvious touches. Director regularly references the influence of director ’s films on his work. Wes

Anderson, the Coen brothers, and ’s work are noticeably idiosyncratic, as is the work of Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson. The authorship of all of these directors is evident in most, if not all, the films they have made.

Looking at the films, one finds their author. In Demme’s case, this is reversed.

Still, though not as traditional, this raises no real questions about Demme’s role as an auteur. Thomas Elsaesser writes:

53 The auteur-theory comes to stand less and less for particular styles, themes or even mise-en-scéne, applied from without (by critics or students), and more for a new kind of self-definition of the American director, which has to do with his (mainly ‘his’) position within the national and international film-market…24

Many of these talents achieved success at unusually young ages, which affected their growth as artists. In some cases, in achieving fame they also acquired disproportionate power, with some like blowing out.

I don’t think it is the chicken or the egg here, but more complex. Initially, the work of a number of directors lead to the auteur theory, which lead to a new consideration and focus on directors. But the accuracy of the theory is crucial. If it was not overstated, it lead to recognition rather than power and . The complexity and difficulties of Demme’s authorship contribute to a lack of attention.

Demme As Auteur

The director Jonathan Demme’s career in film was defined by its versatility. He could be making a weighty drama on social issues, a madcap action comedy, a pulpy crime thriller, or just be filming a rock-and-roll concert or a one-man show…. Perhaps because of his willingness to work in different genres and switch up his visual approach to storytelling, Demme sometimes didn’t get the prestige attention of his fellow Oscar-winning luminaries. 25

Core to this work is the assumption that Demme is an auteur. Certainly not of the first generation of auteurs as described by the French and Sarris, his diverse output requires some effort to make that categorization make sense. One of the driving concerns that led to the auteur theory was French critics after World War II trying to determine the creative voice responsible for films produced by the studio system. Given the assembly line

54 production method shared by these films, the interest was in how individual voices were so clearly evident. Varied, wide-ranging, and eclectic, Demme’s films were consciously created, each on its own terms, not in any way resistant to or subverting the more traditional studio output. The position is that to understand the films we must consider

“Jonathan Demme” – not biographically but as a label for a clear, relatively consistent authorial voice.

Concentrating on individual films can make it harder to discern Demme. Joel

Wicklund noted:

But Demme’s irregular career trajectory was not a case of constantly trying on new directorial personas, but simply of a wide-ranging artist pursuing his myriad of interests without caring about forging a defining, signature style. It was a versatility that sometimes left auteur theory-driven critics writing him off. 26

Adam Cook has much the same observation:

A problem case for anyone looking to label him an auteur, Demme moved from project to project without an obvious through line…he kept us guessing for his entire career…. Upon closer inspection, it may not be so hard after all to find qualities linking his films, be it a fascination with performance, sensitivity to race and class, or his always present humanist curiosity and compassion from behind the camera.27

In many ways Demme’s directorial presence is rarely obscure, even in films as dissimilar as Melvin and Howard and The Manchurian Candidate. There is the passion for the material, the insistence on the film’s cinematic integrity and a respect for and fascination with the characters. and the Coen brothers, for example, offer eccentric

55 characters and convoluted plots as ways of distancing themselves from the material they are presenting. We are enjoying the joke with the filmmakers more than empathizing with the characters. The films of Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese are easily recognizable, their heavy-handed plots and stylish cinema encourage audiences to admire the work but not fade into it.

Demme wanted audiences to be engaged in his films, to enter into them. They were not designed to highlight his authorial presence or define the creative artist responsible for making them. What he most wanted was for the audience watching the film to be lost in it, the deeper they were sucked into that viewing experience, the better.

Rather than wanting the audience focused on his ideology and cinema, he wanted them to be in sync with the film. His works were designed to make him less obvious an author though in Demme’s case the forest very much defines the forest, the body of work argues for its authorship.

The most recurrent interest in all his films from narratives to documentaries to performance films is relationships. There is a concern with personal identity, how each character finds and fits into their sense of self, but that is always presented in the greater context of how they interact and function with others, especially in terms of family and society. As Pauline Kael said, “I can’t think of any other director who is so instinctively and democratically interested in everybody he shows you.”28

At the center of Demme’s efforts is not the question of “Who Am I This Time?” but rather “Who are we?” His work does not feature the isolated hero, these are not Ayn

Rand tales celebrating egotist libertarians. Without denying or suppressing individual

56 identity his characters are distinct but never unmoored, they belong to families, communities and society. Still, though not a collectivist – the focus is on people coming together, the interest is in collaboration, interaction, respect and cooperation.

In his early films, the traditional nuclear family is re-imagined and recast, gender roles of males and females are redefined, subverted, and innovated. In some sense, a reference here is Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle offering the construct of a ‘karass,’ which is a group of individuals appointed by God to do his will. In Caged Heat, a disparate group of women, each adrift, come together in a unit that is empowering and actually liberating. Crazy Mama rifts on the traditional nuclear family as an expanded female- dominated nuclear unit expands. In Citizen’s Band the bigamist truck driver and his outraged two wives are mid-wifed into an extended family by a friendly hooker. The peak of this new non-blood family unit is in Demme’s cut of Swing Shift, where traditional marriage and heterosexual romantic couplings eventually rupture and deconstruct the

“artificial/real family” – the community of women who have come together in the work force during WWII. Almost specifically, the narrative construction of Stop Making Sense is the coming together of individuals to make a band.

After Swing Shift, Demme’s attitude towards family evidences an evolution. In the somewhat ironically titled Married to the Mob, ’s husband dies leaving her a widow, but the surviving family is the toxic mob. Although presented more as caricatures than real, it is still harmful and restricting rather than expansive and liberating. The film also begins to explore the effects of the death of a married partner on the one remaining. In a sense, whereas earlier in Swing Shift the absence of the traditional

57 partner was at least at first welcomed, now it is at least disruptive and consequential if not actually horrific. At the swirling center of Silence is one of the most perverse couples in cinema. Philadelphia is different – family is so crucial to its symbolic language system, a lament on what sickness and death can do to the traditional family unit, as well as the extended family of friends. It doesn’t exactly celebrate family but it is the unexamined foundation.

Beloved is a full assault on family, where history is the source of horror, pain and tragedy though funneled through family. The tragic nightmare of , rather than an oppressive abstract, is personified through the family structure. The potentially life threatening action in The Truth About Charlie is routed in her marriage and the disappearance of her husband. The mother is a truly monstrous figure in Manchurian

Candidate, casting the film as an almost traditional horror genre effort. In both, the nuclear family is the source of destructive evil.

The restoration of family as a positive and healthy force begins with Neil Young:

Heart of Gold (2005). But especially in Rachel Getting Married and Ricki and the Flash,

Demme doesn’t exactly explore and support the new family unit as in his early works but instead goes back to the beginning, the nuclear family, which though flawed and damaged proves to be a remarkably sturdy and reliable anchor for individuals.

Romance

When considering the body of Demme’s films you realize that he never made a typical

Hollywood romance. Romances and romantic comedies have a shared core narrative

58 structure. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back type of standard generic plot strategies. But in Demme’s work, only a few films are structured around a romantic heterosexual coupling. None are straight ahead romances, but instead at best are offbeat narratives about eccentric relationships.

The couple in Who Am I This Time? succeeds because of an ongoing indulgence in fiction. In Citizen’s Band, the ‘Spider’ character is in love with “Electra,’ at the time his brother’s girlfriend. Although they marry at the end, the film is really about the community coming together.

Crazy Mama and Melvin and Howard are too frantic for normal romance. In both, there are wedding chapel scenes, an already outlandish setting rendered more ludicrous. In Crazy Mama, an already married character marries. While in Melvin and

Howard, she is not just all too obviously pregnant, but in need of money as always, after remarrying they end up serving as witnesses for other marriages. Melvin hits on the brides while the grooms just as intensely hit on Lynda.

Hawn’s butchering of Swing Shift took Demme’s film about community and, while cutting and adding scenes, shoved it into the structure of a normal romance. The result is a seriously crippled Hollywood studio romance. Looking at that tortured work makes painfully obvious how little interest Demme has in mainstream Hollywood romance.

The most intensely erotic sexual encounter in Demme’s films occurs in Something

Wild when Lulu and Charlie have sex in a motel. Both are not just lying to the other about almost everything but the only basis of their relationship is this dishonesty. Ironically, the

59 best marriages in the films of Jonathan Demme are in documentaries: The Agronomist,

Neil Young: Heart of Gold and Jimmy Carter Man from Plains.

Film Love and Film Knowledge

Demme just loved movies, any and all, his taste inclusive, his passion without prejudice.

He devoured them all with little distinction between genre, origin, purpose or style, the only really noticeable distinction being his obsession with the work of young talents.

One time he might write about all the great new African cinema David Byrne and he were seeing, while the next he couldn’t wait to share the “…awesome line-up for the first 16 weeks of our Saturday morning western series, Saturday Saddle Up With

Jonathan!29

He told a great story about sitting in an airport in Central America with Dennis

Hopper waiting for their flight to the Rio Film Festival in the wee hours of the morning.

They spent their time talking about movies. Hooper began to badmouth and all his films:

Demme asked, “Well what about 7 Men from Now?” “Okay,” Hopper admitted, “that was pretty good.” “And ?” Demme asked.

Again Hopper had to agree. Pressing on, Demme cited more titles, “, Comanche Station, ?”

Finally, Hopper grudgingly conceded, acknowledging Boetticher’s brilliance, which made Demme so happy. 30

60 Film Language

Cinematically Demme tackled each film on its own term’s. Demme had a love of almost archaic cinematic language, such as wipes and pans, but he was just as excited by the

French New Wave, Brazilian , Soviet Cinema, New York independents and

Japanese Cinema among many others.

Often he would talk about how exciting it was to work out new ideas and different approaches with the remarkable cinematographer, , with whom he so often collaborated. They loved long takes and tracking shots but were always especially excited to experiment with POV, both as a cinematic technique and a narrative presence, sometimes overtly but just as often subtlety. Stepping outside of traditional Hollywood grammar, they’d break rules and play with the way the audience watched the film. But this was never done to draw attention to itself but rather to suck the viewer even further into the work.

Music

The importance of music to Demme can’t be overstated, it is impossible to talk about his work without bringing up music – not just the videos, classic performance films, concert movies and documentaries on music figures, but his consistent, innovative, unique, daring and often surprising use of music in the narratives. At the same time there is no brief or even lengthy discussion of that topic that would begin to do it justice.

Worldview

61 Demme was often out of step with the zeitgeist. Naturally rebellious, his sensibility, though at odds with dominant ideology, still did not fit into convenient renegade categories. Neither a fatalist nor a rapid-fire, unrelenting pessimist, his tone was not knowingly-jaded, cynical, chic, nor did it embrace ever expanding divine despair. His films did not offer easily digested contrarian takes or disgusted, self-satisfied, celebratory misanthropic characters. Tone and character attitudes were neither smugly satiric or condescendingly antagonistic. Keith Uhlich, in Senses of Cinema, noted:

Demme’s films (despite deceptive genre appearances) never leave one with tight and tidy resolutions…. there’s a sense of challenges yet to be met; they’re a reminder that humanity’s story doesn’t end just because we momentarily balance the scales. Indeed, the story moves on through all of us and it is our responsibility, for all posterity, to articulate and add to the enduring narrative. For Jonathan Demme, movies are the medium of address, the means by which he explores and comments on the world surrounding, the way in which he answers the muse’s clarion call to create. It is the great gift of his cinema that it inspires us to go out, expressive individuals all, and do the same. 31

This open-ended embrace, lack of moral certainty and distaste with righteous posturing is obviously a factor in the way his work is treated. He didn’t find the world perfect, but he didn’t hate it for that. Instead he loved people, their lives and culture.

Without celebrating Yuppies, his film Something Wild is sympathetic towards them.

Although in Melvin and Howard is almost a classic working-class loser,

Demme is enamored with him.

The ongoing critical and academic sense is that for works to be subversive, socially relevant and contemporary, they must be at least dramatic, if not outright tragedies. This also works against Demme, given that a certain optimism pervades much

62 of his work.

Talking About His Generation

Demme’s status becomes even more interesting when considering how highly regarded his work is by fellow directors. The first time I visited Demme in NYC, he was on the phone with , advising her on music for her movie Smithereens. After a screening of The Truth About Charlie in NYC, Wes Anderson came up to Demme to talk about music and solicit suggestions. Jim Jarmusch offered, “Inspiring filmmaker, musical explorer, ornithologist (!), and truly wonderful and generous person.” 32

Among many others, filmmakers like , Paul Feig, Noah Hutton,

Carl Franklin, Nancy Savoca, , Brady Corbert, David Lowery, and Kelly

Richard noted his influence. Introducing Last Flag Flying on the opening night of the

New York Film Festival in 2017, director Richard Linklater dedicated the world premiere to Demme, While Paul Thomas Anderson simply offered that The was

“For” Jonathan Demme. Martin Scorsese said:

Whenever I ran into Jonathan, he was filled with enthusiasm and excitement about a new project. He took so much joy in moviemaking. His pictures have an inner lyricism that just lifts them off the ground – even a story like The Silence of the Lambs. I have great admiration for Jonathan as a filmmaker – I love the freshness of his style and his excellent use of music, from Buddy Holly to Miklos Rozsa. There’s so much more to be said, and I hardly know where to begin. I also loved him as a friend, and to me he was always young…33

The Big Question: Why is Demme so Underrepresented?

Given all of the above, relatively speaking, why is there so little written about Demme?

63 An argument can be made that his large and diverse body of work as a whole is difficult to conceptually grasp. Although clearly the work of an auteur director, the shared characteristics are not as obvious as with many directors. This results in his work lacking generic and narrative consistency. The most reasonable answer is that others have a somewhat more consistent style and easily accessible thematic approach. Demme, though clearly the author of his works, is all over the place.

Crucial to Demme’s creative identity was his passion for film. He loved and looked for a challenge, wanted to tackle something he hadn’t tackled before. He was completely uninterested in doing the same thing twice, trying out new approaches and different styles excited him. He was unashamedly driven by passion, cinematically articulate, and in ways, deliberately and willfully naive. Cynicism was incomprehensible to him.

The dearth of literature on Demme and his work seems to be an indicator of how

difficult it is to bring it into focus. Ultimately it seems his work lacks academic

attention, not because it is shallow and meagre, but rather because it is overly rich,

remarkably diverse and considerably complex. It is too sprawling in every way to invite

any kind of easy critical analysis. It may be that the lack of scholarly work on Jonathan

Demme is not a side note or an oversight but a tribute to the ambition, diversity,

imagination and complexity of his output.

64 Endnotes

1 Zack Sharf. “Paul Thomas Anderson Speaks to Richard Linklater About Grieving His ‘Hero’ Jonathan Demme.” IndieWire, March 28, 2018. https://www.indiewire.com/2018/03/paul-thomas-anderson-richard-linklater- honor- jonathan-demme-death-1201944585-

2 Robert E. Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews. Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. p. vii.

3 Keith Uhlich. Senses of Cinema: Great Directors. October 2014, Issue 33. http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/demme/

4 Sharon Waxman. Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005.

5 James Mottram. The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood. New York: Faber and Faber, 2006.

6 Peter Biskind. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon Schuster, 1998. And Down and Dirty Pictures: , Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.

7 John Pierson. Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of Independent Cinema. New York: Hyperion, Miramax Books, 1995.

8 Donald Lyons. Independent Visions: A Critical Introduction to Recent Independent American Film. New York: , 1994.

9 Greg Merritt. Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2000.

10 David Thomson. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. New York: Alfred A.

65 Knopf, 2002. p. 220.

11 David Thomson. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. p. 220.

12 Andrew Syder. Contemporary North American Film Directors. New York: Wallflower, 2000.

13 Andrew Syder. Contemporary North American Film Directors.

14 Norman Miller. International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. 2000. https://www.theyshootpictures.com/demmejonathan.htm

15 Alexandre Astruc. "Du Stylo à la caméra et de la caméra au stylo" 'L'Écran française' March 30, 1948.

16 Francois Truffaut. "Une Certain Tendency du Cinéma Français” Cahiers du Cinema, 1954.

17Thomson Gale. “The Auteur Cinema: Directors And Directions In The "Hollywood Renaissance.” History of the American Cinema. April 14, 2019. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/auteur-cinema-directors- and-directions-hollywood-renaissance

18 Andrew Sarris. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1996.

19 Andrew Sarris. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968.

20 Andrew Sarris. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968. p. 54.

21 Geoff Andrew, The Director's Vision: A Concise Guide to the Art of 250 Great Filmmakers. Review Press, 1999.

66

22 The Auteur Paradigm, Part 2. December 2, 2016 http://doctorfilm.org/?p=254

23 Thomas Schatz. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York: Metro Paperbacks, 1988.

24 Thomas Elsaesser. A Retrospect: The as Auteur – Artist, Brand name or Engineer? 1995

25 David Sims. “Remembering Jonathan Demme,” The Atlantic. April 26, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/04/remembering- jonathan-demme/524391/

26 Joel Wicklund. “Jonathan Demme Sang Our Song” Windy City Cinema, July 6, 2017. http://www.chicagonow.com/windy-city-cinema/2017/07/jonathan-demme-sang- our-song/

27Adam Cook. “The Cult (Gems) of Demme.” TIFF, April 29, 2017. www.tiff.net/the-review/the-cult-gems-of-demme

28 Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael on Jonathan Demme. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1988. p. 41.

29 Jonathan Demme e-mail

30 Jonathan Demme conversation, Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

31Keith Uhlich. Senses of Cinema, Great Directors. October 2014, Issue 33. http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/demme/

32 Jim Jarmusch tweet (10:55 AM, April 26, 2017)

67 33 Martin Scorsese statement issued to the press upon Demme’s Death (April 26, 2017).

68 Chapter 2: Life Before Corman

Growing Up: Long Island

Jonathan Demme’s suburban childhood seems to have been surprisingly pleasant and enjoyable. In some ways, this could explain his incredible appetite for experience, his ongoing sense of joy, and his openness with and compassion toward people. Born on

February 22, 1944 in Rockville Centre, a Long Island suburb in New York, Jonathan was named for his ancestor Jonathan Edwards, a preacher, philosopher and renowned Reform theologian, as well as, author of many essays and published sermons still widely available today.

While his family lived in Rockville Centre and Lynbrook, most of his childhood was spent “in a comfortable two-story house at 27 Lorenz Avenue in Baldwin.” Demme recalls, “I loved living there. My friends and I could walk down the street, cross a creek and play for a couple of hours in woods that ran all the way to Sunrise Highway, where there was an abandoned waterworks.”1

Demme was fascinated with animals from a very early age. He befriended nature writer Edwin Way Teale and his wife Nellie Teale, of Baldwin. They introduced Demme to bird watching when he was in the fifth grade and eventually connected him with ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, who signed Demme’s field guide. Demme would later brag that he was the youngest member of the National Audubon Society, a conservation organization that protects birds and their habitats, attending meetings accompanied by his mother. Among the places they explored and bird-watched was Woodmen Woods. He

69 later told Newsy, “It characterized the Long Island I knew growing up – vast tracts of nature you just walked into and maybe never encountered anybody while you were bird- watching or pretending to be an Indian.”2

Early on his ambition was to be a veterinarian, by 10 or 11 he was regularly working in vets’ offices, which he continued to do until leaving for college.

At much the same time, Demme was mesmerized by movies. Although he would watch anything, he favored certain genres, especially those that connected on a visceral level, such as “westerns, ‘sandal-and-spear’ spectaculars, horror pictures, [and] 1940s melodramas.”3 Demme’s love for movies may have come from his parents, who also had a great love for film, particularly foreign films. Demme “remembers seeing Black

Orpheus with them and enjoying it very much.”4

Demme also immersed himself in music at a young age. He recalls a time when he was around the age of five, before they had a TV in the house, that he would stand by the radio and just listen to his favorites: Nat King Cole, “Lady of ,” and Guy

Mitchell’s “There’s a Pawnshop on the Corner” and “, .”5

Miami, Florida

Late in 1959, Demme’s family moved to Miami, where his father worked at the

Fontainebleau Hotel. In his mid-teens, Demme, still highly interested in animals, dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, and worked part-time jobs in both kennels and for veterinarian offices. (Over the years whenever he visited Austin he would show us pictures of his current dog and ask about ours before talking families.) In Florida,

70 Demme’s musical interests expanded and matured, encountering and developing a deep interest in rhythm and blues. He reminisces:

…Rhythm and Blues, which in my life included Bo Diddley – though it didn’t include Fats Domino, because Fats Domino had crossed over, but Bo Diddley hadn’t – so suddenly my musical interests got a big Rhythm and Blues jolt. From loving pure rock ‘n’ roll into Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, Buster Brown, because I was down in the South where people were listening to that sort of thing. I had lived in total white-bread communities up until then, and now things were more racially complicated and there was all this new kind of stuff. Black music not concerned about crossing over – I got really, really deeply into that. Never was nuts about Elvis except for certain key songs like “U.S. Male” and things like that.6

Still, his passion for film was expanding as well:

The Manchurian Candidate, along with Seven Days in May, Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove were this quartet of anarchistic black-and-white American movies, each of which did things that you just didn’t do in American movies, especially in the realm of irreverence toward politics and government institutions and the army. I was what, sixteen, it was shocking, it was thrilling, and interestingly, it predated my exposure to the , so in a way, this was the American, a certain kind of new wave in American movies.7

After graduating high school Demme eagerly began his first semester at the

University of Florida in Gainesville anxious to be a vet. Unfortunately, almost immediately, he was overwhelmed by the necessary science courses. Still, he picked up

The Alligator, the student newspaper. Realizing it had no film reviewer, he went straight to their offices to volunteer for the position. Demme was offered the job and his first review was for ’ The Wrong Arm of the Law. From here, his mind began to open to cinema's possibilities. “I remember seeing Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player.

71 There’s this one scene where the gangsters are interrogating Charles Aznavour, and he says, ‘May my mother drop dead if what I tell you isn't true.’ And Truffaut cuts to a shot of an old lady collapsing! It blew me away.”8

Though he had long nurtured his dreams of becoming a veterinarian, rather quickly he realized he was neither prepared nor skilled at the sciences he would need to learn. Very early into his first semester, he dropped out of school.

Moving back to Miami, Demme continued to work at vet’s offices with animals.

However, having discovered the perks of being a film reviewer (free movies), he talked the Coral Gable Times Guide, a biweekly shopper, into running his film reviews. Among other films he reviewed the 1964 Joseph E. Levine production, Zulu, for the shopper. “I loved it!” Demme recalled, and he ended up writing a rave review.9

Demme’s father, Robert, was acquainted with Levine:

My father mentioned to Mr. Levine, the great mogul, that [I] was a film critic, so Levine said, “Well, I must meet him. Bring him to my houseboat,” which was down in the canal across from the hotel. I came along – my dad had told me to bring some of my reviews –so I did, and there was Levine, and – yes – it was a pink houseboat, and – yes – he had a cigar a foot long…”10

He goes on to tell about how Levine began to peruse his reviews and landed upon the review he’d written for Zulu. He had very strong opinions about the movie, which came across in his especially positive review. Levine began reading it and peppered him with accolades. “My God…brilliant…marvelous.” Upon finishing the review, Levine looked up at Demme, jabbed him in the chest and said, “You’ve got great taste, kid. Do you want to come and work for me?”11

72 Though Levine had offered him a job, Demme realized that he first had to deal with the draft. Upon learning that he would be drafted in two weeks’ time, he instead joined the Air Force Reserves and served an active six months.12 While in the Air Force

Reserves, he was stationed in San Antonio at Lackland Air Force Base. He recalls one of the most upsetting moments in his life.

I was a reservist and it was pretty terrible, and you know, you’re a prisoner in your barracks during boot camp. This one afternoon I was sitting around the barracks trying to figure if I should commit suicide or not and I suddenly hear, “She’s About a Mover” played live a hundred yards away. I couldn’t get out of the barracks to go see Sir Douglas Quintet. It really drove me up the wall. I couldn’t believe it.13

Into Film: NYC, London (1966–1970)

After his military stint ended in 1966, Demme moved to New York City, where he contacted Levine who came through with a job. Over the next six months he worked as a press agent for Levine at .14

Then he left for a job at the trade paper Film Daily, which actually didn’t last very long as, “the guy that [he] was replacing decided that he wanted to come back.”16 Next, he worked a publicity job at Pathé Contemporary Films, which distributed all the Godard films. He enjoyed this gig immensely, due to the abundance of, “great art films and also their 16mm division was contemporary films.”15

Following his time at Pathé, Demme briefly returned to Miami, only to come back to New York to take a job at United Artists. Among his many adventures there, he recalls a humorous airport pickup:

73 I went out to the airport to pick up , Steve McQueen and his wife – Neil. Also, Hal Ashby, from The Thomas Crown Affair. Ashby had done all the split-screen…. I tried to be cute with Steve McQueen and told him that I loved him in The Blob. And he was way beyond that kind of humor and he just iced me. And that was it. 16

Demme loved the work but he was never really thinking about a life in film. “The thought that I might be involved in actually making movies was the furthest thing from my mind,” Demme says. “Being a publicist was all I wanted. I was having a ball.”17

While he was at United Artists, French film director Francois Truffaut came to town to promote The Bride Wore Black, which came out in 1968. United Artists assigned

Truffaut to Demme. “I picked him up at the airport, and took him into the Algonquin, and the guy behind the desk goes, ‘Oh Monsieur Truffaut, welcome and by the way Señior

Rossellini left a letter for you’ – I was like, I can't believe I'm here for this, and I'm like

‘What did he say?’”18

“Over the next week or so, I took Truffaut to all his interviews,” Demme recalls.

“It was just great…”19 Truffaut was in town to promote his new film The Bride Wore

Black. Demme discovered that novelist Cornell Woolrich, author of the novel that the film is based on, was living in New York at the Sheraton Russell on Park Ave. Woolrich was known to be a recluse of sorts, and rumor had it that he had one or two legs amputated and never, ever went out. Demme however, went to the Sheraton Russell and called Woolwich on his house phone. Surprisingly, he answered. Demme asked, “Can I come up and talk with you a little bit? I'm a film publicist and Francois Truffaut has made a movie of The Bride Wore Black. Can we talk?” Not surprisingly, this offer was declined. Woolrich followed by saying, “Whatever you got to say, say it over the phone.

74 People don't come up here.” 20

Still, Demme was already imagining what an extraordinary meeting Truffaut and

Woolwich could have, the great story it would make for and even more, that he could be there! Demme asked Woolrich if he would like to see the film, but

Woolrich declined, citing that he would never go to a screening. Demme offered to arrange a private screening just for Woolrich, pick him up in a limo, let him screen the movie alone, and then return him home. Woolrich agreed and one week later, Demme rolled up in the limo to pick him up. 21

“Hi, I'm here to pick up Mr. Woolrich.” The guy goes, “Really? He never goes out.” I said, “Yes I know, but he's expecting me.” He calls up. Woolwich never picked up the phone. I went up and knocked, they let me go up and knock, in case he was asleep. That was it. It never happened.22

Even though meeting Woolrich didn’t pan out, Truffaut’s visit was very successful, and he signed Demme’s Truffaut Hitchcock book on his last trip to the airport.

The inscription read, in big, scrawly handwriting, “For John [sic] Demme avec mes amities and before his first movie, Francois Truffaut.”

“I remember thinking, well that’s very nice, but what did he mean?” Demme says.23 While at United Artists, Demme met a number of people, including from Heat of the Night:

I met him at the airport, he was coming out and I had the sign with his name…Then somebody comes up to him agape and says something nice. Steiger says “Jesus I thought I left all the fruits on the plane.” We go out. I know I’m not going to have any good conversation with this guy. He says, ‘Sit in the front!’ I sat in the front. At his hotel, as he gets out, he says, “I want this vehicle out here 24

75 hours a day, whether I use it or not.” He slams the door, goes into the hotel. He was a real unpleasant guy. 24

Demme also met Otto Preminger, and though he was a great filmmaker, he was not the most pleasant of people. Once, about 20 minutes into the premiere of Hurry

Sundown, which Demme was attending, a man had a heart attack on the balcony of the

Loews Tower East. Demme could hear people crying, moving and making room. Ushers were running in to help. In the midst of the commotion, someone yelled, “Stop the projector!” Then, Demme heard Preminger's voice. “Keep rolling! Keep rolling!”

Apparently, he didn't want to stop the movie.25

On another occasion, when Demme was in Connecticut for a press conference for

Otto Preminger, on a movie he had prepared, but never ended up making, he got to ride in a car with Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. Demme recalls the scene:

As we were standing around, Andy started going off to Preminger about his vision, and I remember Pauline saying, “Oh, Andy, cut the crap. You know that Hurry Sundown is a piece of shit. Even Otto will tell you that.” 26

During this time, Demme had his first experience with filmmaking, working on a titled Good Morning, Steve. Demme’s good friend and young fellow publicist,

Paul Wolf, was also an aspiring actor and a writer. Wolf had an idea for a short film,

“about a guy who is uptight and tries too hard with women, because he's not relaxed…and he never gets to first base with women.”27

Wolf was going to play Steve. Together, Demme and Wolf tweaked the script, found a great cameraman, a friend of Wolf’s, and cast the movie from friends. One of the

76 friends happened to be Kathy Witt, who later played Melissa Benedict in Demme’s movie, Philadelphia. They shot the movie, which turned out beautifully, due to the cameraman’s exceptional skills. Although Demme admittedly wasn't really interested in filmmaking, he was intensely interested in films and so doing this short film struck him as amusing to do. As they were about to cut it together, Demme was abruptly offered the chance to go to England. He went and took the footage, along with the negative, with him. Unfortunately, that was the last time he ever saw it. It never made it back to

America, and he had no idea what happened to it.28

While still working at United Artists in 1968, his friend, June Field, approached

Demme about a commercial called PGL Productions, which was looking to for someone to relocate to London, and represent American directors living in

England. The move would provide a substantial income, a paid flat in London, and other various benefits. Adding to his motivation to move and take the job, Demme had recently received a problematic letter from the Air Force Reserves. After attending required monthly meetings for a year, he had stopped going. He describes his dilemma:

I had this tragic American thing. I had to get my haircut every month, so I looked like a Straight, in the street. When I went down to the Reserves it was too long and they made me cut it. I started getting sick, really authentically sick, in the days leading up to my monthly trip to Florida from New York. I just stopped going. Then I got this letter saying I was going to be called up to active duty in a month. I went to my brother Rick, who was a big gung-ho marine, my older brother, the late Ted Demme's father. I told Rick that I got this job opportunity in England. I wanted to get out of America. We hated America then anyway. I mean we lived there and we loved our country…29

Rick advised him to take the job and go to England, explaining that there were

77 several U.S. Air Force bases there. Rick pointed out that he could go to one of those to get connected. Demme realized the wisdom of his brother’s advice and also thought

England would be an adventure so he became PGL’s British Sales Representative. Further following his brother’s advice by the end of 1968 he became a chaplain's assistant at an

Air Force base outside of London.30

He really had little hesitation about the move at all. It was 1968, and the USA engaged in the controversial Vietnam war, was being swept by protests. Demme recalled that he, “…was really happy not to be living in America, a country I had grown to hate at that time, in many ways.”31

While at PGL, Demme produced commercials for television, though by then what he really wanted to do was get into film production. Because his resume touted “United

Artists publicist,” PGL had believed he could help get movies financed in England.

While there were many positives to his position in London, like befriending director Joe Viola, and making connections with other directors and producers, ultimately the negatives outweighed the positives. “I was not very good at selling commercial directors; I couldn’t do a thing. I had a lot of great lunches, but then I just got fed up with the expense account thing, and it wasn't very interesting, it was hard to make sales…”32

Leaving the job, he stayed in London.

He began writing some movie reviews for Fusion, an American alternative magazine centered on politics and music published in Boston. He did some film work.

But mostly he was just living the life, live music, records, movies.

78 Sudden Terror (AKA Eyewitness) (1970)

It was the Swingin’’60s, and Demme relished his time living in England. He wrote movie reviews for publications like Fusion among others. Although having a great time he was still exploring different employment possibilities. Producer Irving Allen, who had been making mostly low-budget action/adventure films since soon after the end of World War

II, began production on Eyewitness (AKA Sudden Terror), a thriller about a boy who witnesses a murder, in the Fall of 1969. Though there was already a composer for the movie, Allen was not impressed with what he was putting together. Looking for a hipper and cutting edge score he hired Demme as Music Coordinater. Given his passion for music, this was a job suited to Demme who soon had hired two bands to do the score –

Van Der Graaf Generator, a progressive rock band and UK Kaleidoscope, an old England, borderline folksy band. His original thought was that UK Kaleidoscope would do the lyrical, elegiac work, and Van Der Graaf Generator would do the rest. As it turned out however, the great Peter Hamill of Van Der Graaf Generator ended up doing more of the lyrical work, while UK Kaleidoscope, “wound up doing the rest…the hardcore stuff.”33

Regardless, Demme said, John Hough, the film’s director who had just graduated from working on the British TV series The Avengers, was, “very gracious about this fucking hippie coming in with two rock bands to score his movie.” 34

In May of 1970, Demme was also asked to work on a twenty-minute performance film on jazz-rock group Ginger Baker’s Air Force, produced by the Irving Allen

Company for the Robert Stigwood Organization. The group was led by drummer Ginger

Baker, formerly the drummer of British rock trio, Cream. Baker was at the height of his

79 fame. The session featured the song “Sweet Wine” was directed by Gary Sherman, produced by Paul Maslansky and edited by Geoffrey Foot. Demme’s role as associate producer according to him was minimal and he, “didn't spend much time with Ginger which [was] fine because he's a maniac.”35

Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman (AKA Naughty Wives) (1973)

Originally hired by the producers to direct Naughty Wives, a nudie film, Demme left after a few days because of artistic differences. The film was finished by Wolf Rilla, always an uneven director, who peaked with Village of the Damned (1960). Though he left the project, Demme’s work remains in the opening sequence and is evocative of

“sexploitation” director . On his “directorial debut.” “That film was part of a time-honored genre,” says Demme. “Or maybe that should be time-warped…. If he is feeling any embarrassment about discussing his less-than-illustrious debut as a director, he isn't showing it.”

I was living in London in the early 1970s…and I was contacted by a producer who wanted me to audition to direct this . I was given one scene to direct, though for some reason I was rejected for the rest of the film. But they kept my scene in the finished movie – it's still there!” I press him on the content of the scene. “Well, a young man and woman are in bed,” he explains patiently. “The man leaves, and the camera stays on the young woman as she, uh, gets dressed for the day.” He makes it sound as tasteful as a Merchant-Ivory garden party.36

Backing into Filmmaking

Demme was essentially backing into filmmaking by way of publicity and promotion. He

80 learned how to be a filmmaker through the most indirect of routes: as a film fan, critic and publicist. In the Fall of 2015, at a dinner with Neil Young and his manager Elliot

Roberts, I asked about the story that the musician had tutored Meryl Streep extensively on guitar for her role in Ricki and the Flash. Young laughingly pointed out that he had maybe spent 45 minutes with her reminding us that Demme had a habit of exaggerating a situation to get additional press. “What do you expect?” Roberts said. “He got into film, not through film school, but marketing.”37

Demme grabbed every opportunity presented to him and used it to expand his knowledge about film. This on-the-run filmmaking was his school, and shooting bits of films, producing, writing and film critiquing were his classes. Though he began this path knowing nothing about actual filmmaking, he emerged, just a few years later, debuting as the director of the accomplished Caged Heat.

81 Endnotes

1 Joseph Gelmis. “Jonathan Demme in Long Island: Our Town” Newsday.com. http://ftlh.blogspot.com/2008/11/woodmere-woods.html

2 Joseph Gelmis, “Jonathan Demme in Long Island: Our Town” Newsday.com.

3 James Kaplan, “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America.” New York Times Magazine. March 27, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/27/magazine/jonathan-demme-s-offbeat- america.html

4 Kaplan, “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America.”

5 Jonathan Demme phone interview (1985)

6 Jonathan Demme phone interview (1985)

7 “Jonathan Demme” IMDB, Personal Quotes

8 Kaplan, “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America.”

9 and Walter Donohue. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. London: Faber and Faber, 1992. p. 160.

10 Boorman and Donohue. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. p. 160.

11 Boorman and Donohue, Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. p. 160.

12 Jonathan Demme phone interview (1985)

82 13 Jonathan Demme phone interview (1985)

14 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

15 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

16 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

17 Kaplan, “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America.”

18 Kaplan, “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America.”

19 Kaplan, “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America.”

20 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

21Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

22 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

23 Kaplan, “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America.”

24 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

25 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

26 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

27 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

83

28 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

29 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

30 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

31 Boorman and Donohue, Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. p. 162.

32 Boorman and Donohue, Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. p. 162.

33 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

34 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

35 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

36 Ryan Gilbey, “Jonathan Demme Odd Man Out” Independent, Nov. 14, 2004 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/jonathan- demme-odd-man-out-20542.html

37 Elliot Roberts, in conversation (Fall 2015)

84 Chapter 3: The Roger Corman School of American Filmmaking

…any day now, Americans may realize that scrambling after the obvious in art is a losing game. The sharpest work of the last thirty years is to be found by studying the most unlikely, self-destroying, uncompromising, roundabout artists.1 –Manny Farber, “Underground Films”

One thing that makes exploitation films of special interest is that the best of them are based on shared fantasies. Crafted like dreams, they overflow with perverse sexuality, surreal violence, absurd comedy, and wave after wave of emotion. They spring, in large part, from the collective unconscious, and they reflect true American ideology.2 –Michael Goodwin, Village Voice

In so many ways Jonathan Demme’s career trajectory is unique and very different from most of his peers that broke into film around the same period. Rather than film school, music videos, commercials or TV his first film jobs were marketing and promotion. The actual transition into filmmaking and especially directing. Demme’s story, specifically his career trajectory, does not fit into most of the usual Hollywood industry arcs. This is true of his career before his directorial debut, and also after he graduated from working with Roger Corman. However, his time with Roger Corman, exploitation films, and New

World Pictures was not quite as unique, in fact it was even fairly standard, very much following the classic route. This part of his career proved to influence him, both in terms of production and creative process as well as aesthetically and cinematically.

“Drive-in exploitation film” is a film industry term that specifically refers to a certain type of theatrical release. It is based on economics – how much was spent on it, what kinds of theaters it will play in and how much it is expected to gross – describing the circumstances of production, distribution and marketing. It is use to describe a type of

85 release aimed at blue collar/redneck inner-city urban and drive-in audiences.

Produced on set budgets even before shooting began they were expected to play a certain circuit and earn a predictable amount of money. As with the B movies of the ‘30s through the ‘50s the term has nothing to do with quality, aesthetics, or content.

B movies came into existence during the 1930s, to be combined with bigger movies, as an attractive entertainment package to get Depression-era audiences back into the theaters. It was basically an assembly line film, where the very low production budget was set mostly independent of the script. Essentially, the film was tailored to the budget and they were given very short production schedules. Talent consisted of certain stars (such as Western heroes) or stars on their way up or on their way down. Similarly, certain directors worked mostly in B movies. However, post-WWII, the two-and-a-half- decade old established patterns of attending movie theaters changed dramatically in a very short time for a number of reasons, especially because of the explosive growth in television. Concurrently the population boom meant a growing number of relatively young families. Less likely to go to regular theaters they were attracted by their affordability to the growing number of drive in theaters, which needed low budget exploitation films but not exactly B movies. Author Michael Goodwin explains,

“…although they have certain elements in common – notably cheapness and speed of production, B movies were made to fill the bottom halves of double bills; they didn’t have to sell on their own. Exploitation pictures must sell on their own merits; they are bill toppers.”3

There was also the verdict of the Supreme Court in the Paramount case in 1948.

86 Until 1948, movie studios owned, either outright or through contractual agreements, the movie theatres in which their movies were played. Because of this, movie studios had complete control over which movies were allowed to be shown and therefore could book only their films. The terms of the verdict, however, disallowed movie studios to have ownership of a theatre and allowed all films to be sold on an individual basis. This verdict leveled the playing ground, in a way, and allowed independent producers to compete with the major movie studios, not only for audiences, but also for actors.4

The major studios, for the most part, moved out of low budget production as the established independent B studios folded, with the mid- seeing the last of the B movies being produced. Concurrently, for some of the same reasons and especially due to

In the wake of these changes, new independent studios emerged, producing movies for drive-ins, inner city urban theaters, and the growing teenage audience. Aiming at these markets, Roger Corman relates how, “…everything is made to try for the top half of the bill. The picture that fails then goes to the bottom half. Or, very often, a picture that had previously been top half will be brought back on the bottom half the second time around, as a second feature.5

Both B movies and exploitation films were dependent on a regular audience, and were over ambitiously rendered by young filmmakers, with a comprehensive knowledge of world cinema, who seemingly found little problem in mating style, ideology, and exploitation. In most cases, the filmmakers treated these films as portfolio work that would never be seen by a wide or cinematically sophisticated audience. The idea was to make a film that was good enough and did well enough at the box office so that there

87 would be a chance to make another and then another. Eventually, if everything broke right, the filmmaker would get to move out of the exploitation market and into directing more reasonably budgeted studio films.

The first drive-in theaters opened in the early 1930s, WWII ended in 1945, and the Paramount decision occurred in 1948, but it wasn’t really until the 1950s into the

1960s that drive-in/exploitation movies fully evolved. This proved to be perfect timing for Roger Corman, who began directing in the mid-1950s.

Corman began his career as a literary agent, then moved to writing, followed by co-producing his first script (1954) and then independently producing

The Monster from the Ocean Floor. Corman, having written and produced The Fast and the Furious (1954), turned down several distribution offers because he wanted to work with James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff at the recently formed American

Releasing Corporation.6 The company soon changed its name to American Independent

Pictures (AIP), but the creative relationship endured for years.

Corman realized that in order to retain the most control, he needed to both produce and direct his own scripts. On his third film, , he was credited as director and producer. Corman was proficient at turning out low budget, theatrical films on short shooting schedules that almost always made money. Corman compensated for a lack of budget by becoming a terrific stylist; his films bustle with energy and ideas.

Corman's early films are fun for their audacity and energy, even when awful like Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and Not of this Earth (1957). His work rapidly improved with films like (1957) and Machine Gun Kelly (1958) effective genre

88 efforts and some of the later films – The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), Masque of the

Red Death (1964), Wild Angels (1966), and (1969) are acknowledged low budget classics.

Corman’s output as a director was impressive. Since becoming a director, he’s directed over 50 films. Ironically, Von Richthofen and Brown, the project on which

Demme began to work with Corman, was when he decided to quit directing.

They had met earlier in the states. Demme was a longtime fan of Corman’s work and when he heard that the director, “was probably going to make a Civil War movie for

UA. I called up and said, ‘Can I come see you?’ He said, “Okay, come over.’ I said I would love to be the unit publicist on this movie. He answered, ‘Well I'm not sure when that's happening.’ And that never panned out. The movie didn't get made.7

A few years later, unemployed yet quite happy living in London, some of his old friends at UA called to say that Roger Corman was coming to Britain. They told him that he was going to be shooting a movie in and asked if he might want to talk to

Corman about the unit publicist job. ‘Yeah! Hell yeah!’8

What Demme didn’t know was that Corman was tired of directing. As Corman remembers:

…I was growing increasingly disenchanted with the treatment of my pictures by the studios that I was working for. In preproduction I was subject to other people’s advice, which I did not particularly want when the advice sometimes became orders about how to make a picture, how to cast it. I was sometimes in a position where I had to take certain people in certain roles and I thought this would hurt the film. And afterwards, in the cutting. My films several times were recut after I finished them, and, needless to say, I thought, for the worse. And the last couple of films…were hurt rather badly. Specifically, a picture I made called Gas-s-s- s for AIP, which was completely recut. It was a very controversial kind of a

89 comedy, and AIP cut all the funny stuff right out of the film, including the entire ending. The film was never shown anywhere as I shot it, and I felt, frankly, they emasculated the picture and destroyed any possibility of success.9

Corman had already produced 40 films besides the ones he directed. By any standards he was a dominant talent in his industry having already provided crucial career breaks to a remarkable number of emerging talents. These included cinematographer

Haskell Wexler and actors , Dennis Hopper, , Diane Ladd,

Bruce Dern, Robert DeNiro, , , and Pam Grier. Other career talent launched by Corman included directors Francis Ford Coppola, ,

Nicolas Roeg and , as well as writers like and Richard

Matheson.

Always strategic, Corman began New World Pictures, his own distribution and production company, with his brother Gene on July 8, 1970. Von Richthofen and Brown began filming on August 17, 1970. Ten days later New World released its first film

Student Nurses.

Less than a year later, when Von Richthofen and Brown was released in June

1971, New World had already released two other films and had five others ready to go.

Corman’s company needed films.

Demme, unaware of this situation when he met with Corman, was not expecting what was coming. Almost immediately, Corman said: “Okay, I've read your publicity writing, it's good, you can have that job. Can you write scripts? Because I'm starting a company called New World Pictures, I'm stuck over here in Ireland, but I need scripts.”

“‘Do you like motorcycle movies?’ Roger asked. And I go, ‘Yeah! especially

90 your .’ So he says, okay, come up with a motorcycle idea and maybe you can write the script.”10

Demme thought his friend Joe Viola, a commercial director, was a great storyteller so he recruited him. Knowing that Japanese films had been successfully adapted as westerns, they pitched Corman on a biker , figuring that film had a lot of potential for violence and murder. Corman told them to go ahead.

Demme understood what a terrific opportunity for him this was, and together with

Joe Viola began to write a script. “An enormous stroke of good fortune doesn’t fully characterize it,” Demme recalled. “I mean people bust their butts for decades to get to make a picture, and I fell backward into it.”11

Angels Hard as They Come

Viola and Demme returned to London to work on their biker version of Rashomon. As

Demme recalls:

We went back to London, and we started y’know, can we actually have a movie made from a script of ours? And Roger came through town, eight weeks later or something like that. He had gone through Israel looking for production deals. And he says I'm gonna be in London next week, is the script ready. We said actually yeah it's almost finished. He said okay, bring it to the Hilton at 2PM on Tuesday.

We met [Corman] at the London Hilton…we handed [the script] to him in the lobby of the hotel. He said, “Wait a minute guys, I’ll read it right now, come into the bar and have a drink.” That was strange, sitting at a table with a guy who’s reading your script while you make small talk with your partner.

Corman finished reading the script, looked at us and said, “OK, this isn’t bad. It needs a lot of rewriting, but it’s pretty good…”12

91

Corman had already told them that: “The knifing is great, the rape is great, but lose this varying points of view thing. Fill in the gaps.”13 Corman then looked at the guys, as Demme remembers:

“Joe you direct commercials right? And Jonathan you could probably produce? Would you guys like to come to L.A. and make it?” and I remember Joe going like, ‘Gee, Roger...’ and I kicked him under the table and I was like, “Hell yes! We'd love to, we'll be there!” He goes, “Okay, Joe you'll get a thousand dollars for directing, and Jonathan you'll get a thousand for producing.”14

Angels Hard as They Come was made for $125,000. Viola directed, while both

Viola and Demme produced and wrote it. Angels didn’t end up resembling Rashomon in any way. Outside of some of the talent that worked on it going on to do impressive things

(set designer Jack Fiske, actors Gary Busey and ), it was a relatively typical motorcycle film of the time – a little more claustrophobic and intense, but nothing out of what was the norm in that genre. Corman was pleased, offering Viola and Demme another movie to make.

The Hot Box (1972)

The Hot Box, a film about nurses getting radicalized by revolutionaries, was co-written by Demme and Viola, though this time only Demme produced, while Viola directed.

Corman sent them to the Philippines to do their next movie. “We were…on one of the more remote islands, Negros – and we had all the problems that the bigger movie,

Apocalypse Now, later had: we had monsoons, endless disasters, we got very behind

92 schedule and it became necessary to catch up, to have some second-unit work…”15

The working title of the film was Hold My Rifle, Kiss My Wound. But the title was changed to The Hot Box.

This is where I first directed Second Unit, and discovered the exquisite joy of shooting things. My film school was when I knew I was going to have to direct the next day, I went to this tiny movie theater on this tiny island Negros Oriental in this tiny town of Dumaguete. There was this 1971 Italian film playing there that was titled Viva Cangaceiroan. It was “a remake” of Lima Barreto’s 1953 Brazilian classic O Cangaceiro, itself a tribute to the American Western, though it was very much a Brazilian film. Directed by Giovanni Fago, I watched it two times that night. Until I'd really see the way Fago had shot battle scenes and stuff. It was exceptionally well done. I scribbled shots down. 16

The next day, Demme set up several of the shots with the second unit, mirroring the scenes and shots from Fago’s film he’d seen the night before. He was instantly excited by the process and fell in love with making up his own shots.

In classic Corman style, while shooting they took advantage of all the official resources that they could. This meant keeping the actual story of the film hidden:

But we got these extraordinary battle scenes in The Hot Box. It was hilarious because we were doing a movie the theme of which was that in many repressed third world countries revolution is the only correct solution to the current problems. Meanwhile we’re cutting to the waterfall every five minutes so that the nurses can bathe nude and discuss their changing dialectics. We were using like two or three hundred members of the Filipino constabulary and Filipino army cadets, R.O.T.C. officers to portray the imperialistic army in this country. We were having them constantly blown away by a band of rebels and these generals kept coming to our hotel and saying, “Well, gee, well when do we get to see the script?”

93 “Oh well, it will be ready next week.”

“But we don’t understand how you can shoot a film without a script.”

“Well, we’re constantly changing it.”

Joe and I were really quite amazed that we got out of there alive because this was like in 1972 and there was full scale revolutionary war going on right around us. We were ninety miles from Zamboanga, which was one of the great hotbeds of military activity at that point. Martial law was in effect and it was a month after the infamous Plaza Miranda bombing where Marcos decided the best way to eliminate the political opposition was to blow up the entire party at a rally. And here we come arriving in town. So that was the whole bizarre experience.17

History and retrospective has been kind to Demme. His extraordinary work has granted him a gravitas not evident. Joe Viola remembers when Demme turned up with a dwarf at The Hot Box shoot:

We needed a guy to be the victim of tyrannical cops…. We wrote it as a kind of older guy, traditional victim. And here we were literally in the middle of the jungle, this car pulls up, and out steps this wonderful, very profane little guy. Jon proceeds to tell me how he saw the guy standing at the side of the road with a big grin on his face and a minute later he was offering him a part in the movie – and he was wonderful. Jonathan's instincts are always so correct in that he sees in people that sense of character and knows exactly where to place that – usually in a whimsical moment.18

The Hot Box, in many ways, predated and predicted much of the standard New

World releases’ contradictory style, combining faux-leftist politics and advocacy for women’s rights with skimpy clothing and reasonable amounts of nudity. As director Mark

Hartley notes:

94 All those films seem to be about revolution and uprising against a dictator…They weren't intended to be subversive films, since the plots were usually just an excuse to show girls in bikinis firing machine guns. But in some strange, perverted way, watching these films on local screens was possibly the only way the Filipino people were seeing any kind of revolution.19

Demme loved the whole experience of shooting The Hot Box. He also loved the film itself: “I tell you [The Hot Box] is a true epic. I think Joe’s a really terrific director.

He stopped directing after that. He decided he just wanted to write.”20

Viola went on to produce and write a lot of television, working on many series over the years including T. J. Hooker and Cagney and Lacy. He teamed up again with

Demme in 1993, producing Beah: A Black Woman Speaks. Demme, though, had been bitten by the directing bug.

Black Mama, White Mama (1973)

An exploitation-film remake of 's The Defiant Ones (1958), Black Mama,

White Mama stars the great Pam Grier and exploitation regular Margaret Markov as two prisoners who escape handcuffed together. Although they are very different, they are forced to work and travel together. Grier is a streetwise criminal, a hooker, and Markov is an idealistic revolutionary. Gradually, they discover that their situations are more similar than they first realized. They come to realize how women are used by men regardless of the ideology to which they pretend.

Black Mama, White Mama turned out to be somewhat different than they had envisioned. Demme got a story credit, while Viola, under his pseudonym H. R. Christian, got credit. Another screenplay followed, though somewhat by accident. Henry

95 Rosenbaum, a story editor at AIP, was set to write a script, but broke his back in a surfing mishap and was stuck in the hospital with holes drilled in his cranium. In need of help,

Rosenbaum called Demme and asked him to co-write the script: “I'll have to figure out what the hell movie that turned out to be – I think Cirio Santiago might have wound up directing it, but it was done under pseudonyms.”21

Fly Me (1973)

The Filipino film industry was one of the busiest in the world from the 1960s through the mid 1980s. Much of this activity was the production of exploitation films to be distributed internationally. Fly Me was a fairly standard generic work a la Stewardesses,

Swinging Stewardesses, Stewardesses in 3-D, combining soft-core style with exploitation film action. It followed three flight attendants Toby (Pat Anderson), Sherry (Lyllah

Torena), and Andrea (Lenore Kasdorf) on a round-trip flight from to Hong

Kong. Toby tries to ditch her mother’s protection in order to romance a doctor, Andrea’s boyfriend has gone missing and Shelley smuggles drugs and is kidnapped. As Marty

McKee observes:

Amazingly, all three subplots manage to intersect at the end. As you can imagine, tone is a big problem in Fly Me, which must be the only film to combine a wacky comic-relief mother protecting her adult daughter’s virginity with a sleazy storyline involving drugging nude women and selling them into sex slavery.22

Having nothing to do with the actual production, Demme was brought on after the film was finished, as Corman decided the film needed some new inserted action

96 sequences. Demme shot these scenes, choreographed in Los Angeles by David Chow

(later technical adviser on the Kung Fu TV series). Demme probably also filmed the opening scene with Anderson and cabbie . Demme received a second unit director credit.

Learning on the job and making low budget exploitation films for young filmmakers was very much the experience of being thrown into deep water where you either learned quickly enough to swim or drowned. Paying little and offering less training, this area of filmmaking was very receptive to young talent. Working on a number of productions in a variety of roles, Demme sucked it all in, paying attention and learning from every aspect of the filmmaking process. Completely new to filmmaking when Demme went to work for Corman on Angels Hard as they Come, he proved a skilled and gifted filmmaker when Caged Heat, his directorial debut, was released just a few years later in 1974.

97 Endnotes

1 Manny Faber. “Underground Films” Movies. Hillstone, 1971.

2 Goodwin, Michael. “Velvet Vampires and Red Hot Mamas: Why Exploitation Films Get To Us” Village Voice, July 7, 1975.

3 Goodwin, Michael. “Velvet Vampires and Red Hot Mamas: Why Exploitation Films Get To Us.” Village Voice, July 7, 1975.

4 Goodwin, Michael. “Velvet Vampires and Red Hot Mamas: Why Exploitation Films Get To Us.” Village Voice, July 7, 1975.

5 Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn. Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System, An Anthology of Film History and Criticism. Dutton & Co.: New York, 1975. p. 301.

6 Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn. Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System p. 304.

7 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

8 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

9 Gary Morris. “Roger Corman on New World Pictures: An Interview from 1974” Bright Lights Film Journal, January 1, 2000. https://brightlightsfilm.com/roger-corman-new-world-pictures-interview- 1974/#.XLbPfZNKhBw

10 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

11Anthony Decurtis. “The Rolling Stone interview Jonathan Demme.” Rolling Stone Magazine, March 24, 1994.

98

12 John Boorman and Walter Donohue, eds. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. Faber and Faber: London, 1992. p. 162-163.

13 Boorman, Donohue. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. p. 162

14 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

15 Boorman, Donohue. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. p.163

16 Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

17 Jonathan Demme in conversation, NYC (August 28, 2015)

18 Fred Shruers. “Making Movies for Love Not Money.” Rolling Stone, May 19, 1988. https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/jonathan-demme-making movies-for-love-not-money-192367/

19 Paul Corupe. “Cult knockoff Thrillers from Manila.” Toronto Star, February 25, 2011

20 Jonathan Demme in conversation, NYC (August 28, 2015)

21Jonathan Demme Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

22 Marty McKeee. “See Stewardesses Battle Kung Fu Killers.” Johnny LaRue’s Crane Shot, January 26, 2012. http://craneshot.blogspot.com/2012/01/

23 Jonathan Demme. Screenplay The Vampires of Harlem. Rosenberg-Gelfman Productions c/o Artists Entertainment Complex, 641 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York

99 Chapter 4: Caged Heat (1974)

Women’s Prison USA—Rape, Riot and Revenge! White Hot Desires Melting Cold Prison Steel!1 –Caged Heat Tagline

Caged Heat…contains everything found praiseworthy in the earlier women-in-prison films – strong, intelligent, clever women involved in a group action; women as lead characters; a not unflattering glimpse at lesbianism and transvestitism; prison shown as cruel, dehumanizing, and terrifying as they really are – minus much that she found objectionable – emphasis on female breasts; the disproportionate use of white and black characters which typically has only one black actress in a lead role.2 –Danny Peary, Cult Movies

Caged Heat (1974)

Exploitation genres often undergo periods of explosive growth, with a number of films released one on top of the other, until the cycle peters out. Jack Hill’s Big Doll House, released in 1971, is regarded as kicking off a serious run of women-in-prison films.

Actually there are some earlier films that fit – 99 Women and Love Camp 7, both released in 1969 – but Hill’s effort is genre defining. Films that followed included Women in

Cages (1971), The Hot Box (1972), The Big Bird Cage (1972), The Big Bust Out (1972) and Black Mama, White Mama (1973). A generic variant of this followed with films with different archetypes and motifs including Ilsa She Wolf of the SS (1975), Ilsa,

Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (976), Nazi Love Camp 27 (1977), Wanda the Wicked Warden

(1977) and The Gestapo’s Last Orgy (1977).

Caged Heat was released at the tail end of this exploitation generic wave. The genre, by then very much winding down, Demme managed to craft, not entirely deliberately, a truly unique women-in-. After finishing The Hot Box, Joe

100 Viola’s and Jonathan Demme’s second film for Corman, Demme asked Corman if he would have the chance to direct a movie himself. Corman answered, “Okay, write a prison movie and we’ll see how that works out.”3 Demme wrote Caged Heat.

The full story of the film – from asking for Corman’s permission, until it reached the screen – is complicated, as it took about a year for Demme to get the script in the shape he wanted it in to shoot. As Demme recalls:

It’s funny the way these things pop up. For example, my script for Caged Heat. You hand your script in and what Roger does is sometimes he’ll give the notes right on the script and hand it back to you. So, you get the script back and you get little marginal references like, “breast nudity possible here?” Yes, you realize, yes, it is possible here, and you don’t want to get too idealistic, because actually you don’t have negative feelings about nudity anyway. So, you go, “Yes, Roger, indeed it is.” And that’s the bargain you make with Roger.4

Sometimes, however, the multitude of script notes for Demme to sort out, left him unsettled. After he had sent in his last draft for Caged Heat, Corman sent the script back with notes that enraged Demme. In response to his feelings about the notes, Demme wrote a “Get stuffed, you’re so wrong” type of letter and marched it straight down to the mailbox.5 However, in a strange twist of events, Demme didn’t mail the letter, remembering that a fortuneteller at the Kensington Street market that he had visited a couple of days earlier, had told him to beware of overreacting to my father sometime in the future. Demme remembered:

Although Roger Corman wasn't my biological father, he certainly was a father figure to me at that moment in my career and I remember standing there poised to

101 drop the letter in the slot and thinking, ‘Maybe I'll wait 24 hours in light of what the fortune-teller said.’ Well, of course I woke up the next day feeling a little better about the notes and wrote a more reasoned response and ultimately got to direct the movie. So, there it is; I got good advice from a fortune-teller.6

Finally, they had a script that pleased both Corman and Demme. Corman, however, was having second thoughts, beginning to feel that the women-in-prison genre might have run its course. But still, he supported the project. Even though it wasn’t a

New World production, Corman put some money into it. Demme directed and Sam

Geffman produced:

It was a women’s prison picture, but this time set in the because we felt we had done enough in that market, all in the Philippines, and Sam wanted to make an American film to follow the ones we had done in the Philippines.7

Caged Heat begins with an abrupt drug bust. Her boyfriend dealer gets away but

Jaqueline Wilson (Erica Gavin) is busted, sentenced to significant time and sent to a woman’s prison. The penitentiary is run by the cruel warden McQueen (Barbara Steele), who, in cahoots with the evil prison doctor (Warren Miller), forces some of the prisoners to submit to horrible, albeit legal, torture. The inmates, although initially divided, join together to save fellow inmate from the sadistic doctor’s plans to lobotomize her, and ultimately scheme their great escape.

Demme carefully chose Caged Heat’s cast, beginning with the lead role of inmate

Jacqueline Wilson, played by Erica Gavin, the iconographic star of Russ Meyer’s classics, Vixen (1968) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Demme was a fan of Meyer’s work, especially his editing, and cartoonish, larger than life characters. He not only

102 tracked Gavin down, but also gave her the part, without having her read the lines.

“You’ve got the part,” Demme told Gavin, “because I’ve seen your work and I know you are right for it.”8 Though her career was not marked by many good acting experiences,

Gavin remembers Caged Heat as a highlight. In the role, Gavin said:

I knew who I was, and I was in control of myself and the situation around me. That’s partly because of Jonathan. What a great director and what a nice man. He was very sensitive in his direction, always willing to give you time, instead of rushing…. He was wonderful at eliciting feelings from you and allowing you to express them the way you felt was right for the character.9

Also adding:

…To this day I still don’t know exactly why he wanted me. But I was so lucky he cast me.10

The waif-like Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith, who would then soon realize a certain cult-film star status, was cast as Lavelle, Jaqueline Wilson’s cell mate. The year before,

Smith had been in Lemora – Lady Vampire (1973), directed by Dick Blackburn, who would go on to co-write (1982). On the Caged Heat shoot, Smith and

Gavin were best friends. “She’s cool. She was like a flower child, a very gentle soul,” says Gavin. “I could totally relate to her even though she was younger.”11

Casting the role of the evil, wheelchair-bound warden, Supt. McQueen, Demme chose Barbara Steele, the British horror actress and star of the Italian cult classic Black Sunday (1961). As Demme recalls: “I was a film buff who was becoming a filmmaker. And I thought, what if I can have Barbara Steele, a gorgeous icon of low-

103 budget exploitation movies, in my movie?”12

Pinter, McQueen’s assistant was played by Toby Carr Rafelson, director Bob

Rafelson’s wife at the time, she was an art director and production designer. In the later role she again worked with Demme on Melvin and Howard, though behind the camera.

Roberta Collins, the remarkable exploitation-film star, was cast as inmate Belle

Tyson. Collins was a women-in-prison film regular, appearing in The Big Doll House

(1971), Women in Cages (1971), as well as, the Unholy Rollers (1972) and

2000 (1975). Speculation at the time had heavy odds that Collins would break into mainstream movies, but that never came to fruition.

The extended family units featured in Demme’s early films were reflected in the behind-the-camera talent, not just the folks he worked with all the time, but his friends he casts in smaller roles. Essentially extras with lines, these included director directors

George Armitage and Joe Viola, as well as Cydoni Cale, wife of John Cale, of the legendary American rock band Velvet Underground, who scored the film.

Evelyn Purcell, Demme’s wife at the time, produced Caged Heat, budgeted at

$160,000 with a four-week shoot. Even on this first directing job, there were a number of people listed in the credits who would become Demme regulars, including cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, who is known for his work on Demme’s films, including

Silence of the Lambs, Beloved, Something Wild, among many others. The unit manager for Caged Heat was , who was involved in one way or another with most of Demme’s movies, graduating to a producer on Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert film.

104 Having previously only worked on Andy Warhol movies, Caged Heat’s marked

Demme’s collaboration with composer Cale, who went on to score Who Am I This Time? and Something Wild for Demme, as well as many movies and TV shows for other directors. One of Caged Heat’s editors was future documentary director Johanna

Demetrakas.

The shoot proved difficult. Corman could be very strict, especially when it came to budget. Demme remembers:

When I asked Demme if working at New World was a supportive environment, assuming it was, he quickly disabused me of that notion: It was an on-the-job education. You know, I’ve never come in over-budget. Never. I’ve never come in over-schedule. Never. And that’s part of my DNA now, because of Roger. The only way you ever got fired off one of Roger’s movies was by getting half a day behind.13

The atmosphere at New World was very competitive with most everyone there hoping to make it in the industry. Demme said:

I was in such a frightened state when I directed that movie. I didn’t feel under- qualified – I was under-qualified. Every day I was full of anxiety, waiting to be exposed as the poser I knew I was and yanked off the set. There was a very competitive feeling. The vast majority of people on those Corman productions were newcomers desperately trying to prove they’d earned the right to be on a professional film.”14

Getting even close to accurate box-office reports on films released by New World is nearly impossible. Depending on the interview and the specific question, sometimes

Corman would assert that a film did very well, only to talk in a subsequent interview about its disappointingly low box office earnings. Even though Caged Heat came late in

105 the cycle, according to Variety, it grossed around $400,000 in its first month. One of the reasons gauging box office earnings is tough is that New World, and exploitation films in general, had a very different shelf life than mainstream Hollywood releases. Those studio films had much longer runs than they do now, but most of them were put back on the shelf when that initial run was over. Exploitation films, however, would often keep playing for years, essentially in a kind of open ended first-run. Although it was released in 1974, the first time I saw Caged Heat was in 1977 at a drive-in theater.

Corman’s Commandments: Humor, Action, Sex

As with Crazy Mama and especially Swing Shift the film was really about how the women prisoners join together and support each other. The story is of a group of women prisoners, in an all-women prison, who start as strangers or even overtly hostile adversaries who by the end join together to escape the prison.

Demme explained the rules of making a Corman produced, New World Pictures release:

If you buy his concept – it’s never articulated I don’t think–but if you buy his concept that pictures that audiences like contain three main elements; one is humor, which he considers tremendously important. Another is action, which he considers very important. And another element is sex, which he considers important, but not quite as important, I think. If you really buy it and you kind of commit to getting as much of this stuff as possible in there, and if you also want to make a good picture and tell a good story, then the best of both worlds happens. He gets a movie that contains these things and he’s confident of releasing, and you get to make a picture very much the way you want to make it.15

How the women were presented and what they signified in Caged Heat was very

106 different than in other women-in-prison exploitation films. The women prisoner characters in Caged Heat are far stronger, more independent, and deeply loyal to each other. Instead of being vicious, mean-spirited and hating sex, these characters are affectionate toward each other. They form a community of caring women, and not just because of the necessity to band together in order to escape.

These women are on their own; there are no positive male characters in the film.

Boyfriends are talked about, but never seen or really needed. The men who are shown are usually exploiting, or at least bullying, women – the prison doctor, one of the main villains, and the guards. In a sense, the film confronts the idea that women are dependent on men for survival, as it continually shows that not to be true. Although it is still clearly an exploitation film, this attitude marks it as inherently political.

Danny Peary in Cult Movies observes:

As if to counterbalance his forced use of nudity, Demme intentionally deglamorizes the women on several occasions, showing them on the toilet and looking ill, or with food in their mouths, or even dressed up like baggy-pants male comics, mustaches and all.16

The film opens with a close-up of Pandora’s (Ella Reid’s) face as she appears to be masturbating. But the shot pulls back to reveal that she’s just shooting craps, with her cellmate Belle Tyson (Roberta Collins). This is followed by a tracking shot down the cellblock, showcasing the walls covered in graffiti, accompanied by a harrowing Cale viola track.

The shot passes by each cell in the block, conveying information about the occupants, a scene that is generic to all prison films. This is usually done to illustrate the

107 horrible conditions humans are forced to endure, and to emphasize the tough and dangerous prisoners. However, in Caged Heat, this beautifully shot, memorable scene conveys a completely different message. In Demme’s hands it is a surprisingly domestic,

– weirdly domestic, but domestic nevertheless, in that it is touching and intimate. It casts the inmates, not just as people, but people who care for one another.

Among the prisoners in the cell block are one pair of female inmates who are explicitly a couple. Each cell’s inhabitants are unique – a mentally troubled woman in one, a woman on the toilet in the next and an elderly woman reading a bible in another.

The camera tracks past the cell of Jacqueline Wilson (Erica Gavin) and finally, we come up to a cell with three women in it, each distinctly, colorfully dressed, all looking very tough. Their cell is lit with a soft pink, contrasting the greens, yellows, and blues of the other cells.

Maggie (Juanita Brown), clearly the leader, is looking through her bag, unable to find something. Finally, quite angry, she exclaims “Goddamnit!”

“Who copped my smokes?” Immediately she storms out of the cell followed by her two friends and strides down the corridor as though on their way to a gang fight.

Cale’s viola score intensifies. Maggie bursts into Pandora and Tyson’s cell who are on the floor still shooting dice. Pissed off, Maggie starts tearing the room apart, not finding what she is looking for Maggie attacks a scared and hurt Tyson, ripping her shirt open.

Demme rarely has shots that are straight homages to other films, but certain directors did influence his style. One of his most notable influences was , who directed mostly low-budget war, western, spy and gangster films. A terrific stylist,

108 Fuller influenced a couple of generations of filmmakers with in-your-face cinema, aggressively confronting the audience. Few other directors used close-ups as abrasively and directly as Fuller. It often became more an invasion of personal space, than merely a cinematic framing. This Caged Heat cigarette confrontation scene showcases some terrific Fuller-esque close-ups. Right after Maggie finds the cigarettes, Tyson whimpers,

“I’m sorry, Maggie.” There is a cut to a close-up of Maggie spitting out, “You stinking klepto!” Then adding, “You don’t even smoke,” as she slaps her.

Stepping between them, Pandora tries to calm Maggie down. “She can’t help herself.” Disgusted, Maggie replies, “All right! But if she rips me off one more time I’m going to spill a can of whoop ass all over her butt!” Maggie throws the pack of cigarettes at Pandora’s face, and storms out.

About this scene Demme enthused: “That was a big Sam Fuller moment. We’re actually going to spend enough time on this scene to do a DOLLY SHOT?”17

Maggie is tough, but not brutal. She screams at Tyson but rather than the kind of casual brutality usually presented in prison movies, Maggie makes it clear she’ll live with it this time – clearly not the first time–but next time, well, next time she’ll pound Tyson

(which is probably what Maggie said the last time).

Demme uses his familiarity with all the generic conventions of the women-in- prison films – women in cells, a grungy cell block, a tough prisoner who runs things with a number of thug assistants – only to undercut them by going in an unexpected direction.

He avoids the traditional route, in order to make meaning. Scenes are much more domestic than exploitative. Why show a woman peeing in the toilet in her cell? For sick

109 exploitive purposes, or because there’s relatively little to do in a cell? Demme shows it all. They play games, flirt, smoke, read comic books, pray, stare into space, and they use the bathroom. The prisoners are people. Lesbians are people, just lovers. As much as he can, Demme normalizes the situation. Yes, this is a prison, at least how one is portrayed in a women-in-prison exploitation film, but the inmates are neither brutal, nor mindlessly sadistic, nor is the film itself perversely voyeuristic. In the women-in-prison genre, women watch women and men watch women, all in the most distorted ways. Demme has nothing against breasts, but he doesn’t merely exploit them. For every shot of a naked body in any way sexual, there is a shot illustrating how nakedness is either casual or makes you vulnerable.

One of the defining features of Demme’s work is point of view. Not just POV shots, but the shifting narrative voice, the cinematic techniques crucial to the story being told.

At crucial points in Caged Heat the characters face a similar choice: self-interest or helping other women. Eventually Jacqueline, Maggie and another woman escape from the prison. They go to hook up with a friend of Maggie’s, who works in a shady

“massage” parlor, which also features nude wrestling. Maggie enters one of the small rooms–on the bed is a man grappling with a woman, in a scene completely lacking in eroticism. “Crazy?” she asks, first as a question, but then as an exclamation, “Crazy

Alice!”

Alice (Lynda Gold) looks at her and responds, “Maggie! Maggie !

When did you get out?” Shoving the guy off her, she bolts up (as another patron, played

110 by cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, sticks his head out of another room). Maggie immediately calls Crazy Alice on the scene: “What is with this nonsense?” And Alice answers, “I got laid off at the plant. What are you going to do?” This scene is one of the very rare signs of a working-class reality in exploitation films.

The points Demme makes about women, independence and community are emphasized by Caged Heat’s ending. Deliberately and aggressively heroic, it is a conscious manufacturing of a myth that transcends reality. This is not the usual generic pulp formula; most women-in-prison films are more nihilistic. Nearing the end of Caged

Heat, the women, who had already escaped earlier in the film, return to the prison to rescue their friends. Friends in tow, the newly liberated women are in car, prison guards shooting at them, bullets whizzing about. One woman extends her hand to pull the door closed and right then, the film freeze frames on the outstretched arm. It lasts a beat, an anachronistic camera shot, to emphasize the transition away from reality into fantasy (or a heightened reality).

Caged Heat very clearly articulates an ongoing aspect of the narratives of

Demme’s films. Regardless of the tone and trajectory of the films, they are, for lack of a better word, “haunted,” defined not just by what is being shown on the screen, but also by what is missing. Set in a realistic world, similar to the one we live in, these films’ stories are haunted in a number of ways, especially by the past–if not actual events, then old expectations. The past is history and the past is biography, but mostly the past, in a mutated, remembered and impressionist form, is also always present. Sometimes there are literally ghosts, more often spirits, apparitions, and visions. Often what is “missing”

111 are elements of a normal healthy life that aren’t there. Rarely is this “missing” actually emphasized – within the film there is no discussion of what is not there. The “missing” and ghosts are never in the generic 3-D horror sense, but only in the service of considering very human concerns, they resonate within a scene, expanding its meaning.

In Caged Heat, this “missing” is an almost visceral presence. A women’s prison, it is basically only half a world in terms of setting, but it is defined as much by what is missing, as by what is there. Missing are men – men as partners, romantic and sexual; men as adults helping to run the world; men as equals to the women in the film. Almost every man in the film is a failure of one sort or another, always letting women down.

Also missing is the sense of what life in the real world is like.

There are certain natural forces, such as sexual desire, that are so powerful, that even without men, they are still interwoven within the film. In the same way some people, when they lose a limb, continue to feel it, so these natural forces are present, even without men. Although Caged Heat is comfortable with lesbian love and lesbian sex, what is missing here is healthy heterosexuality.

In a way, the most obvious lack, that of , is compensated for by the way the women come together in community. The narrative tone rather than downbeat and fatalistic is increasingly positive. Usually drive-in prison movies, whether about men or women, are anchored in hopelessness; prisoners never seen beyond the prison’s walls. All too often, even if they do escape the institution, it makes little difference, as the prison, by then, is very real inside them. There is an unreal texture to the whole film, more of an adventure, than a series of demeaning prison scenes, but this ending insistently privileges

112 fantasy and myth. The women together cannot be defeated. Whereas often such a disconnected happy ending can seem artificially imposed, here the way the film was shot and the characters presented made it, if not organic, then at least not abruptly disruptive.

The overall development of the film was to move it away from reality, allowing it a narrative grace that made the ending more organic.

Corman Lessons: “…And A Little Bit of Social Commentary”

Caged Heat, a classic New World release, indeed fulfilled all of Corman’s requirements for a successful film, including “equal parts action, sex, and comedy.” But the films

Corman produced were also often seasoned with “a little bit of social commentary thrown in for good measure, preferably from the left side of the coin.” What was most important about Caged Heat, Demme felt, was that it offered, “the very profound observation

[that]…psycho surgery was going on in American prisons.” In order to emphasize that point, he wanted to dramatize it in as strong a way as possible. “…Two years later One

Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest comes out and that’s all about psycho surgery. But Roger

Corman made the first movie that actually said that.”18

Prison is a ready metaphor for the repression of modern life, and the women who break their way out…suggest a positive, even militant reaction to sexist victimization.19

–John Dorr, Hollywood Reporter

I was a relatively new CinemaTexas graduate student when I saw Caged Heat (for the

113 second time), with fellow graduate student, Nick Barbaro and friends. After the film was over, Barbaro and I got into a heated argument, the most contentious point being what

Caged Heat would mean to the audience most likely to see it. Barbaro resisted my interpretation that Caged Heat was, at least in some ways, a subversive work. He argued that the film, despite its message, would mostly just reinforce preconceptions about women, playing to sexual and violent fantasies and tendencies. The audience would read it exactly the way they wanted, so it was no different from the more savage women-in- prison films. My point was, not that it would be a conscious reading, but that its sympathetic portrayal of women would stick in the head.

After intense discussions, Barbaro eventually went on to write about it:

The first time I saw a Jonathan Demme movie was, as I recall, the first time I had a real argument about a movie – one I got good and upset about. The subject was typical film school stuff: something about the different levels of meaning in Caged Heat, how we – the intelligentsia, I must have supposed – would read this movie differently from your average Friday night drive-in moviegoer, and to what extent Demme must have taken that into account in making this tale of five tough chicks breaking out of prison and wreaking vengeance on male authority figures.

I forget the details, but I remember coming away from the argument with that disturbing feeling that I hadn’t quite expressed what I felt, that, in fact, maybe I wasn’t even quite sure of what I meant, what the point was I was trying to make. I knew it was quite a movie, though, to provoke this response, and I knew there was something about the way Demme treated his audience, and his characters, that I wasn’t quite able to articulate.20

The assumption here is that films can, and do, make meaning in quite different ways than they are intended or perceived to make. Although Marjorie Baumgarten, also a graduate student writing for CinemaTexas (who would later become film editor at the

114 Austin Chronicle), didn’t participate in that exchange, she weighed in later with a review that again looked at Caged Heat from an unusual angle.

Caged Heat works on two levels in that it allows women to function as the subjects of an action story, while catering to our desire to observe these threatening women at a safe and secure distance. Concurrently, the women function as both subject protagonists and fetishistic objects….

An intrinsic contradiction nevertheless, exists between the characters’ emotional commitment to other women and their absorption of male character traits and behavior patterns. Caged Heat offers hope for a future artistic tradition of women as heroic subjects, but it does nothing to encourage them to forge their own traditions and stories based on self-definition. These women achieve heroic status only because their actions conform to pre-existing, male-defined behavior codes and narrative structures. The transference of female characters into protagonists in male action stories amounts to emotional transvestitism. Not that role reversal isn’t interesting, instructive and valuable, but it is merely a transposition of elements within the same structure. It does not forge new roles, narratives and structures. New protagonists must shape new stories evolved from their own necessities.21

Keeping in mind that this is about an exploitation film, in many ways Baumgarten seems to be responding more to my ceaseless fanatical championing of Caged Heat at the time, than to the film itself. She chastises the film for not going further and being more radical. Given that the film was made for the exploitation-film circuit, including drive-in theaters and inner-city , it is remarkable that she can regard the film with feminist concerns, without seeming completely ludicrous.

Back to the Future

In 2005, I taught a Spring Semester class at the University of Texas Department of

Radio-Television-Film, on the history of American independent film. Independent,

115 regional, and low-budget films had long been an academic interest of mine, my master’s thesis was on the economic history of B movies, so this class was an obvious choice for me. This “shadow cinema,” which acknowledged and imitated Hollywood, but was of another world, had always fascinated me–specifically ethnically and racially targeted films for underrepresented groups (African American, Ukrainian, and Yiddish films intended for distribution only in those communities). I had watched many of the films, done research, and written about them academically.

Still, I had not taught in twenty years, so organizing the history, selecting the films to be shown, tying them to the history, and presenting it to a class mostly unfamiliar with them, was challenging. Going back over films that I cherished and championed, most of which I had watched many times, was a rough experience. Some held up, a few had gotten even better over time, but many now seemed so much less interesting, innovative, ambitious, and ideologically loaded then they once had felt.

Russ Meyer’s movies, for example, had Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang adolescent over-the-top humor and plotless plots, some pretending to be denser and more convoluted than others. I expected that the vitality of the work driven by Meyer’s cinematic virtuosity would be in ample evidence. Years earlier, as a graduate film student, I had gleefully pointed out that Meyer was a classic Eisenstein editor – one shot a thesis, the next the antithesis, leading to synthesis: an emotional resonance in the mind of the viewer that was possibly different from and usually richer than just the two shots. Instead, these films that once rippled with filmic energy for me seemed flat and silly. Redundant in action, dialogue, and character (deliberately two-dimensional stereotypes), the cinematic

116 language that was once their grace, now seemed commonplace and often dull.

Even when some of the films held up – and all had their academic interests – far too many of those from directors like Roger Corman, John Waters, Stephanie Rothman,

Ted V. Mikels, and Jack Hill, lacked the cinematic energy that had once seemed to mark them. films were mostly lame, ’s directorial efforts dull, and the anti-art fascination that the more marginal talents like Ed Wood and Herschell Gordon

Lewis had held for me, now gone. Sam Fuller’s films were still breathtaking and searing, while George Romero’s genre-busting exploration of classic horror myths remained unique and intellectually captivating. But even personal favorites such as Joan Micklin

Silver’s mimetic, relevant films – literally among the first that resonated with the lives we were living more than manufactured Hollywood other-dimensional fictions – fell terribly flat with students. Early, groundbreaking gay and lesbian films that were once startling and disruptive seemed hopelessly dated and even conservative.

Caged Heat proved especially troubling to consider. Having seen far more women in prison exploitation films over the years, what once seemed like strategies unique to this film were more generic and normalized. Much of the language in this genre of films is the same – as are the actions, the sequences, the stereotypes (prisoners and guards) and the archetypes (the warden, her henchwoman, the doctor, and the rebellious leader).

There are lesbian relationships, some mutual, but many exploitative (the matron and the guards using the prisoners). There is nudity (invariably there is a shower-room scene) and forced sex and often bondage. Some hardcore exploitation enthusiasts, such as Quentin

Tarantino, feel Caged Heat is too self-reflexive, way too hip, and thus not among the best

117 drive-in films that are pure unto themselves. In conversation, he made it clear that Jack

Hill’s dead-ahead drive-in genre works much more than Demme’s slyer exploitation films.22

Watching it again, trying to think how my students would receive such a film, much of what was initially impressive about the film, simply seemed no longer evident.

Strong women characters, an interracial cast, casually (a careful word choice) accepted lesbian couples, including interracial ones, women with guns, women having sexual appetites and making crude sexual jokes–all of which once was so unusual – were now as common as any evening’s prime-time or on-demand TV fare. Shorn of these attributes,

Caged Heat I feared would seem cruder, more sexist and exploitive. I decided not to show the film that had initiated my whole interest in this area.

One of the sure signs of a great movie is that each time you see it, it’s a slightly different movie. Events in our lives affect the emotional geography of the work. Given my original obsession with Caged Heat, I worried that my finding it more interesting than so many other films had been due to that early intense emotional attraction. There are all kinds of ways to enter a film, but the most satisfying is as a viewer plunging into it, taking it on its own terms. Recently I watched a retrospective screening of Caged

Heat. I was gripped by the film from the very first shots. Sharp, hip, fast on its feet, and witty, I was completely connected to it and having so much fun I didn’t have time to consider what I thought about.

118 Endnotes

1 Caged Heat tagline

2 Danny Peary. Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird and the Wonderful. A Delta Book: New York, 1981. p. 45.

3John Boorman and Walter Donohue, eds. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. Faber and Faber: London, 1992. p. 163.

4 Jonathan Demme in conversation (1988)

5 Stella Papamichael. “Movies. Getting Direct With Directors, No. 23: Jonathan Demme.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/callingtheshots/jonathan_demme.shtml

6 Stella Papamichael. “Movies. Getting Direct With Directors, No. 23: Jonathan Demme.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/callingtheshots/jonathan_demme.shtml

7 Phillip DiFranco. Movie World of Roger Corman. Chelsea House Publishers: New York, 1979. p. 192.

8 Steve Sullivan. “Vixen, Erica Gavin to Hell & Back,” Glamour Girls Then and Now, Issue 16, Spring/Summer 2002. p. 38.

9 Steve Sullivan “Vixen, Erica Gavin to Hell & Back,” Glamour Girls Then and Now, Issue 16, Spring/Summer 2002. p. 38.

10 Steve Sullivan “Vixen, Erica Gavin to Hell & Back,” Glamour Girls Then and Now, Issue 16, Spring/Summer 2002. p. 38.

11 Steve Sullivan “Vixen, Erica Gavin to Hell & Back,” Glamour Girls Then and Now, Issue 16, Spring/Summer 2002. p. 39.

119 12 Susan Wloszcyna. “How Demme and His Women Worked Their Magic,” USA Today, September 30, 2008 http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-09-30-demme-side_N.htm)

13 Stephen Whitty. “Demme Back in the Director's Chair,” The Star-Ledger, October 04, 2008.

14 Ryan Gilbey. “Jonathan Demme: Odd Man Out,” Independent. November 14, 2004 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/jonathan- demme-odd-man-out-20542.html

15 Jonathan Demme in conversation (1988)

16 Danny Peary. Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird and the Wonderful. A Delta Book: New York, 1981.

17 Jonathan Demme in conversation (1988)

18 Jonathan Demme in conversation (1988)

19 (Quote from John Dorr in Hollywood Reporter) Danny Peary. Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird and the Wonderful. A Delta Book: New York, 1998.

20Nick Barbaro review of Caged Heat

21Marjorie Baumgarten. “Caged Heat: Second Thoughts.” CinemaTexas Notes, Vol. 14, No. 3. April 3, 1978.

22 Quentin Tarantino in conversation

120 Chapter 5: Demme’s Americana Humanist Series

Crazy Mama, Fighting Mad (1975–1976)

Jonathan Demme’s career plan was to follow Caged Heat with Fighting Mad, which he was writing and planning to direct. Instead Corman basically forced Demme to take over

Crazy Mama when the original director dropped out just ten days before the film was scheduled to begin shooting. At the time and for a number of years afterwards Demme was embarrassed by the film, rarely discussing it. Ironically, there is a strong argument to be made that not only is it significantly better than Fighting Mad, his next film and a pet project, but that Crazy Mama is the first in what turned out to be Demme’s great

Americana films – a list that includes Citizens Band, Melvin and Howard, Who Am I This

Time?, Something Wild, Stop Making Sense, and his never-released cut of Swing Shift.

These films by Demme all share a certain sensibility – one that is appreciative of the life and dreams of the working class set against a strong affection for mainstream American life and culture.

These films were neither conceived, intended or ever presented as a series. This grouping of four theatrical narratives, one music film, an hour long TV show and

Demme’s cut of Swing Shift, which was never released theatrically, are very interrelated in a number of ways. Although very different in structure and style, all these films share a unique observant sensibility, radical politics, revisionist and subversive views of family and sex roles, and a passionate interest in culture all delivered with cinematic style.

Considering them as a body of work, here labeled Demme’s Americana Humanist

121 Series provides yet a way of dealing with Demme’s films that provides clear indication of the ways in which they are a deeply connected body of work.

Each of these films on its own is original and fresh, while they also all evidence a certain shared sensibility, one with a deep interest in the lives and dreams of their mostly working class characters as well as an affectionate appreciation of popular culture. These films to my knowledge are not elsewhere grouped as presented here but they are often treated together. Emmanuel Levy notes a trilogy of Demme’s films:

Demme’s trilogy of series folk comedies, Citizens Band (aka Handle With Care) (1977), Melvin and Howard (1980), and Something Wild (1986), portray the idiosyncratic varieties of American life…the kind that would never be made by Hollywood today.

In his lyrical sketches of rural America, Demme used a relaxed, diffuse style to capture the innocent quality of American hopefulness. He provided uncondescending insights into a working-class which, despite poverty, is still buoyed by dreams of striking it rich. Demme has shown intuitive feel for the texture of life outside the mainstream, suffusing his characters with warm acceptance devoid of criticism. Rich in commonplace detail and nonjudgmental humor, his approach combines the satirical percept of the very American with the humanist compassion of the very French Jean Renoir.1

Less specifically, James Kaplan also notes the shared vision of a number of these films:

Jonathan Demme's domain is America itself – a vibrant, polychromatic, up-to-the- second place. But there isn't a slick or pat frame in any of his movies. When and Paul LeMat, as Howard Hughes and Melvin Dummar, sing “'Bye Bye Blackbird'' as they drive through the desert at night in Melvin and Howard; when David Byrne dances across the stage in his big suit in Stop Making Sense; when , pretending to be the husband of his kinky kidnapper, Melanie Griffith, goes to meet her small-town mother in Something Wild – Demme's films cross the line from entertainment into poetry. They contain a warmth, a largeness of spirit, a deadpan humor, and a visual and narrative unpredictability that are indebted equally to the eye-pleasing kineticism practiced by Demme's mentor,

122 Roger Corman, the master of horror and action pictures, and to the cinematic intelligence of his early friend and influence Francois Truffaut.

Demme celebrates America, yet he isn't content simply to give us back our culture in the language of commercials and sitcoms. He's trying to show us a new version. Jonathan Demme's America is an international community, full of the voices, colors and music of the whole world; that America is finally hitting the movie screen.2

In Demme’s filmography, this grouping is chronologically followed by Married to the

Mob, then Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Beloved. The differences between each of the latter films and the ones included in this group together makes the relationship between the early films even more obvious. Approaching this grouping of films adds resonance to each as well as proving valuable when dealing with the overall body of work. Thematically and narratively, the films in “Demme’s Americana Humanist

Series” represent a peak creative period for Demme.

Inherently humanist works, the stories are built around the characters’ lives more than in service of carefully constructed narratives or advancing a militant ideology.

Rather than insist on the inevitability of tragedy, their world view is a cautious optimism, suggesting that there is always the possibility that tomorrow could be better than today.

This stands apart from many Hollywood films that seem to feel that in order to be

“realistic” and “socially conscious,” their tone needs to be dark as a way of conveying the society’s current most haunting fears. Often this is just the background against which alienation, limitations, and confusion are splashed as colors in a Jackson Pollack painting.

Most Hollywood films that deal with the working class, such as On The Waterfront

(1954), The Pawnbroker (1964), Blue Collar (1978), F.I.S.T. (1978), and Silkwood

123 (1983), both condescending in attitude and negative in outlook, are permeated with an undercurrent of despair about life. Films like Marty (1955) and Saturday Night Fever

(1977), though not specifically tragic, still depict a future that, at best, offers only limited options.

This is not Demme’s world. What others revile, criticize, or take as apocalyptic,

Demme often views as the relatively mundane but not malevolent evidence of human existence. Demme’s is not the near-silly, best-of-all-possible-worlds take of Voltaire’s

Candide, but neither is it the morally empty, corrupt and corrupting suburbs of films like

The Graduate (, 1967), Ordinary People (, 1980),

Neighbors (John G. Avildsen, 1981), Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986), and American

Beauty (, 1999).

The films are mimetic, set in the world we know, but also slightly askew – which keeps viewers off balance. Never condescending or contemptuous, but driven by an insatiable curiosity and fascinated by almost everything, when making these films

Demme’s life was a never-ending road picture, a quest of discovery fueled by a limitless enthusiasm and genuine fascination. Every production, realized on its own terms, offered him the chance to explore new characters and depict their world. Fascinated by the possibilities of this country he was more interested in exploring its dreams and ambitions than portraying its failures and weaknesses. Ironically, after Silence, in Philadelphia,

Beloved, and The Manchurian Candidate, his focus shifted – rather than exploring visions, he detailed shortcomings.

The feminist exploitation fable Crazy Mama, set in the 1950s, begins with

124 business failure and economic uncertainty and ends with frenzied small-time capitalism.

The Stokes women, evicted from their California beauty parlor for overdue rent, decide to return to their old homestead. The film is a unique road trip traveling back into the country and in time, not forward. Obviously focused on sex roles, it is intrinsically about money and class. Centered on a classic Demme extended family, women are in control throughout – that is what control there is – while the males are along for the ride.

Citizens Band (AKA Handle with Care) swirls around questions of identity, coming at it from a number of angles. Set in a small town, there is the everyday life of folks, but many also have separate secret identities based on their CB handles. Usually at night on CBs they talk pretending to be who they aren’t. Some of these CB operators, routinely violate federal rules, which increasingly frustrates Spider (Paul LeMat) until he becomes a vigilante. His very dysfunctional family becomes whole, healed by a crisis when their father goes missing, which not only brings family but community together.

Another family in crisis in the film is healed when the bigamist truck driver reaches a cooperative living arrangement with his two wives brokered by his hooker friend.

The central question in Melvin and Howard is: who was the stranger Melvin picked up in his truck late one night while driving through the desert? Was this mysterious and guarded person Howard (Hughes)? Is the will genuine? Which directly focuses on Melvin? Hopelessly addicted to his fantasies and foolish daydreams, he is the hero of the film, but he is also a loser. Still this is one of the very few American working- class films that has affection for its characters and the world in which – trailers, new subdivisions, and apartments. The people and families of this world also cause

125 concern. Melvin divorces his wife, remarries her when she is very pregnant; she leaves him. He then takes a new bride. All the while Howard Hughes is hovering in the background.

It is not uncommon to see a film about a dreamer who persists, against all advice and reason, until he triumphs. But this is about a dreamer who never succeeds on any reasonable terms. Rather than crushed, Melvin cruises forward because if one does not expect success even very small achievements can be considered victories.

Obviously, given its title, Who Am I This Time? is specifically about identity, what it is and what it means. Set in a small town where most folks know each other, native son

Harry Nash () works in the hardware store while Helene Shaw (Susan

Sarandon), who works for the phone company, is only passing through. Working together on the local theater company’s production of A Street Car Named Desire brings them together. The contrast of real life and theatrical performance accentuates the work’s concern with identity.

What a viewer makes of Demme’s cut of Swing Shift depends on who they think

Kay Walsh is – a loving wife, a sheltered and naive woman, Rosie the Riveter, an independent woman, a reliable girlfriend, a lover or an adulteress. She may well be all of those. The issue is important but not the center of the film. The United States having entered World War II, most of the men have gone off to war and, in order to keep industries going, women are recruited into the work force. These mostly working class women, have largely been domestic stay-at-home wives. Now they enter a world new to them – an airplane manufacturing plant, formerly a “man’s world.” There in order to be

126 of value they must effectively perform in jobs that they had never done before. The film’s main focus is on the women as individuals undergoing significant changes in their lives and how they then come together in community; but this involves other issues, including the individual and the group, sex roles and marriage, the tradition of the past set against the modern world’s changes.

Something Wild is a contemplation on identity – who one is and who one presents themselves as being. Notably, in the middle, the tone shifts from screwball comedy to stalker thriller. In the beginning, a woman playfully kidnaps a man. Well into the film her ex-husband kidnaps her in a more violent way.

No one tells the truth from the beginning about identity. The three characters over the course of the film are both who they are and what they say they are, and also somewhat the total opposite. Each shift in identity is treated lovingly and satirically. It is a comedy of errors based on people misrepresenting themselves. Then it evolves into a thriller of errors, courageously changing tones. Beginning in the city, they travel into the heart of the south. Later, they return not to the city but the suburbs. It skewers yuppies and the suburbs while also cherishing them.

In this Americana Humanist Series, each film plunged into new and unknown territory. He was on a pointed upward learning curve. Standing alone, each film works, most of them extraordinarily well. Together as a group, there is a harmony – they work together, each informing and expanding the meanings of the others. Finally, as a group, they are revealing about the works’ conceptual author and expand the richness and meanings of his entire filmography in terms of ambition, impact, consequence, and

127 achievement.

In the films, there is a kind of spirituality – not in service of any specific ideology or theology, but because there is always something more to everyday life. Demme is not just aware that we do function together; rather than contemptuous, he is affectionate and supportive. In fact, the goal seems to be individual becoming fully realized unto themselves, which in this series of films, is both family and community. Rather than denying or suppressing individual identity, they actually serve to reinforce it.

Crazy Mama (1975)

In 1957 Cheryl drove Mom’s Chevy on a heavy date: got knocked up, knocked over a bank; smashed four police cars and kidnapped her stepfather. It was a crazy year! 3

Demme had invested a year into developing Fighting Mad when Corman surprised him with directing Crazy Mama. There are three specific Mama movies, although a number of others are in some ways related. The first was Bloody Mama (1970), which Corman directed from a screenplay by the fascinating and enigmatic (screenplays for Crazy Mama, Wild in the Streets, ). Shelly Winters headed up a terrific cast that includes Pat Hingle, Don Stroud, Diane Varsi, and Robert

Walden. Bloody Mama also helped launch the career of a very young Robert DeNiro, who had previously only been in New York shot indies. He attracted much attention, as

Winters sang his praises to anyone who would listen.

A big hit, Bloody Mama’s box office success led to ’s

(1974) starring , William Shatner, and Tom Skerritt. The success paved

128 way for yet another Mama film. Big Bad Mama was written by William Norton and

Francis Doel, the latter who was also responsible for the story for Crazy Mama. Doel’s role in New World productions is still grievously underappreciated. She was not only

Corman’s right hand person but was also the head of New World’s script department. In conversations with talents that worked for New World, she is regularly cited as the company’s invaluable and extraordinary resource. Yet she flew below the radar, remaining largely unknown.

Big Bad Mama 2 did not come out until over a decade later in 1987. Although it was marketed as a sequel, it was more a remake of the original. Related to the Mama movies are (1972), which its director Martin Scorsese regularly refers to as a sequel to Bloody Mama, and The Lady in Red (1979), directed by and written by John Styles.

AIP was excited about doing another Mama film after Bloody Mama’s success.

According to , their exact words were, “Hey, yeah, it's working, let's do it!”4

Since Roger Corman was also interested, Julie plunged into researching women criminals to find an appropriate subject. Initially, Corman couldn’t find much information, but then

Julie discovered Ben L. Reitman’s Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar

Bertha (1937), and so the film Boxcar Bertha began to take shape. As Julie recalls:

I tried to put my arc on it. I saw this as a statement about a woman who was outside the system. Women were becoming concerned about women's liberation and feminism, whatever you want to call it. This was a woman who just got in a box car, where she wanted, when she wanted, lived her life with not much money and eventually turned to crime. I liked that way of looking at it from the outside. 5

129

Even though Roger Corman produced the film while Julie was associate producer, keeping the film consistent with Julie’s vision proved difficult, as others continuously tried to change it. Eventually, Martin Scorsese was recruited to direct. Julie remembers:

Martin also had some ideas that had to do with his relationship with his brother and I threw my hands up and I was like “I don't know!” I didn’t supervise the production and I really wasn't involved in the development of the story…. it was really that I found the project and worked on the development of it, mostly. And then the setup of the production. When we got to camp in Arkansas, Martin Scorsese had sketched every shot of the picture and it was up on his wall in the hotel room. So, then I knew that there was something that was definitely going to happen to make this. 6

After honing her skills and producing a few more films, Julie ended up as the creative force and producer on Crazy Mama. Robert Thom, who had written the screenplay for Bloody Mama, was brought on to script Crazy Mama. Although Francis

Does is credited, Julie worked out the original story, which she admits was “skimpy.”

It started with when we moved to California. I didn't really want to be in California. I started thinking, well this whole story of the mother with her sons, and they're on the road. In all these “Mama Stories” – Bloody Mama, Crazy Mama – they get on the road, they're out doing whatever. I said, “Now what if the mother and the daughter went back with the family and headed back to the Midwest.” So it just turned out that way.…7

Determined to have the project directed by a woman, Julie first asked , already a successful actress who had just directed a well-received TV special but Grant turned her down. Then Corman asked Shirley Clarke, a very hip, well-connected New

130 York City filmmaker. Having directed a number of award winning short films, Clarke’s first was an adaptation of the play The Connection (1961) by Jack Gerber.

She followed it with The Cool World (1963). Although both were narratives, they were shot to look very much like cinema véritè. (Appropriately, The Cool World was financed and produced by vèritè legend Frederick Wiseman.)8 Portrait of Jason (1967), her next feature, was a very well-reviewed straight on documentary.

Clarke began working on Crazy Mama, but because she was used to the dynamics of low-budget indie productions, as well as shooting in a very loose, semi-documentary style, she had difficulty adapting to Hollywood filmmaking. Especially troubling was having to constantly make decisions, dealing with the unending and numerous issues that came up during pre-production for a studio narrative film. Unfortunately, this resulted in the members of the film’s production team having an increasingly difficult time getting a decision as to their concerns. They brought this situation to Julie Corman, who determined that the problem, “was just that my very personal way of filmmaking was not…Hollywood studio. I was best suited to very personal, self-generated films.”9

Although still very protective of Clarke, Corman realized the difficulty of the situation. She invited Clarke to her office where after a very long discussion, both

Corman and Clarke reached the same conclusion. Reluctantly both of them concluded that Clarke was simply not ready to direct a Hollywood studio theatrical film.10

Unfortunately, this realization came just ten days before shooting was set to begin.

Julie, still hoping for a woman director, talked to Roger about the situation. Roger thought Demme would be ideal for the project, and because Julie was a fan of Caged

131 Heat and Demme personally, she agreed.

Roger took the young director to lunch. At the time, Demme was deep into pre- production on Fighting Mad, a project close to his heart, which he was very much looking forward to making as his next directorial effort.

Corman began the lunch meeting with, “Okay, we’re not making Fighting Mad.”

Demme was not pleased, as he had been working on the script for a year and was expecting to soon begin pre-production. “Instead you’re going to direct Crazy Mama,”

Corman continued. “Shooting begins in ten days.”11

Demme told Corman that he’d rather pass on this project and continue working on

Fighting Mad. “Corman made it very clear to [him] that this wasn’t either/or but that there would be no Fighting Mad without Crazy Mama.”12 Demme remembers the encounter:

When he told me this over lunch it was a classic Roger moment. I am trying somehow to come to terms with the trauma of finding out that this Fighting Mad, which I’m passionately dying to make – even as I’m coming to terms with the fact I’m not going to make that – Corman’s going, “There’s a casting session in half an hour, find all the locations and, by the way, the cast hates the script.” 13

Backed into a corner, Demme insisted that he needed to read the script before agreeing to direct this new film. Though a fair request, Corman insisted that there was not enough time for Demme to even read the script.

Demme realized he would only get his chance to do Fighting Mad if he accepted the position. His only condition was that he would get to choose the second-unit director,

“because the kind of movies Corman made had the second-unit going on all the time and,

132 in fact, the second-unit director winds up doing almost as much as the director.”14 He wanted Evelyn Purcell, then Demme’s wife, who had produced Caged Heat. He told

Corman he would do the film if he had her on board. Corman agreed and Crazy Mama officially had a new director.

When Roger told Julie that Demme had agreed to direct, he left out that he had essentially blackmailed him into doing it. Julie had no idea this was how Demme was recruited. In fact, after reading an earlier draft of this chapter, she exclaimed, “I didn't know Roger did that. I didn't know any of this!”15

Interestingly, Julie Corman, having wanted a woman director since the project began, had separately also insisted to Roger that Evelyn Purcell be made second-unit director.

In order to fund his films, Corman routinely announced the titles of films New

World would be releasing when nothing but the title existed. He knew that titles and key art would sell films on the circuit. Demme explains:

That’s how Roger would finance all these pictures in those days: he would go to the exhibitors with a title and he’d say, “OK, we’re going to make Crazy Mama, and it’ll be ready in June, and who wants to show it?” Given the previous success of the two Mama films, though they had nothing in common but their titles and, to an extent, outlaw moms…. He would get an enormous amount of advances – or enormous proportionate to the budgets he shot on – and with the money in hand he would then go ahead and make the film, so there was a no-loss situation.16

According to conversations I’ve had over the years with regional film publicity and marketing veterans, sometimes Corman would actually sell a percentage of the movie to the different regional exhibitors, usually exaggerating the budget. Claiming it was

133 going to be a $200,000 budget, he would approach a distributor handling a few states where his films usually did 10% of their business, offering him a piece of the gross if he would put up 10% of the budget. Once he had all the money lined up he was ready to go, knowing that each of these distributors had a vested interest in the film doing well.

Finally, he would then tell the film’s production team that the budget was $150,000.

With a director and funding in place, Crazy Mama began production. Set in the

1950s, Crazy Mama tells the story of Melba, Sheba and Cheryl, three generations of

Stokes women. After they are evicted from their family-run beauty parlor, the Stokes women flee to avoid the landlord, Mr. Albertson, and the money they owed him. They decide to return to Arkansas to reclaim their family farm, which they had lost in a sepia- toned opening sequence. On the journey there they begin what turns into a multi-state crime spree.

Cloris Leachman was signed to star in Crazy Mama, playing Melba Stokes, with veteran actress Ann Southern, playing Sheba Stokes, her mother, and up and coming talent Linda Purl, playing her daughter Cheryl Stokes. The atmosphere surrounding the production of Crazy Mama was no less tense than it had been during the making of

Caged Heat. Demme, not wanting to make the movie in the first place, found himself no happier once shooting began. The budget was $300,000, which was very low but almost double Caged Heat’s.

There was a cutthroat atmosphere to the competition between members of the creative team. As Demme recalls:

On the day I screened the first cut, one of the film’s editors handed over to Roger

134 a set of notes detailing what he would have done with the movie. I didn't think particularly poorly of him for that, I just thought: wow, it's really ruthless out there, isn’t it?17

In the beginning, Demme stuck closely to Robert Thom’s script, particularly the dialogue scenes. But toward the end of the film, he began to stray. Demme clarifies:

It was supposed to end in a total bloodbath with everybody getting killed – the kids, Cloris – and I just couldn’t handle that somehow or other, but I was pissed off at Ann Sothern for being such an old kvetch, so I let her get killed. Everybody else escaped.18

Demme may have been unhappy with the whole project, but Corman was outraged by the finished film and furious with Demme for changing the ending from the apocalyptic

Bonnie and Clyde–type climax that he had been expecting to one where most of this odd family survived. Corman felt that due to this change, there was essentially no ending to the film. He was so angry that he terminated Demme’s next project, Fighting Mad.

Director Allan Arks relates:

On Crazy Mama, Jonathan Demme, who’s a brilliant director, never got a shot of , who played Crazy Mama, firing a gun, which to Roger was like sacrilege. At one point, she waves the gun around and sticks it out the window of . So, when we were cutting the trailer, as soon as the gun cleared frame, we added the sound of a gunshot and cut to a helicopter blowing up, which we lifted from a Cirio Santiago movie.19

Ironically, given Roger Corman’s negative reaction to Demme’s changes, listening to the commentary discussion between Corman and Demme on the Crazy Mama

DVD, tells another story. The two clearly enjoy talking to each other, though Corman is

135 continually distracted by the movie – getting lost in what is happening on the screen or closely listening to the soundtrack. He offers compliment after compliment to Demme for the film. Corman’s delight and respect for the film becomes more and more obvious as he is watching it.

One suspects that Corman, knowing Demme had changed the ending, approached

Crazy Mama in an already very angry state about the film and its director. Back then he had watched the film in that very different frame of mind. Watching four decades later without the emotional badge was a very different experience with Corman not just enjoying but delighted by the movie.

The film’s soundtrack features ten contemporaneous radio hits, chosen in a very peaceful collaboration between Julie Corman and Demme. They had had both grown up listening to the radio, voraciously consuming those early rock ’n’ roll. Corman reveals that she held out for “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” by the Everly Brothers, even though

Demme didn’t necessarily love the idea, she insisted. Tracks “Transfusion” and “Running

Bear” were also Corman’s choices, while “Black Slacks,” “Western Movies” and

“Money” were Demme’s.20 Years later recording the commentary track, despite his old opinion, Corman was clearly excited by the soundtrack and kept interrupting his discussion with Demme to enthusiastically comment on the songs.

New Family, Old Family: “Sheba Stokes, Melba Stokes, Cheryl Stokes and Baby Stokes. Oak Trees, Mountains, Us!”

Crazy Mama is rock ‘n’ roll with postcard visuals, a celebration of kitsch, but also of the extended nonnuclear family joined together by shared affection and interests, rather than

136 blood. It consists of outsiders operating within what seem to be traditional familial structures, though it really is anything but traditional. The extended family unit in this

Demme film is structured around the people who come together rather than any traditional preexisting nuclear constructs.

Lighthearted and humorous, Crazy Mama is also sarcastic and satirical, and sometimes even sweet. Focused on women and their social role as well as new family structures, their journey becomes a metaphoric search for the true beating heart of

America, especially as considered in the context of a newly created and invented family.

Everyday economics is an important undercurrent throughout the film. In the prologue, the Stokes family loses their farm to the bank and the film’s main action begins with them losing their salon. Money, social position, and ambition are topics that are woven throughout the film. Crazy Mama ends with a freeze-frame shot of them crazily selling hot dogs; a frenzied collage loaded with resonance about the extended family and women both empowered and repositioned in more traditional roles.

Crazy Mama’s prologue mirrors Bloody Mama’s similar prologue in many ways.

Both begin with hazy pastel-shaded, faded-color mornings, obviously shot through some kind of filter. In Bloody Mama, two brothers are chasing their sister through the woods.

Racing to get away from them, she gets knocked down by her father, who criticizes the young girl for not letting her brothers have their way with her. Crazy Mama’s prologue, similarly textured, begins with a young girl playing in the field of an Arkansas farm.

Unlike Bloody Mama, the violence is committed not by the family but against it. A sheriff comes onto their land to evict the family. The father is determined to stay. Standing next

137 to him is Sheba Stokes, his wife (a younger version of Southern’s Sheba, appropriately played by Tisha Sterling, Ann Sothern’s daughter). The young girl is Melba, their daughter. Her father, holding a rifle, refuses the sheriff’s demands. Stokes land is Stokes land. The sheriff shoots him dead.

The film then sharply cuts to its present in a West Coast beauty parlor where

Sheba Stokes (Sothern) is working. In comes Melba (Leachman) from what seems like some kind of afternoon sexual rendezvous, followed by moving men who start carrying everything out. The Stokes family is being evicted again and again for delinquent rent payments.

Cheryl (Purl) is shown walking along the beach carrying an unforgettable pickle handbag. We soon learn she is pregnant by her beach-bum boyfriend Shawn (Donnie

Most) – and I'm not even going to start laying out those family connections. Sheba and

Melba arrive at the beach to get Cheryl.

Appropriately, the landlord who evicts them is played by Jim Backus (the dad in

Rebel Without a Cause, the rich Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island and the voice of Mr. Magoo). The Stokes with Shawn return to the shop, where a chase ensues. They end up stealing the landlord’s car. This eviction from the beauty salon mirrors the film’s opening – the eviction from their home in Arkansas. They decide it is time to head back to that family homestead.

Crazy Mama is a unique American , in that it is not focused on the traditional journey to the West, traveling through the unknown to settle the untamed frontier. Instead it is about heading back into the heartland. In America, the quest for

138 personal growth and discovery has traditionally involved an actual journey, rather than simply philosophical contemplation. The direction of the movement was, for the longest time, almost always westward, fitting with Frederick Turner’s sense of the importance of the frontier and in harmony with the dream of American manifest destiny. After the country was largely settled, the direction continued, heading to California became a kind of poetic response to normalcy and conformity, a movement from the bourgeois to the bohemian. The East signified a more rigid world with a staid and traditional set of expectations and social restrictions, as well as, an established class system. The movement west offered any number of variations on the great American Dream, including a discontented if not out rightly radical aversion to its dominant ideology. This may have peaked with the Beat generation, where many of those not already based on the

West Coast, moved there. This was also true of the hippie-freak movement of the 1960s, which largely began in California, but attracted people from across the nation.

Starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, a growing sense of cultural alienation led to a change in destination, especially as the West was no longer really the frontier. Consequently, rather than heading to the coast, there was a reverse movement, one back into the American heartland – the journey, not towards the classic American

Dream promise of California, but away from it. Triggered by a certain hopelessness, one had to leave the melting-pot of the coast in search of self or in pursuit of dreams. It could be in quest of a more rugged lifestyle. The destination was places like Wyoming and Montana, places mythologized as the new frontier in the fiction of writers like Jim

Harrison and Thomas McGuane.

139 Others, like the Stokes, driven by the unspoken longing for an imagined past, travelled back in search of the old family homestead. Easy Rider (1969) proved the defining film, launching this new American journey back, the California paradise having proved a mirage. Their trip ended tragically, in the middle of the country. Rather than a celebration, Easy Rider was a nihilistic cinematic tone poem representing resignation and loss. There was no direction forward.

Headed back into the heartland, in Crazy Mama they travel through a landscape of neon and commerce, empty stretches and abandoned buildings. A country worn out rather than vibrant. This trip begins with the three generations of Stokes women but includes the gestating but unborn fourth generation. Surfer bum Shawn (Donnie Most) the father of

Cheryl’s baby joins them but then in Las Vegas she takes a shine to Snake, a greased- back-hair, black-leather-jacket biker (played by Leachman’s son Bryan Englund), who is seemingly mesmerized by her.

Melba picks up Mayor Jim Bob Tucker (), a stereotypical loud and larger-than-life Texan, who has deserted his very rich wife Ella Mae Tucker (Sally

Kirkland) back home. One can posit Tucker as a father figure, except that he really comes across as just one of the boys. Finally, in a casino, Sheba hooks up with fellow slot machine player Bertha (Merie Earle), a free-spirited senior citizen, who happily joins the family.

Shawn and Snake are wooing Cheryl, who seems at the same time to be interested in and bored by both. This is another of those odd triangles in Demme’s films similar to

Citizen’s Band, where there is the bigamous truck driver with two wives and a hooker

140 girlfriend, as well as the two brothers in love with the same woman. Certainly not in the traditional sense, this group is still very much a family. Their relationships and roles within it are fluid and complex.

While traveling together, there is a great defining scene when they stop at the

Wigwam Motel in Rialto, California. Rather than a single building it consists of a number of concrete teepees. (There used to be a chain of them, but only one remains near the

Texas border.) The seven of them all are staying in the single room of their concrete- teepee. Shawn, Snake, and Cheryl share a bed. Shawn, the beach bum, is muttering about the situation of them all sharing the bed (though there is nothing sexual between them – it’s just a sleeping arrangement). He goes on and on: “I should be upset by this but I'm not upset by this. Why am I not upset by this? I should be. He is here. I am here. But I'm not…”

Snake interrupts him, saying something like: "Right now in Russia in a silo there is an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead on it that can be fired at any moment, aimed right at this teepee! So, don’t sweat the small stuff!”

Don’t sweat the small stuff; in many ways the theme of not just the movie but a number of Demme’s films – don’t get trapped by the mundane. Emotionally if not polemically, the movie is decidedly feminist. The family is matriarchal and not even vaguely patriarchal. Not only do the female members of the Stokes family dominate, but the one adult male member of the group is, at best, slightly post-adolescent in his behavior.

It may not sound like the most radical notion of our times, but here Demme is

141 exploring what would happen in an almost mundane situation if preexisting traditions and laws were not used as guidelines. Arguably, the film is surprisingly transcendent. If you listen to the commentary track, it is clear that both Demme and Corman had underestimated the film in their memories. It moves far behind the overarching ambition of Corman’s other Mama films (Bloody and Big Bad) in that it riffs not just on family, capitalism, gangster films, and traditional sex roles, but along the way embraces and satirizes American culture, a neon-drenched rock ‘n’ roll exploration.

[When we first met Demme, the experience of making the film was still very much with him, leaving it a work he would rather not discus. In interviews at the time he was actively hostile towards Crazy Mama. Our love of the film and championing it as a great effort came as a surprise and was probably a bit disorienting.]

Fighting Mad

When you are pushed too far, even a peaceful man gets Fighting Mad! 21

Demme’s next film proved disappointing in a number of ways, especially given that this was a pet project for him. Corman, having promised Demme he could next make

Fighting Mad, was so furious with the ways Demme had changed the ending of Crazy

Mama that he cancelled Fighting Mad.

“But,” Demme admits, “the great thing about Roger – there are many great things about him – but one is that when I wrote him a letter explaining what had happened and saying finally, ‘You know you shouldn't be canceling this film [Fighting Mad],’ I got a phone call from him the next day: ‘Well, I'm still pissed off at you because I still think you could have made a better movie, but you're

142 right about a number of things, and so we'll go ahead with Fighting Mad.’” 22

Demme both wrote and directed Fighting Mad, with Evelyn Purcell second unit and co-producing. Corman was producer, making the film for Fox where he had what turned out to be a short-lived production deal.

Demme hired Tak Fujimoto to shoot the film. He began by shooting the opening montage of Peter Fonda and his son driving down to the family farm in Arkansas.

Unfortunately, the union teamsters almost immediately realized that Fujimoto was not union so they sent him back home.23 The montage he shot is used in the film, though uncredited, as Michael Watkins gets the sole cinematographer credit. Most of Watkins work has been as a shooter or director on any number of TV shows.

During editing, in order to give the film’s editor some relief because of the film’s ridiculously tight deadlines, Demme ended up editing the entire climax of the film himself.

To compose the film’s score, Peter Fonda insisted on using Bruce Langhorne, who had scored The Hired Hand (1971), Fonda’s director debut. Langhorne would not only score Melvin and Howard but also Demme’s cut of Swing Shift, though the released version has a different score.

In the DVD commentary accompanying the film, Demme notes that it was

Corman who not only suggested making a “redneck revenge picture” but also strip mining for the villain’s. Considering this was such a personal project for Demme, it is interesting that the core ideas came from Corman.

143 In many ways the most ideologically charged and politically coherent of Demme’s early films, Fighting Mad is cinematically and aesthetically the least successful of them.

It's not that it is a disaster, it is just that, at it’s very best, Fighting Mad is still a completely generic exploitation revenge film. The least unusual of Demme’s films, it’s a too predictable tale of good farmers and bad developers. There really isn’t another of

Demme’s films that comes to mind where the two opposing sides are so clearly delineated as good guys and bad guys.

This may well be because Demme’s politics are most effective and persuasive when they are deeply woven into a film’s characters and story. Offered specifically and overtly, they aren’t just polemical but hollow, evident but missing the emotional connection that so many of his films excite in audience members.

Along with The Last Embrace and Hawn’s cut of Swing Shift, it is of that small group of Demme’s films that, more mainstream than idiosyncratic, lack most of the indicators of his authorship. Watching them one gets a strong indication of the kind of films he might have made if his career had been more geared to the industry and less personal.

Even though the genre never ends, by the time Fighting Mad was released the contemporary wave of revenge films had peaked contributing to the film’s commercial failure.

CODA

The thing about Roger is, he doesn’t want you around for too long. You get a little too expensive. My memory was that after a while he was like, “Why don’t you go on and have

144 a career now.”

–Jonathan Demme 24

145 Endnotes

1 Emanuel Levy. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. NYU Press: New York, 1999.

2 James Kaplan. “Jonathan Demme’s Offbeat America” New York Times. March 27, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/27/magazine/jonathan-demme-s-offbeat- america.html

3 Tagline for Crazy Mama

4 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

5 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

6 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

7 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

8 Frederick Wiseman in conversation (Date)

9 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

10 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

11 Jonathan Demme, Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

12 Jonathan Demme, Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

13 Jonathan Demme, Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

146 14 Jonathan Demme, Interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

15 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

16John Boorman and Walter Donohue, eds. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. Faber and Faber: Boston, 1992. p. 167

17 Ryan Gilbey. “Jonathan Demme: Odd Man Out,” Independent, November 14, 2004, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/jonathan- demme-odd-man-out-20542.html

18 Louis Black. “Jonathan Demme: American Visions Part 1” https://www.media-party.com/storefrontdemme/americanvisions1.html

19 Scott Foundas. “Grindhouse Gang,” L.A. Weekly, April 4, 2007. https://www.laweekly.com/film/grindhouse-gang-2148193

20 Julie Corman Interview (March 2017)

21 Tagline for Fighting Mad

22 John Boorman and Walter Donohue, eds. Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers. Faber and Faber: Boston, 1992. p. 169.

23 IMDB, “Trivia,” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074529/

24 Chris Nashawaty. Crab Monsters, Teenage Caveman, and , Roger Corman: King of the B Movie. Abrams: New York, 2013. p. 149

147 Chapter 6: Citizens Band, Last Embrace (1977-1979)

Everybody is somebody else.1

Citizen’s Band

After breaking into film working for Corman, Demme followed the classic New World talent trajectory by graduating to a more prestigious better funded project. Demme remembers: “I got a chance to do a non-exploitation movie with Citizens Band, which was a movie they were doing at Paramount.”2

Freddie Fields, a legendary talent manager and agent who had become an independent producer, in post-production on Lipstick (1976), his first effort, was looking for new projects. Writer Paul Brickman3 showed him an article on the CB craze in the

Village Voice, which cited a number of factors driving this increase, mostly emanating from the negative impact on commercial truckers from the new, lower national speed limit of 55mph and, although the oil crisis that prompted it was over, fuel availability. CB radios aided finding well stocked service stations, spreading the word about speed traps and organizing protest blockades and convoys. Consequently, CB sales more than doubled from $175 million in 1973 to $500 million in 1976.4

Agreeing with Brickman that this would make a good film, Fields hired him to write a screenplay. Paramount, where Fields had a deal, was definitely interested.

Brickman finished a draft that Fields sent to any number of directors. Reading the script,

Demme loved it. He signed on to direct, even though he had seen a list of twenty-three directors who had already passed on the project. Demme and Brickman worked together

148 on the script finally producing a version that Paramount producer David Picker and

Production Chief Richard Sylbert were enthusiastic about and the production was greenlit.5

Given that the script had been turned down by so many directors, one would have guessed that Brickman would be relieved and happy that Demme not only had signed on but was very excited about the project. Which was not the case. Brickman didn’t hide his negative feelings for Demme, from the very beginning: “Paul and I didn’t work well together at all. First of all, he was horrified that a Roger Corman director was being attached to his screenplay. I was so taken with the script, that I had a natural inclination to get along, but that was not possible because of Paul’s views on me.”6

The tension mounted after shooting began. Brickman had a very different idea as to how the movie should work. After each take, Brickman would debrief the actors asking them why they had played the scene the way they did and suggesting different approaches. Demme felt backed into a corner: “Unfortunately, after two days of shooting on location it became necessary for me to insist Paul leave town….” Banning Brickman from the set didn’t help their relationship.7

Fields, once among the most powerful Hollywood agents, was producing Looking

For Mr. Goodbar directed by at much the same time (Citizens Band began shooting September 1976, Looking November 1976). Brooks, a powerful and important director, banned Fields from his set. Really wanting to put his stamp on

Citizen’s Band, Fields interfered a lot, constantly wanting to change everything and arguing with Demme.8

149 But Demme was shooting little coverage anyway. Controlling Fields matched

Demme’s aesthetic ambition of “… the idea of less editing, of editing in the camera – as so many of the films that I’d admired over the years had done…” 9 The budget at $2 million was very low for a studio film but over three times the $600,000 budget Demme had for Fighting Mad.

Fields continued to be difficult and dissatisfied with Demme, fighting with him throughout production. After the shoot was finished, when the film was in post- production, the arguments between Fields and Demme only got worse, until finally, when

Demme was supervising the mix, Fields fired him. Demme didn’t even know about this until a friend told him that, “ called Freddie and said ‘I hear you fired the director who is making a movie for you. You better get him back, because directors won’t want to work with you if you get that reputation.”10 Demme was rehired, finishing the film.

Set in the small Nebraska town of Union, Citizens Band is much more character driven than narrative dependent. There are two distinct plots that never tie together.

Spider (), local CB coordinator, lives with his difficult dad (Robert

Blossoms), a retired truck driver, who is almost comatose except when he is contacted by old pals on the CB when he comes alive as “Papa Thermodyne.” His much missed ex- girlfriend () is now dating his more successful brother (Bruce McGill).

During a storm, Spider responds to a distress call from crashed trucker Chrome

Angel (Chuck Napier). Even though he asked them not to come, both his wives Dallas

Angel () and Portland Angel (Marcia Rodd), unaware of each other,

150 show up. He’s holed up in the RV of his friend, Hot Coffee (Alex Elias). He helped her purchase the vehicle because she is a hooker and being mobile makes it easier to hook up with trucker clients.

There is the real world in this film but it is layered against the fantasy world of of radio transmissions, folks communicating by CB radios, with pseudonymous handles that hide their identities. “Everybody in this town is somebody they're not supposed to be,” observes Spider. Getting more and more outraged by CB operators abusing the rules,

Spider goes vigilante against the most outrageous. These include “The Red Baron,” a raving neo-Nazi, “The Priest” who is constantly sermonizing, and “The Hustler,” a teenage boy who talks dirty. Soon after his campaign has begun, “Blood,” a new CB operator on the scene, begins to threaten his life.

Instead of treating CB radios as just a gimmick, Brickman’s script and Demme’s direction took them seriously, exploring the ways they impact the culture, especially as to how they provide gave the opportunity to anonymously engage in fantasies, pretending to be other than who they are. The CB radio talk helps add another dimension to many of the characters.

The action in most visual media is immediate, which offers limited opportunities for individual introspection. In theater, the only ways to share characters’ inner thoughts are disruptive – monologues, asides or by direct address to the audience – all of which disrupt the narrative flow. Voiceovers in film are a way of conveying characters’ thoughts, though many filmmakers don’t like them because they are too much a literary technique which disrupts the cinema. Therefore, a character’s private thoughts are usually

151 offered by performance or how a scene is shot – camera angles, cutting, shot placement and sound.

There are films in which characters have a secret or double life such as

Hitchcock’s Psycho, ’s Crimes of Passion, De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and

Jack Smight’s No Way to Treat a Lady. All of these involve role playing, the characters deliberately creating an alter ego. Similarly, superheroes have their separate secret identities. In a film like The Captain’s Paradise, about a bigamist, viewers know what is going on, even though those within the narrative have no idea.

Directly addressing the audience is the most obvious way for characters to break the fourth wall, the invisible and conceptual “wall” separating the film from the audience.

On television George Burns regularly did this on his show with Gracie Allen (1950 -

1958). Both Bob Hope and Bing Crosby did this in the seven films of their Road To… series (1940 -1962). More recently it has been used in films like , High

Fidelity and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Characters deliberately share what they are thinking with the audience – but, of course, the audience knows what is going on. It obviously ruptures the organic integrity of the narrative as well as disrupting viewers’ suspension of disbelief.

Citizens Band is all straight ahead narrative, no breaking the fourth wall or monologues. Still, in a unique way, we learn more about some of the characters than usual. Listening in as they broadcast on their CB radios provides viewers access to their fantasies, often revealing who they would like to be or do – a teacher who imagines herself as an erotic seductress; an angry man who wants to kill his brother. These secret

152 lives are not gossip fodder or tabloid revelations; they speak to the character’s identity.

Without disrupting the narrative flow or stepping outside it, this information enriches and expands characters.

Interconnected and self-contained, in ways the film is like Slacker where the camera follows one character until it picks up another. Similarly, there is Max Ophüls’s

La Ronde (1950), which offers ten encounters with each scene including a character from the previous episode. Everyone is tied together, every relationship connected to every other relationship. Because of their CBs, many of the characters have two identities. The already small town is crowded and self-referential, sharing many of the characters unspoken dreams. A community both of real people and imagined identities.

Citizen’s Band is Demme at his most exuberant, evidencing his affection for all the characters. He sketches a series of relationships: between father and son, between brothers, between real-life ex-lovers and imagined lovers. All these relationships resonate more deeply, as they are played out not only in the real world but over CB radios.

Citizens Band is an ode to America’s contradictions and its mundane incompatibilities.

Although publicly there is excessive talking, yelling, and arguing, often what is missing is genuine communication. When traditional family, emotional or love obligations and feelings, are illustrated in this film, they are mostly dysfunctional –familial, romantic, professional - but void of accepted standards of behavior and normal expectations, the world of CB radios is freeing.

One of the triumphs of the film is how our perceptions of the characters are undercut and expanded at the end. Hot Coffee, the hooker, invites both wives to join their

153 husband and her in the RV. “Papa Themodyne” disappears leading to a wide scale search for him. The reveals are very similar to that of Caged Heat. In the beginning the characters are hardened women prisoners. But as the story unfolds they take great risks to support each other, which humanizes them allowing for genuine connections to develop.

Having come to know each as individuals, when the escaped prisoners break back in to successfully free their friends, the happy ending is not just unexpected but deeply cathartic.

The resolutions in Citizen’s Band are as surprising and expansive. After pizza is delivered and consumed, Hot Coffee negotiates a new arrangement where the bigamist trucker and both wives will try living together. The search not only brings the entire community including Hot Coffee. Chrome Angel, both wives, the Priest, the Hustler and

Red Baron in common purpose but reminds Spider and Blood that first and foremost they are brothers. Citizens Band is a celebration of humanity and possibility where redemption is not dependent on spiritual conversion but human interaction.

Demme remembers that the “…studio, the producers, everybody, was so convinced that it was going to be an unqualified success…that their attitude was “get it together and get it out there, ready to count the receipts.” 11 Except when it opened nobody came.

Subsequently, after the film had already opened, without his knowledge or input, the studio recut the film, taking out Denme’s original ending completely and changing the title to Handle with Care. It still did no business. The missing ending being reinstated after Pauline Kael, in the New Yorker, and Richard Goldstein, in the Village Voice

154 complained, didn’t help. In an effort to find an audience the studio ran it for free on one screen for a week in New York. The theater was packed but only for that week.

The failure was overwhelming for Demme, who speculated that “the bottom-line reason for its commercial failure was that it was about CB radios and the people who use them, which was not a subject of sufficient interest to attract moviegoers.”12 He also worried that those elements that had first attracted him to the script – “…the absence of arbitrary violence…no heavy police presence, no gunfights or car crashes…” actually hurt the effort, leaving it, “…a film without a hook.”13

Except Citizens Band is a wonderful film, a uniquely positive rural comedy. Set in a very small town rather than chafe at its limitations or lament its narrow traditionalism the film celebrates the community. Initially the characters seem suppressed, unhappy and as narrow in their thinking as they are in the lives they are living. Yet as it unfolds rather than drifting into sarcasm or focusing down on the community’s blandness, the film instead becomes expansive in its view. The ending finds all the different residents coming together to support each other in a shared effort. The rich rendering of the characters as multi-layered and complex individuals, the renewed sense of family as well as the trucker’s complicated romantic relationships marks it as an important work in Demme’s

Americana humanist series.

The aspects of the Demme came to doubt are crucial to its achievement. Changing them as he suggests would have stripped the film of its identity, making it into a more typical and uninteresting studio effort. Ironically, the strategy of adding in and emphasizing the expected generic motifs to make it more commercial is essentially the

155 same that Goldie Hawn embraced when she recut Swing Shift.

Colombo: Murder Under Glass (1978)

After the box office failure of Citizen’s Band, Demme couldn’t get a major Hollywood directing job or, as he put it, “I couldn't get .”14 Eventually, this changed because of the film. Peter Falk, the star of the award-winning TV series Columbo, loved it. The series’ success gave him enough pull to get Demme hired to direct an episode in 1978. A strong episode Columbo: Murder Under Glass featured Louis Jordan in a graceful performance as the guest star and villain. The script won writer Robert Van Scoyk an

Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1979.

Demme was perfectly suited for directing Columbo, the eccentricities of the lead being a natural fit. As did his preference for narratives driven by character and dialogue more than action. Outside of helping keep his struggling career alive, there isn’t much of an argument to be made for this as a Demme work.

The international resonance of a hit American TV show should never be underestimated. Demme told about how, while traveling with Jimmy Carter for a documentary he was making, he was constantly introduced by the former President as the

“man who directed Columbo,” rather than the man who directed The Silence of the Lambs or Philadelphia, which were far more popular. 15

Last Embrace (1979)

It begins with an ancient warning. It ends at the edge of Niagara Falls. In between there are five murders. Solve the mystery. Or die trying.16

156 –The Last Embrace tagline

Producers Michael Taylor and Dan Wigutow also saw and were wowed by

Citizens Band. They sent Demme the Last Embrace, a script by David Shaber based on the book The Thirteenth Man by Murray Bloom, that they had optioned. was already attached to the project. Demme really liked the script, though he thought it needed a lot of work. The story was based on an almost completely unknown slice of turn of the century history in New York City’s Jewish community. He figured this was an opportunity to make a film like Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, using “…a startling historical insight as the theme of an historical thriller.”17 Demme was very excited about working with Roy Scheider, having really enjoyed his work in films like The French

Connection, Klute (both 1971), Jaws (1975), and All that Jazz (1979).

Last Embrace is about a government agent (Scheider) who is traumatized after losing his wife (Sandy McLeod) in an unfortunate shoot out. Recovered, he finds his agency uninterested in his returning to work. Just then he uncovers a dark mysterious conspiracy that is rooted in turn of the century New York Jewish community. There is a mysterious vendetta that has already claimed several victims, he seems to be next.

Demme signed on enthusiastically, planning on working with Shaver to really get the script shaped up. A window had opened in star Roy Scheider’s schedule, however so to accommodate him the film was rushed into production. This proved to be very unfortunate for the project. There was no time for the work on the script Demme felt it needed. Demme said, “We shot the film hoping to lick the remaining story problems and we didn’t.” 18

157 Scheider was also a problem as director and star ended up fighting throughout the shoot. Instead of the Bogart-type presence Demme had been hoping for, Scheider’s performance at best was low key and unfocused. Demme was hoping for Hitchcock but got a bad TV movie. He acknowledged that in “…the end, it’s a movie that I consider – and I’m not alone in this – deeply, deeply flawed…” 19

Last Embrace foreshadows some of the territory Demme will explore in Silence of the Lambs and The Manchurian Candidate. Far more traditionally rendered, the film is very disappointing, uneven, and awkwardly paced. Simply put, the film doesn’t work on any level. As with Fighting Mad in The Last Embrace, you can feel Demme pulling back on his creative instincts in order to work within the genre’s rules. When he ignores hesitations and trusts his sensibilities in Silence of the Lambs, pushing both genre traditions and classic cinema rules, he changes and expands the filmic vocabulary.

158 Endnotes

1 Citizen’s Band Tagline

2 Demme in conversation (1988)

3 Brickman went on to write films like Break Training (1977) and Deal of the Century (1983) as well as write and direct Risky Business (1983) and Men Don’t Leave (1990).

4 Radio Shack history http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/history.html

5 Robert E. Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews. University of Mississippi Press: Jackson, 2009. p. 8

6 Conversation with Jonathan Demme, Paul Le Mat, Film Society of Center, February 1, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkepEB1ObY

7 Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews. p. 20

8 Rob Feld. “The DGA Interview Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015, 26-27.

9John Boorman and Walter Donohue, eds. Projections: A forum for Filmmakers. Farber and Faber: Boston, 1992.

10 Rob Feld. “The DGA Interview Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015, 26-27.

11 Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews. p. 21

12 Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews. p. 9

159 13 Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews. p. 9

14 Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews. p. 9

15 Conversation with Jonathan Demme, Paul Le Mat, Film Society of , February 1, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkepEB1ObY

16 Last Embrace Tagline

17 Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews, p. 10.

18 Kapsis. Jonathan Demme Interviews, p. 10.

19 Boorman and Donohue, Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers, p. 175.

160 Chapter 7: Melvin and Howard, Who Am I This Time? (1980 - 1982)

Poor Melvin. All he wanted was to be Milkman of the Month. Instead, he lost his job, his truck, and his wife. Then Howard Hughes left him $156,000,000.1 –Melvin and Howard Tagline

Howard Hughes died in April, 1976. The ‘Mormon Will’ was thrown out of Clark County Superior Court in June, 1978. Lynda is a housewife and lives with her husband Bob in Garden Grove, California. Melvin and Bonnie live in Willard, , where Melvin drives a delivery truck for Coors Beer. A will acceptable to the courts has yet to be found.2 –Melvin and Howard Epilogue

Melvin and Howard tells the mostly true story of classic loser-dreamer Melvin

Dummar (Paul Le Mat), a milk man always financially behind. One night in the desert he picks up (Jason Robards), who tells him he is Howard Hughes. Dummar scoffs.

When Hughes dies a will mysteriously ends up on Dummar’s desk leaving him a chunk of

Hughes estate.

Melvin and Howard, combining character, narrative, theme and setting with an understated visual style, is a truly eccentric effort that celebrates American culture through the oddest of stories. Although a box office failure, it was still a game changer for Demme, receiving rave reviews and earning honors from the industry (including two Academy

Awards and a Golden Globe) at film festivals and from critic groups. Pauline Kael, an early and consistent champion of the director, raised the bar, writing:

Jean Renoir instinctively understood what he had in common with characters very different from himself, and when his people are at their most ludicrous – when they are self-pitying or infuriatingly contentious – he puts us inside their skins, so we’re laughing at ourselves. Asked to explain how it was that he didn’t separate his characters into the good ones and the bad ones, Renoir’s answer was always

161 ‘Because everyone has his reasons,’ and in his best films we don’t need those reasons explained – we intuit them. The young American director Jonathan Demme has some of this same gift, and his lyric comedy Melvin and Howard…is an almost flawless act of sympathetic imagination.3

The idea for Melvin and Howard originated when producer Don Phillips watched a

TV interview with real-life Melvin Dummar in 1976 shortly after a will supposedly hand written by Howard Hughes surfaced naming Dummar an heir. Thinking this would be an ideal story for a film, Phillips secured the rights by getting in touch with Dummar’s attorney. Partnering with producer Art Linson, with whom he had just worked on Car

Wash, a Universal project, they approached the studio. Ned Tanen, the president of

Universal’s film division, was so interested he offered it to Bo Goldman, who had won the best adapted screenplay award for Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the

Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). “Goldman was unexpectedly moved by Dummar’s circumstances, and his humble beginnings. For Goldman, the story was one of survival, and the disappointment or fruition of people’s dreams.”4 Mike Nichols was attached as director but when he dropped out it became Demme’s project. Demme and Phillips were both excited about using Paul Le Mat. As Demme remembers: “My sense of Melvin – on the basis of

Bo Goldman’s script – was that he was a beautiful naïf in the best sense of the word. So, it was very important for me to have Paul in that part.”5

Late one night, Melvin Dummar (LeMat), driving his truck home on Highway 95 through the desert, picks up a man he finds passed out alongside the road. When the stranger (Jason Robards) awakes, he insists that Dummar drive him to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in lieu of a hospital. Along the way, the stranger claims to be Howard

162 Hughes. Dummar laughs at the absurdity of the statement, gives him a ride, and drops him off at his destination, thinking nothing more of it.

Dummar returns from the road trip to his wife Lynda () and job as a milkman. Lynda wants a better life, while Dummar is content with just getting along.

When another of their vehicles is repossessed, she’s had enough and leaves him and Darcy, their daughter (Elizabeth Cheshire). She ends up dancing in a strip club, and of course he pursues her. She rejects him. But learning she is pregnant, they reconcile and then remarry.

A pronouncedly pregnant Lynda and Melvin repeat their vows in a Las Vegas wedding chapel but after paying the fees they are basically broke. But then, a Mad

Magazine version of romantic fulfillment occurs – in one of the more bizarre wedding sequences ever, they go to work as witnesses at others’ weddings earning ten dollars for each couple. More than Fellini-esque, what follows is Melvin and Lynda kissing each of the brides and grooms, with Melvin hitting on them and Lynda being hit on. At the end of the sequence, the chapel owner says: “That’s 12 couples at ten dollars each – 120 dollars – and may I say you were wonderful! You’re so in love – it’s good for business. Come back as witnesses anytime.”

Back home with the newborn baby and his older sister, Lynda applies for and becomes a contestant on Easy Street, a TV game show hosted by Robert Ridgley.

Originally it was going to be the real TV game show, Let’s Make A Deal (1963 –present), with the filmmaker having approached the show’s master of ceremonies, Monty Hall. But when it came time to shoot the sequence, Hall’s lawyers protested the use of the show’s name so a new game show titled Easy Street was invented and used instead.6

163 In films, television quiz shows are almost always offered as metaphors for the country’s hopeless addiction to consumerism, the hollowest version of the Great American

Dream – something for nothing. In Melvin and Howard, however, the concentration is on

Lynda, the individual being able to access and follow her dreams. Here, dreaming is an act of resistance to realism and cynicism, a declaration of individual possibility. In most other

Hollywood directors’ hands, such a show would be mocked or played for satire. In Melvin,

Demme gets that the show itself is a magic door behind which another life can be found.

After one of the more memorable tap dances in film history, Lynda wins the biggest prize, which provides life changing possibilities. She is ready to grab them and move forward pragmatically with Melvin, Darcy, and the baby. True to form, Melvin’s eyes are not on the ground, not on the day-to-day of the actual gritty future of Lynda and his tomorrow, but on an imagined fantastic future. He is still expecting to win the biggest prize

– which isn’t in any way defined or clear. But having had some luck, Dummar, determined to ride it further, ridiculously purchases a car and boat believing that somehow this will have positive results.

Realizing that not only has Melvin not changed but won’t, Lynda leaves him again, this time taking both children. She is a wife, a game show contestant, a runaway wife, a stripper, an ex-wife, and then a wife again. But she is also always a mother, a provider, with responsibilities. And she knows Melvin is hopeless.

Dummar then marries Bonnie (Pamela Reed), the milk company’s payroll clerk.

Soon Melvin and Bonnie are in Utah running a gas station. We don’t even need details to know things are not going smoothly. Hounded to pay for a gas delivery he figures: “Easter

1 64 . Oughta pump a thousand gallons. Give ‘em a check tomorrow, we'll have it covered by Monday.” Despite these economic setbacks, Bonnie and Melvin have a good healthy marriage.

But Lynda is not out of the picture. At night he calls her. At the end of the film, dropping off their two children to spend the summer with Bonnie and Melvin, she reminisces, “I do miss it sometimes, Melvin – it was always exciting. Lousy – but exciting.” Then they passionately kiss. In an almost inversion of the bigamous triangle in

Citizens Band, here the two different legal marriages bleed into each other.

When Howard Hughes dies, a mysterious stranger leaves an envelope with a hand written will in it on the gas station desk.

Director Mike Nichols, who was attached to the project and had worked on the script with Goldman, achieved success by doing improv with and directing a long string of award-winning Broadway hits, including Barefoot in the Park (1963), LUV

(1964), The Odd Couple (1965), Plaza Suite (1968), and Prisoner of Second Avenue (1972)

(all but LUV were written by ).

His film directorial debut was ’s corrosive Who's

Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), which won five , followed by The

Graduate (1967), a box office smash that won him a Best Director Oscar. His next two films, Catch 22 and Carnal Knowledge (1971) received more mixed receptions. Then came

Day of the Dolphin (1973) and The Fortune (1975), which were both failures. Nichols worked on the Melvin and Howard script but after Jack Nicholson wasn’t available to play

Melvin, he soon left the project

165 Talking to Demme about another project, Thom Mount, ’

President, raved about the script. Demme read and fell in love with it. Mount’s enthusiasm was not shared by all – a copy of the first shooting script has the comment, “This is a TV

Movie script that everyone involved thinks is mediocre.”7

It is worth taking a moment to consider that, though Demme and Nichols focused on some of the same territory, there was a pronounced difference in their attitudes and thematic ambitions. Sardonic and satiric, Nichols’ style was cold, sharp, and cruel, whereas

Demme was warm, embracing, and affectionate. Considering the tone and direction of

Nichols’ work, as well as his New York cocktail-circuit wit and social butchery-as-satire, it’s not a stretch to say his version would have been very different. David Thomson asks about Nichols, “Is there anything more substantial than a high reputation and a producer’s instinct for what smart people want to see? Is there soul, intelligence, theme or character holding these films together.…”8 This entire work argues that Demme’s filmography is defined by a shared soulfulness and authorial enthusiasm.

Demme clearly believes Dummar’s story, but regardless the film’s premise is that it was wrong to dismiss it out of hand. Not a political work – an attack on the inequalities of

American jurisprudence or the stacked odds in favor of the powerful – it is a celebration of dreams and dreamers. More Walter Mitty than Joe Hill, Dummar, never practical, is very much a stereotypical loser. But what is a loser but an unreconstructed dreamer? No matter what happens, no matter how often his dreams go south, it isn’t that he doesn’t stop but that he doesn’t even slow down. Melvin and Howard could hardly be called conventional or a traditional Hollywood portrayal of the working class. Telling the story of a failed

166 dreamer, it avoids the predictable trajectory of Hollywood films like Death of a Salesman

(1951), On The Waterfront (1954), and Marty (1955), where any hope for members of the working class is doomed to be tragically overwhelmed by life’s circumstances. Talking to

Ethan Hawke recently, we marveled at how fresh and unique Melvin and Howard still is, there being no other film that immediately comes to mind exactly like it.9

In almost anyone else’s hands, this story would have been too predictable, being either a painful maudlin tragedy or a mocking buffoonish class-based farce. Instead,

Demme created an oddly sweet, deeply American comedy grounded in the day-to-day, where even if hopes and dreams do not triumph neither do they completely succumb.

The film is set in the real blue-collar world of trailers, hard hats, and pickup trucks

– a place of mundane jobs, repossessed vehicles, and constant debt. Melvin is not a

Hollywood-chic, arm’s length cartoon depiction of the working-class. Neither contemporary noble savages or grotesque Ma and Pa Kettle caricatures the characters are depicted with respect and understanding. Melvin, demonstrating some strengths and far more weaknesses, is always true to his character – a blue-collar hustler who is never really smart enough to resist his own dreams, continually falling for his own line. Neither a larger than life hero or villain, he is at least well-intentioned, sweet, and charming.

Hopeless dreamers and consistent losers have the advantage of knowing the action is in the imagination, not reality. If crushed by each and every failure they would be worse than fools and the film would be as artificial and dishonest as if they finally succeeded, fulfilling their dreams. When a reporter asks, “Melvin, did you ever believe a dream like this could come true?” He acknowledges the obvious, “In the dream, there's no hassle.”

167 The ending provides redemption – not through pathetic resignation but through his acceptance, awareness, and understanding. “Melvin Dummar's never going to see 156 million dollars – in fact he's never going to see a dime.” But it was enough that,

“…Howard Hughes sang Melvin Dummar's song. Howard Hughes sang ‘Santa's Souped

Up Sleigh.’”

The ending is transcendent – among the greatest moments in Demme’s work – a scene as simple yet profound as in Casablanca when Rick and Captain Renault walk off together. Melvin, driving through the desert after a rain, a scruffy Howard Hughes next to him. Exhausted and needing to rest, Melvin finally lets Howard drive. Smiling and driving,

Hughes begins to sing:

‘Pack up all my cares and woes Singin' low Here I go Bye bye blackbird…’

A hopeless and doomed dreamer and one of the richest and saddest men in the world together driving through the desert towards the dawn. The Las Vegas that the two of them drive toward is not the typical personification of mammon, but just another imagined oasis on the journey. It isn’t that tomorrow will be better than today; it is that it could be and, if nothing else, at the very least it is coming – new, fresh, unknown, and loaded with possibility.

Distribution/Exhibition

Despite their early anticipations of the film’s commercial possibilities, Universal had big

168 problems with the finished film. A president of distribution fell asleep six minutes into the studio’s screening. Some thought it wouldn’t even do well at drive-ins and shouldn’t be released. Demme reached out to , who helped get it into the Venice Film

Festival, and , who helped get it into the New York Film Festival.10 As

Demme recalls:

The two festivals said yes to it. The head of the wanted it too. The movie was sent over to France to be subtitled. I got a call at 5 am from the Cannes Film Festival asking, ‘Where is the print of Melvin and Howard?’ I called the studio and they told me, ‘We don't want your movie in Cannes, because then it will be known as a festival movie and we don’t make any movies to be festival movies. So we’ve locked up the print in . And you're not going on the trip.’11

Phillips asked the studio to put Melvin and Howard in the New York and Venice festivals. After being turned down, he protested until studio leaders eventually agreed to a meeting. Facing a table with about a dozen executives seated around it, Phillips argued that it would be:

…smart and wise to open in New York and Venice, because then we’d cover both bases, North America and Europe. They were unimpressed and uninterested, which drove Phillips mad. Jumping up on the table he took off his shoes, then his socks. “I took my shirt off. I took my jeans off. There I was in my underwear, yelling and screaming and walking around. And I told the boys that I was going to show them my ugly balls and my dick if they did not agree to put Melvin and Howard in the Festival. 12

Reluctantly, the executives went along. Melvin and Howard was chosen for opening night at the New York Film Festival. in the New York Times said there was no better film for that slot than “Demme’s sharp, engaging, very funny, anxious

169 comedy, Melvin and Howard, a satiric expression of the American Dream in the closing years of the 20th century, as old debts are being called in and life has become a series of repossessions.13

Offering that, on the basis of just Citizen’s Band and Melvin and Howard, Demme was “a social satirist in the tradition of Preston Sturges. He’s a filmmaker with a fondness for the absurdities of our existence and for people who have no idea that they're ‘little’ or teetering on the edge of disaster.”14

Though the film was another commercial disaster, it earned extensive and widespread critical praise, including honors from the Boston, NYC and LA Film Critics groups and three Academy Award nominations (winning two) and four Golden Globe

Awards (winning one). Divorced from commercial context, these awards lend enormous industry validity to the recipient’s career. Awarded for a film he directed, the accolades also accrued to Demme, even though he was not nominated. (Filmmaker John Sayles once told me that after both of his Academy Award nominations, the price he commanded for writing screenplays significantly increased. In many cases, he was sure those who hired him had not even seen the films in question, but were just aware of the honors earned.)15

After Melvin and Howard, Demme was in an interesting position. Though he had created a unique, enduring American masterpiece, it didn’t mean much in the day-to-day reality of living a Hollywood industry career.

Who Am I This Time?

The awards and critical praise for Melvin and Howard were good for Demme’s career, but

170 the box office earnings were not. Over the next couple of years, Demme worked on developing some feature film projects but none came to fruition. When offered an

American Playhouse television adaptation of best-selling author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s story

Who Am I This Time? just ten days before it was to begin shooting, he took it. Shot on

16mm, it aired in February 1982 for PBS' American Playhouse series.

Set in Middle America, the work is a tour de force about theater, acting, and personality. Helene Shaw () traveling from town to town working for the phone company has no social life. When George Johnson (Demme favorite Robert

Ridgely) comes in to complain about a bill, he invites her to try out for the local version of

A Streetcar Named Desire. Hesitantly she does, offering a flat emotionless reading for

Stella. Almost crying she says she has no idea where to go inside herself to find that character. Just then, local hardware store clerk, the usually nearly autistic Harry Nash

(Christopher Walken), impatiently bursts into the room. Only coming alive when he acts, he’s there to read for Stanley. Helene helps out by reading as Stella.

Nash doesn’t read Stanley but explodes into him. His performance is so powerfully intense it ignites something in Helene, who grows into Stella, touching passions and emotions inside herself she had never felt or even imagined. Beautifully shot and skillfully edited the scene is uniquely evocative. Demme keeps the camera moving in framing close- ups while making clear the geography of the room.

One thing books have over movies is that it’s much easier to write of a character’s startling personality transformation than it is to show it – to have an actor portray a truly transformative moment. There are a few great cinematic moments in which a character

171 shows as remarkable a change as expressed in fiction. Broderick Crawford’s intense transformative speech in which he goes from naïve sincere hick to politician in All the

King's Men (1949) is one. Andy Griffith doesn’t exactly go through a transformation but his first charismatic performance in A Face In The Crowd (1957), for that film to work, has to be otherworldly. And it is.

The scene with Harry and Helene is easy to write, it’s just words. Harry has to not only do Stanley but do a great Stanley. Helene, at first hesitantly but then with growing passion, has to find her inner Stella. Walken and Sarandon both hit it out of the ball park.

The audition is explosive. During rehearsals, Harry completely wows and unintentionally woos Helene. Harry is actually a shy, clumsy introvert – but as Stanley he is on fire.

Helene falls hard for him. Not just because of who he is but because of who she becomes with him. People warn Helene that in reality he is not this guy he is playing, but she simply doesn’t believe them. During the play she comes to realize the difference and distance between man and performance. At the end of the last performance she gives him a copy of

Romeo and Juliet. Consequently, he reads Romeo to her Juliet. Not in real life but in a theatrical context. Continuing to find plays to share with him she keeps their romance alive.

As already noted, Demme is obsessed with identity. It is worth thinking about that for much of his career he took what was offered. He didn’t want to do Crazy Mama but was enthusiastic about Citizens Band and Melvin and Howard. He joined this production just ten days before shooting. Swing Shift was offered to him then taken away. He was working on another project when he fell in love with the script for Something Wild. When

172 he was advocating to direct a different screenplay, the Orion executives suggested he read the book Silence of Lambs and think about doing that instead. The Truth about Charlie and

Manchurian Candidate were projects he was actively involved in developing. Each of these films has identity as a crucial theme. Who we are, who we think we are, and how we are perceived are crucial – the CB handles in Citizen’s Band; who is Howard in Melvin and

Howard? From the title The Truth About Charlie alone; and Manchurian Candidate is a classic investigation of identity.

Early in the film, when Nash is approached about being in the new play, he asks,

“Who am I this time?” At the end, when they are asked about being in a new play together,

Helene asks, “Who are we this time?” In considering Demme’s overall body of work, the question, Who Am I This Time? immediately leads to the questions: Who am I? Who are we this time? These questions are at the core of Demme’s work. Melvin and Howard followed by Who Am I This Time? represent a high point in Demme’s humanist Americana films.

Two quirky films, both celebrating the working life and featuring the kinds of characters not usually featured much less expected to carry films. Finally seeming to be on the right track, there were no indications that the rockiest point of his career was just ahead.

173 Endnotes

1 Melvin and Howard tagline

2 Melvin and Howard epilogue

3 Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael on Jonathan Demme. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 1988

4 Demme in conversation on Goldman, Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

5 Demme in conversation on LeMat, Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

6 Easy Street

7 My personal copy of Melvin and Howard shooting script

8 David Thompson. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

9 in conversation (March, 2018)

10 Demme in conversation (1988)

11 Demme in conversation (1988)

12 Demme (on Don Phillips) in conversation (1988)

13 Vincent Canby. “What the Oscars Are Overlooking.” New York Times, March 29, 1981 https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/29/movies/film-view-what-the-oscars- are- overlooking.html

174 14 Vincent Canby. “What the Oscars Are Overlooking.” New York Times, March 29, 1981

15 John Sayles in conversation

175 Chapter 8: Swing Shift, Stop Making Sense (1981–1985)

When America marched off to war the women marched into the factory. From then on…nothing was the same.1

–Swing Shift Tagline

Swing Shift should have been Demme’s breakthrough project providing a thematic tent pole for this study. It had all the makings for a quintessential Demme film – a woman-centric story set during WWII focused on women joining the labor force, it was about a disparate group of individuals who come together. The script featured a number of interesting, well defined prominent characters of both men and women. The cast included not just a terrifically talented star – Goldie Hawn, so simpatico to Demme’s sensibility that she fought to get him on the film – but an outstanding ensemble –

Christine Lahti, , Kurt Russell, , and .

The film is concerned with the role of women in the work force during WWII.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 the U. S. Military had about 1,800,000 personnel. Within two years the number had expanded to over

9,000,000. At the same time, the country’s economy still shaking off the Great

Depression leap frogged into a war economy. Driven by government spending, there was tremendous growth in manufacturing, construction, ship building and mining creating a pressing need for workers. Millions of men joined the military leaving many needed jobs unfilled. Desperately needed to take over those jobs, women were urged to enter the work force to fill them.

176 Rosie the Riveter, a created character, ended up as one of the most prominent and effective icons during the war years, encouraging women to take jobs. They did, with enormous numbers of women leaving the home and going to work. Every area of the economy – from office jobs to agriculture to the military to industrial – employed women, from the areas where they had traditional work to those sectors that had long been considered for men only. Essential to the war effort, the relatively new and already understaffed aviation industry was expected to achieve near impossible production output. The number of planes the government needed was extraordinary. Given that before the war barely 1% of its employees were female, the industry’s aggressive recruitment of women was equally challenging. Successful even more than expected, with over 300,000 women hired, the work force peaked at 65% female.2

Swing Shift had an unusually tortured journey from script to screen. Beginning as an original script by writer (Slap Shot, [1977]; uncredited North Dallas

Forty [1979]; Ordinary People [1980]), it was purchased by Paramount where it went through extensive re-writes. Unhappy with the changes, Dowd sued the studio to get it back, leading to years of litigation.3 When Paramount put it in turnaround, it landed at

United Artists. Goldie Hawn, already attached as executive producer and star, not liking that situation, finally managed to get it to Warner Bros., which had produced two of her most recent films: Private Benjamin (1980) and Best Friends (1982).

Well established in the industry, Hawn had leading roles in such hits as Shampoo

(Columbia, 1974), Foul Play (Paramount, 1976), and Seems Like Old Times

(Rastar/Columbia, 1979). Still, Private Benjamin – a project Hawn was going to star in as

177 well as produce with writers , and Harvey Miller – was turned down by every studio in Hollywood. It only sold when Hawn’s agent, sitting next to Robert Shapiro on a plane, somehow convinced the Warner Bros. head of production to buy it.4 Still some executives at Warner bros. were very reluctant to produce the film. It was only when Goldie Hawn threatened to leave that they agreed.5 The film became such a major hit that it put Hawn in a position of considerable power at Warner Bros.

Hawn, having just seen and really loving Melvin and Howard, and loving the script, recalls that she just knew that Demme was the guy to direct Swing Shift. “Straight from New York, this guy has tremendous style…. I loved him instantly – the way he looks, the way he talks, the way he thinks.” 6

Demme was excited to work with Hawn but was also personally invested in the project. As he recalls, “my grandmother, my father’s mother Edith Castle, was a Rosie the Riveter! She was a nurse who, when the war came, they were needing people at

Grumman to build a certain kind of fighter plane that they were making…so she went to work on the assembly line. One of the characters is named Edith as an homage to her.” 7

Though Demme always gives major credit to Dowd, he brought on Bo Goldman

(Melvin and Howard) and Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) to do rewrites, substantially changing it.8 Still, the WGA awarded Dowd sole screenwriter credit which she didn’t take, being so unhappy with the film that she used the moniker Rob Morton (which she had also used for Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, another project she initiated but eventually exited).9

There were some concerns about Swing Shift’s box office potential, both because

178 of the story and because it wasn’t perceived as the kind of role audiences wanted to see

Hawn playing. “They wanted her in hilarious comedies. But because she was such a corporate asset, they green-lit it. We shot it.” Demme recalls, noting that actual production was a “lovey-dovey” experience.10

After the film was finished, Hawn and Russell left for a long vacation in Ibiza.

Deep into editing Demme received a call from Bob Shapiro, head of production, who had green-lit the movie. Shapiro said, “Listen Jonathan, I need to see the film and I know it’s months away from when you’re supposed to show it to us, but trust me, I need to see it.”11

Demme let him screen a very rough and incomplete cut, which Shapiro was so excited about that he asked if he could show it to Terry Semel, Studio President and

COO, and Bob Daly, Chairman and Chief Executive. Shapiro’s career was on thin ice at

Warner Bros. because films like Hammett (1982), Love Child (1982), The Escape Artist

(1982), and Five Days One Summer (1982) had been box office disasters. He felt that if he could just show them how terrific Swing Shift was, because they hadn’t initially wanted to do it, it would serve him well. Demme agreed. According to Demme, “At the end they're like, ‘Oh my God! Amazing! It’s a fantastic – Oh my God!’” Loving the film they assured Demme that he was clearly headed in the right direction.12 Ironically this didn’t help Shapiro who was fired a short time later.

When Hawn returned, she was furious when she found out that the Warner Bros. executives had seen a cut without her. “She had a shit fit at the fact that I had screened it,” Demme recalls. “She demanded a screening immediately, so she could see what they

179 saw.”13 Demme tried to calm her down, reminding her that they “had been love bugs” during the filming, going to great lengths to explain the situation and why he had screened it. This didn’t help. “She was just enraged…enraged that it had been seen by them before her.”14

Demme vividly remembers Hawn, Russell and Anthea Sylbert, her producing partner, coming into the screening with clipboards. As soon as the screening started lights were being turned on as all were busy making notes. Demme, feeling they weren’t even watching the film, thought, “Oh my God…” When the screening was over they told him they would talk to him later.

Goldie Hawn remembered it quite differently:

It’s six months later and the night of the studio screening of the first cut of the movie Swing Shift. As usual we are all a little anxious as we file into the Warner Bros. screening room. As actors and crew, we have all given our best, but – as with every movie – they [films] are ultimately assembled and made in the editing room, leaving us completely helpless.

…Kurt takes my hand, and we sit side by side as the lights dim and the film begins to flicker at us from the projector. The movie that I was so passionate about, that I first sold to Warner Bros., unfolds before our eyes. I take Kurt's hands. We watch our faces up on the screen, our mouths opening and closing over our lines. There is the airplane factory, the pretty little garden houses and the buzzing, jumping jitterbug bars where I first felt the pangs of love for Kurt. Our costumes look great. My wig doesn't look too bad after all. But something is wrong. Very wrong.15

Although Demme was the director, there was no question that it was Hawn the studio executives wanted to please. Knowing that Semel and Daley loved the film, when the meeting began Demme was not that worried. The notes by Hawn, Sylbert, and

180 Russell distributed, the meeting began with Hawn. As Demme recalls, she was so uptight she was rambling “…blah, blah, blah, scene, that shot you used, and blah, blah, blah and that’s terrible.”16

At first he wasn’t really listening but then to his astonishment Daley and Semel started agreeing her. He couldn’t believe it. “Page after page, the clock is going around, and at a certain point I remember Goldie saying, ‘…And again, here’s a scene – I’m the star of the movie, and the shots of me, there’s no close-ups in this scene! And the same is true of many other scenes.’” Editor Craig McKay pointed out that, “It's a big screen

Goldie.”17

It continued for a long time, going over all the notes. “As the meeting wound down, they began to actually try to be a little bit nicer.” Demme remembered, “They knew they had won the battle and the studio was behind them. When Hawn, finishing with her last note, said, “I guess that's it.” 18

Demme was angry and disgusted. Probably as a gambit to buy time, the studio executives decided to ask for some outside advice. Elaine May was the first one asked.

She was shown the film as Demme had cut it. Afterwards there was a lunch with Hawn,

Sylbert, and Demme. May had never met Demme, but when she walked into the room she figured out who he was and going over asked, “Are you Jonathan? What a wonderful movie, it’s fabulous! Are you guys out of your mind?”

They explained to her their vision of what the film should be, very much along the lines of a Tracy and Hepburn effort. After listening, May responded, “Well all these ideas sound great for some movie, but they go completely against the ecology of this movie as

181 it now exists, and you'll never pull it off.”19

Unfortunately, this turned out to have no impact at all. Demme heard that “Goldie wants to turn it into a love story with Kurt Russell.”20 Never entirely losing hope, Demme concentrated on editing, having control of the film through two cuts and two preview screenings. He was hoping that if he could quickly finish the cut and show it to them, they would change their minds.

What he didn’t realize was the extent to which Hawn genuinely regarded the film as such a complete disaster. She was certain, according to Steve Vineberg’s definitive article, “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood,” that the only hope of saving the project was her involvement.21 Focused on making the film better, Hawn took charge, completely reworking it. Feeling the film needed new scenes, according to Demme, “she had Robert

Towne, such a hack, and, and these weird minions of his writing all these scenes to turn it into a romance.”22 Certainly one of the most acclaimed and respected writers at the time, the involvement of Towne (Shampoo, Chinatown) made Demme irate. Over the three and a half decades of our friendship, Demme almost never said anything negative about anyone. Towne was an exception. Demme thought that because Towne was really on the outs at Warner Bros. because of big fights and lawsuits over Personal Best, he was hoping to work his way “back into their good graces by writing a bunch of – tons of – new scenes to change the movie from a story of feminist solidarity between Goldie and

Christine Lahti into a love story with Kurt Russell.”23 Demme really resented Towne.

They were finishing the film and scoring it when the new Towne’s scenes were delivered. Immediately, Demme thought they were horrible and hated them.

182 Unfortunately, Demme’s deal with the film was so structured that he had to direct these additional scenes in order to continue having control over the editing. They didn’t have to release his version, but they had to give him a cut. Demme put his name upside down on the slate because that’s what he had heard that studio directors did when they were forced to shoot something they didn’t like. William Fracker was the new cinematographer as Tak

Fujimoto had been fired.

As the whole work was being reshaped and recut, these new scenes were edited in where Hawn wanted them. Demme remembers: “It was so painful…and then I had to cut in the scenes that we shot.” All of this in an effort to salvage the work. Given how damaged she had found Demme’s cut, Hawn felt the theatrical release of Swing Shift was the best version that they “…could cobble together under impossible circumstances.”24

There was a screening schedule for two days after the re-shoots finished shooting.

“Craig and I would have time to change the movie. I was thinking, I have to keep playing this by the book. We looked at it, and we already knew it was a catastrophe. We have the screening coming up the next day. Craig asks, ‘JD what are we going do?’” Unwilling to show a film that he couldn’t stand behind, he answered, “Put it all back the way it ought to be.”25

Hawn, Sylbert, and Russell showed up at the screening along with the studio’s new head of production Mark Rosenberg, who had been Demme’s agent until the director fired him. They expected to see the new version featuring new scenes, but what they got was Demme’s cut. He would note that, “if you show a version you don't believe in, you’re fucked! You can’t just go, ‘Well I wanted to do the scene this other way.’ You can't

183 do that. I learned that earlier on. You just have to show your best shot, come what may.”

26

Unsurprisingly, Hawn’s party was enraged. The next day Demme was summoned to Rosenberg’s office. Demme recalls that Rosenberg, sitting behind his desk, had

“…been waiting to fuck me up ever since I fired him. He says, ‘Oh Jonathan, sit down’

(Demme imitating a casual voice).’” Rosenberg then proceeded to let Demme know, in no uncertain terms, that he’d lost his creative control. He shoved Goldie’s notes across the desk.27

Even many years later, Demme was still clearly upset as he pointed out that for a

“filmmaker, in your professional life, it’s hard to imagine anything more devastating because you haven’t just had your work taken away from you. You’ve worked on it for more than two years, first with writers, then through pre-production, then with editors and the composers, etc.”28

Without entirely buying Hawn’s version, Vineberg somewhat sympathetically offers a different perspective on the situation:

Demme asked her to play a woman who sleeps with two men and likes it, a woman who isn’t always glamorous (certainly not in the scene outside the restaurant with Lucky, or the one where she cries when he touches her breast, or the one where she faces Jack and tells him she’s been cheating on him), but is always real. And she did it. But then she got scared and threw the performance away, reverting to something she must have thought would keep her fans happy.29

There are a couple of ways to look at Hawn’s reaction. Concerned with how

184 joining the work force during World War II affected women, by actually changing their societal roles and personal attitudes, in Swing Shift Demme deliberately moved away from the warmth and intimacy of his earlier films. The whole point is how the War profoundly changes things which significantly affects people. Neither as sweet or good humored as in Citizens Band or Melvin and Howard, the characters are deep, complex, and ultimately difficult, making their complicated relationships less romantic and more troubling. Having seen Melvin, Hawn was perhaps expecting a very different movie.

Added to that, Hawn had fallen deeply in love with Kurt Russell. Already feeling overshadowed by Lahti, she was very concerned about how her character came across. In the version she saw, though Lucky and Kay’s romance was central to the action, the film was far more about the women as a group.

Hawn wanted a classic Hollywood romance that captured the magic of two people falling in love, which was not even a concern of Demme’s cut. Consequently, it is not surprising that she had trouble with almost every aspect of the narrative – her character,

Lucky’s character, the overall story, the portrayal of the romance as tainted and convenient, the greater focus on the community of women, the strong performances of the other characters and how all the relationships were presented. Ultimately, the only way to get the film to work for her was to destroy it, which is exactly what was done. The irony is that Hawn’s performance in Demme’s cut, as Vineberg notes, “is easily the finest work of her career.” 30

Demme’s Version

185 In many ways Swing Shift, Demme’s most ambitious effort to date, was the peak film of his Americana humanist works. It marks the end of the first phases of his filmmaking, starting with Corman and then moving on to better projects. Given its stressful and complicated production history, it is impossible to know how much it affected Demme’s career. There seemed to be an abrupt change in focus but it is impossible to know whether that was as a strong reaction to Swing Shift or more evolutionary. The film evidences a unique, observant sensibility and an underlying appreciation of radical politics in its examination of the changing economic and social roles of women as a consequence of

World War II. Demme had already demonstrated his interest in the working class but here he concentrated on women. The film’s very core is a revisionist, expansive, and subversive view of family and especially sex roles.

It was more cinematically sophisticated and visually eloquent than previous films.

Working with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, composer Bruce Langhorne, and editor

Craig McKay among others, Demme carefully crafted every aspect of the film from its muted color to the rich period appropriate score to its visual style – shots, cuts, editing, length of takes, compositions, and camera angles – all coming beautifully together. A richly populated period piece, the action takes place in a limited number of settings, mostly the bungalow colony where Kay lives, the airplane manufacturing plant, and jazz clubs with the road between the factory and the bungalows – a metaphoric territory where characters change direction and relationships. This ensures that the characters are not overwhelmed by background and setting, while also allowing viewers an intimacy, so they come to spend more time and appreciate the different locations.

186 Both cuts of Swing Shift begin with Kay (Goldie Hawn) and Jack Walsh’s (Ed

Harris) happy marriage exploded by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States at war,

Jack immediately enlists and soon is off to fight. Kay takes a job working at the

MacBride Aircraft Manufacturing Plant, even though she knows that Jack wouldn’t approve. It turns out that Hazel, a neighbor Jack regularly harassed, has taken a job at the same plant. Work changes Kay. She is “drawn to Hazel, who has a toughness, a gutsiness she envies….” 31 Working in the same plant brings them together as friends. They are part of a group of recently hired women, all of them new to the industrial labor force. After a brief training period, they’re assigned jobs in the plant. The men who are still at

MacBride mock and harass them, which serves to bring them even closer together.

Gradually they become accomplished at their jobs as well as more comfortable in the industrial atmosphere.

Increasingly lonely, Kay becomes ever more involved in a flirtatious relationship with her foreman, “Lucky” (Kurt Russell), a jazz trumpeter with a 4-F military exemption. Alone with her husband gone and working with Lucky every day, Kay’s determination to keep it casual doesn’t last all that long. They do try very hard to keep their affair secret – in public Hazel is always with them, making for a happy platonic group of friends.

Everything changes when, after three years away, Jack shows up on a surprise visit with a forty-eight-hour leave. Unhappy that she is working, Jack still tries for normality, talking to her as though she is still the woman he left when he went to war.

Instead there is an increasing awkwardness between them which finally pushes Kay to

187 tell Jack about her affair. Devastated, Jack leaves very early the next morning.

But his sudden appearance also really disturbs Lucky. Trying to comfort him,

Hazel ends up spending the night, which Kay soon realizes. From the moment Jack leaves for war until his return home, Swing Shift rolls forward, a sweet, historic, and comedic romance with an unnerving undercurrent due to the War and their illicit relationship. But now everything falls apart.

Characters and their relationships drive the narrative but Demme’s interest is in what happens to these women – stay-at-home wives joining the workforce by taking industrial jobs that had traditionally been for men only. The absence of men affects everything – men as husbands, sons, co-workers, and bosses. Left as the head of their families, many earning money on their own, often for the first time, saw not just a moving away from tradition and expectations but a moving towards an increasing self- confidence and sufficiency. This affected women’s priorities and possibilities, bringing into question much of what had been long accepted, including their sexuality.

Demme’s version is focused on the whole group, with Kay certainly a protagonist but not “the” hero. Her portrayal in such a way is clearly an issue. Jack – only seen on the screen as the movie begins, when he visits home and at the end – provides a context by which to consider Kay’s changes. Although showing a tough, almost cold exterior, Jack also projects a warm, sympathetic core. Tossed about, he is damaged by the changes, even though his behavior is in no way a contributing factor. A devoted and loving husband, he becomes lost and overwhelmed, as the world he thought he understood keeps radically changing. If he was a brute, her changes and decisions would be so much more

188 obvious and less problematic. Still, Kay’s affair with Lucky is just a fling, though a deeply felt one, a deviation from the rest of her life. Especially because of how Jack is played, their coming back together after the War is welcoming rather than disturbing.

Hazel, more worldly than Kay, breaks off her relationship with Biscuit early on in order to assert herself and her desires. Although tougher and more sophisticated sexually than Kay, only when Biscuit changes, becoming not just a sailor but a traditional suitor, does Hazel takes him back. Whereas joining the work force may have helped Kay move away from tradition, it granted Hazel the strength to fully embrace it.

There is a fascinating sub-plot featuring Jeannie (Holly Hunter). Absolutely emotionally dependent on her absent husband, she is devastated when she learns he has been killed. Ironically, one of the consequences is that she becomes a media star, representing grieving widows. As her prominence increases, her sense of loss fades, as she clearly enjoys her new celebrity status and job selling war bonds. The missing husband becomes a prop by which she asserts her own independence.

The dramatic shifts in Kay and Hazel’s lives are overshadowed by the war’s ending. Many of these women workers, cherishing their new roles, intend to remain in the workforce. But, of course, everything changes The men returning from the military are going to resume their jobs; as the women lose theirs.

Ultimately Demme’s version is not about Kay or Hazel, nor Jack or Lucky. It is about a generation and the changes they witness. Historically based, the characters in their lives, actions, and relationships illustrate and personify much of what was happening during those turbulent times. Demme’s Swing Shift celebrates women’s

189 freedom, while suggesting that while it can be liberating, the results are far more complex and nuanced. Exhilarating but also problematic, freedom presents one with options.

Options require decisions; decisions have consequences.

Hawn’s Version

Demme’s main focus is about women coming together, Hawn’s is about a woman falling in love. The film was reshot and recut in an attempt to forcibly fit it into the mold of much more traditional Hollywood romance, very much “The Love Song of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.”

Not interested in the story Demme tells – of a generation living through a major cultural and economic evolution – Hawn truncates the narrative, throwing out some themes and characters, simplifying others. In the released version, the new and rearrange footage as well as the many cuts, both small and substantial, tell a far less ambitious and much more narrowly focused tale of a boy and girl – and another boy.

Early on there are fewer changes, with only a few cuts and some added shots, most of which specifically change the focus of Kay and Jack’s relationship. An important deletion is a scene where Jack and Kay are in bed, indicating, “her strong sexual need for him.”32 Added instead is her caressing his jacket after he’s gone.

The most overall significant changes involve the characters of Lucky and Kay as well as their relationship. In Demme’s cut Lucky is a great deal of fun, but not to be trusted. Being 4F means that Lucky is safe at home instead of having to go to war. The

190 women who work for him, their husbands gone to war, are alone, providing him and his fellow male co-workers opportunities for harassment and occasionally innocent flirtation.

Lucky is a bit of a cad, Demme notes: “It was a very honest portrayal of a guy who didn't get drafted, who’s a musician and managed to…ehh…what does he care?” 33

Lucky so portrayed calls into question Kay’s character, which is reinforced by her actions. Hawn considerably softens the portrayal of Lucky, re-focusing his character as a somewhat more traditional romantic lead. In Hawn’s version Kay’s character is completely changed, leaving her more sweet and innocent.

A major difference in the versions is the timetable of Lucky and Kay’s romance.

Demme’s has them giving into their desires much sooner. Deliberately and carefully

Hawn extends the time between when the teasing flirtation begins until they finally consummate it: “When Lucky approaches her at work, she says, “You’ve been asking me out every week for the last five months” (you can actually see Hawn’s mouth “three” while her post-dubbed voice says “five”) – presumably so we’ll applaud her lengthier period of celibacy.” 34

Over the course of the film, Hawn reworks the relationship, not just extending it but changing the order of the sequences. In Demme’s cut, after the first time they have sex, Kay freaks out at a restaurant, upset over what she’s done. Hawn moves this scene to

“before she sleeps with Lucky, so it looks like an outburst of terrified chastity rather than post-coital terror.” 35

Hawn makes a concerted effort to reduce the intensity and passion of Kay and

Lucky’s relationship. Presenting it as far more “superficial and farcical. We’re supposed

191 to think she’s making a mistake, but it’s all right, because she’ll go back to Jack in the end.”36

Cutting the way Lucky and Kay are portrayed, her version also shrinks and even eliminates other characters. Waiting in line at the beginning to apply for work, the women chat. Laverne (Patty Maloney), a little person, comments on how the best job she ever had was as a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz. In Hawn’s version she is not visible in the scene, her role in the film completely cut out, though oddly the line is left in as a kind of disembodied voiceover. The Holly Hunter character and subplot is also completely removed. Hazel’s role is of course truncated. But Hawn’s changes were not limited to narrative and characters. Vineberg offers that the first thing you notice is the cinematic differences: “Stiff and static, the studio cut of Swing Shift seems embalmed in the creamy, sunlit haze of Tak Fujimoto’s cinematography; the movie dawdles, and the characters

(especially Kay) have no apparent forward movement. Demme’s cut is the same length but seems to move much faster: his editing gives it a flying density.” 37

Demme’s version of Swing Shift was a cinematic tone poem, deliberately poetic, the film’s slowed down rhythms (as compared to other Demme films) is emphasized by moving shots, the camera effortlessly gliding through different settings in very long, graceful, and elegant takes. Along with the variety of characters and the carefully developed narrative, Hawn chopped up the cinematography, messed with the use of color and either changed or removed a lot of Demme’s visual flourishes.

The extent and range of the damage can be perplexing. Consider Langhorne’s beautiful score, which helps set the mood while also matching and enhancing the

192 camerawork in service to the narrative. Demme painfully recalls that Hawn, “completely junked Bruce Langhorne's score, which he’d worked on for over a year and he wrote. It’s a great score. And he wrote period-correct jazz, period-correct big band, period-correct pop music – the themes of which became underscoring. It was a brilliant, brilliant thing.”38 Instead there is Patrick Williams’ lame, unimaginative and disquieting score.

In Demme’s version Lucky plays a long hot jazz solo. It is not just powerful and lovely but adds depth to Lucky’s character. For reasons that are not readily comprehensible, the scene is cut from Hawn’s version, though Demme guessed that “after scrapping the score, that particular solo which had significance in context to the rest of the music – just didn't fit.” 39

Watching Hawn’s cut, haunted by Demme’s, it is hard to avoid the feeling that she is deliberately hurting the film, not just banishing but butchering Demme’s version. One can’t help but feel she was driven by her anger at the film. The result is an ugly

Frankenstein creature sewn together out of ragged parts ripped out of what was once a living movie.

The way each of the different cuts of the film ends brings home their deep differences. There is a closing party where all the characters come together. Kay and

Hazel go outside to make peace, tightly hugging each other; in Demme’s version the moving camera begins to slowly circle them. Hawn ends not just the shot but the whole film with the circling camera quickly stopping on a freeze frame of just Hawn’s face. It is about her not them. Serving to emphasize how the film has been butchered, it is as a motif – the camera’s abrupt stop feels weird and wrong.

193 In Demme’s version after the swirling shot of Kay and Hazel it cuts to a long shot at the beach at sunset. Their car parked on the sand, the two women are together, drinking, laughing and talking.

It is worth considering how rarely Demme’s films center on romantic heterosexual coupling and marriage. Not one is a typical Hollywood romance. Instead of boy-meets-girl as the focus, his concerns center on the individual, family, and community. Outraged at Demme’s version of Swing Shift, Hawn’s whole purpose in restructuring was to crush into the form of a traditional and accessible Hollywood romance.

The distance between the film that Demme was making and the one Hawn dictated unintentionally illustrates how a traditional romantic coupling was of so little interest to the director. His narratively complex cut is about the way the War affects women not just individually but as they come together in community. Her cut is a tortured but typical Hollywood look at a romantic triangle. With the additional shooting the film’s budget ended up at between $15 and $17 million. The released version (Hawn’s cut) was a critical and commercial failure, earning just $6.5 million dollars. Although the experience must have been very disturbing for her, it was even more traumatic for

Demme, who considered quitting directing altogether.

That is until his life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll.

Stop Making Sense (1984)

Why stop making sense? Why a movie? Why a big suit? Where do the odd movements come from? What will the band do next? 40

194 –Stop Making Sense Tagline

One afternoon in 1983, while Swing Shift was still in production, Jonathan

Demme surprised me by showing up at the Austin Chronicle office. He did not complain about, or mention, the troubles of his current production. Instead, he wanted to go out for hamburgers and talk about his next film. Knowing that I cherished the Talking Heads as much as he did, he was so happy to share that he was going to be making a concert film of the band.

The Talking Heads went on “The Big Suit” tour to promote the “Speaking in

Tongues” album, released in June of 1983. The core group of David Byrne, Tina

Weymouth, and Chris Frantz, was joined by singers Ended Holt and Lynn

Mabry (from Brides of Funkenstein and Parliament-Funkadelic), keyboardist Bernie

Worrell (from Parliament-Funkadelic), guitarist Alex Weir (from The Brothers Johnson) and percussionist Steve Scales (who had worked with Yoko Ono, Tina Turner, Bryan

Ferry, and The Psychedelic Furs).

The title of the tour was appropriate, as Byrne changed into an overly large, outsized suit at the end of the show. As Byrne explained, “I like symmetry; geometric shapes. I wanted my head to appear smaller and the easiest way to do that was to make my body bigger. Because music is very physical, and often the body understands it before the head.” 41

Demme recalled watching the show:

I just got so overstimulated by it. I couldn’t believe how thrilling this was. It was

195 a rock show that not only presented great music, but also seemed to have all these little hidden pockets of humor and also of emotion. As I came out of the concert, I thought, My God, that’s a movie waiting to be filmed. The challenge to the filmmaker would be to not get in the way.42

The version Demme always related had to be wrong in at least some parts, because he said he saw them at the Hollywood Bowl. The “Big Suit” tour began in

August of 1983 (they played two dates in July). In Los Angeles they played two dates at the Greek Theater. Some versions have Demme going back stage to talk to the band about making a movie after the show.

Regardless, at some point, likely mid-September 1983, David Byrne came over to

Demme’s home to talk. Demme was awed by Byrne, but the musician was all business.

He said, “You think it would be a good movie. So do I. How would you do it?”

Demme answered:

…essentially I'd try to keep it simple…. I would try very hard to honor the excitement of the live performance by avoiding tricky shots, flashy editing techniques…anything that would constitute a digression from the performance itself…. I felt watching the show was like watching a story that you admittedly can’t follow on a narrative level, but there seemed to be an emotional through- line. And there was this perception of the band members as characters.43

Since the show was so carefully constructed as a narrative this really sat well with

Byrne. It is easy to get lost in the chronology but at this point Demme was best known for directing Melvin and Howard and, to a lesser extent, Citizen’s Band. The band had already been thinking it was a good show to film and they liked Demme. Borrowing the money from Warner Bros. they paid for the film themselves. Demme started planning.

196 In late October, Demme was able to get away from Swing Shift, which was why he was in Austin. He was going to shoot the three Talking Heads concerts in Texas –

Houston, Austin, and Dallas. Giving cameras to a few filmmakers he really trusted, he had them as well as himself shoot the shows so he could begin to develop visual ideas as to how to craft the feature.

He gave camera to Brian Hanson (Speed of Light) and David Boone (Invasion of the Aluminum People) who he met when Demme and I put together the Made In Texas program of six short films that was shown at the Collective for Living Cinema in NYC in

October, 1981.

The Talking Heads were playing four nights of concerts, Tuesday December 13th through Friday December 16th, 1983, at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, that was concurrent with the reshoots for Swing Shift. Even though everything was ready to go earlier, they kept stalling for one reason or another until the shooting actually began on Monday December 12th, 1983.

The first day had been horrible for Demme. According to him, at best he was hardly directing. He would just say, “OK, so Goldie, how do you want to stage this?

What do you want to do?” She would answer hesitantly with some ideas and then ask him what he thought. He would just look over at William Fraker, who they hired as cinematographer after firing Tak Fujimoto, asking him if that sounded okay to him. Bill would say fine. Demme would say “action” then he’d say “cut.” Finally, he would ask

Goldie if she was fine with the take.44

Acting very calm and detached, inside he was enraged. He just found it hard to

197 believe what was happening and it was destroying him. The second day of reshoots was the same as the first night of Talking Head’s shows. Already freaked out, that morning,

Demme ended up sitting in the bathtub of the house he was renting “crying, just crying – bathtubs are a good place for that.” 45

According to Demme: “Goldie and all her people knowing that I had this thing happening later at night – on the second day decided to fuck me up.” She kept asking for re-takes and everything kept moving very slowly. It became clear that the day was going to run very late. Demme had already called his friend and co-producer Gary Goetzman to explain the situation. He told him, “…guess you're just going to have to do it, it's not like anything’s going to get directed exactly, I'll get there as fast as I can…fuck, I can't fucking believe…” Just then Demme’s friend Jim Quinn, the A,D. Came up to say:

“Jonathan, Ed Harris just told me has a migraine and he can’t shoot anymore – he can’t do these two other scenes now.”

“Oh my God, well that’s horrible about the migraine but then we’re gonna wrap.”

Then we wrapped, and I go running – I had 45 minutes to get to the Pantages, we were out in the Valley. I'm running to my car and I jump in my car. I look over and Ed Harris is sitting there shotgun and he's goes, “Let's ride!” 46

They filmed three of the four shows at Pantages Theater, though the released film ended up mostly using footage from the December 15th show. Essentially, Demme shot the show as Byrne designed and planned it and the band performed it. Demme noted that,

“David really saw this movie in his own head long before we came and pitched him on letting us shoot it.47

198 In an interview, drummer Chris Frantz said, “The only directions we got were from Gary Goetzman, who was technically the producer. Gary said, ‘Don't look at the camera and, for God’s sake, don't pick your nose.’” 48

In the film, Demme, rather than dazzling or cinematically showing off, stays focused on the performance and excludes both the audience and the presence of himself, the filmmaker. Demme told Time: “In the cutting room we quickly discovered that there was always something far more interesting going on on stage than in the ‘best’ of our audience footage…This led to the realization that if we pulled back from showing the live audience, it made our film feel that much more specially created for our movie audience!”49

The film is of a whole, seamless live performance, a cultural explosion happening live and spontaneous in front of an audience. Many concert films are clearly visual texts, assembled in post-production of concluded performances, with shots of the audience used to provide punctuation marks to indicate to viewers of the film as to how the show is unfolding. The performance momentum is achieved artificially. Demme trusts the Heads’ performance. The show as performed live had always been unusually narrative. Talking

Heads front man David Byrne walked out alone to the center of the stage. He puts down a boom box and launches into a solo version of “Psycho Killer.” Then bassist Tina

Weymouth. Six numbers into the show, the whole band is finally on stage. Demme’s editing tightens in on and emphasizes the unfolding drama of the musical show but rather than clearly evidencing his authorship, Demme wanted to achieve the explosive emotive impact of seeing the show live. Certainly this is a fiction, this is very much an authored

199 film. But by Byrne and the band as much as by Demme and his team.

Drummer Chris Frantz recalled:

Throughout the shooting and the editing that followed, Jonathan made certain that the viewer might visually enjoy the quirkiness and intensity that each band member brought to the stage without ever losing focus on the central dynamic, which made for a better story than, say, close-ups on keyboard fingering. We very much appreciated that he gave women in the band and on the crew the same respect as the men.50

The film is almost an easily accessible metaphoric outline for what Demme strived for in Crazy Mama, Citizens Band, Melvin and Howard, and, though not successfully, in Swing Shift. The joy of filmmaker as audience member, rather than intruding artist, the sense of trusting the music over theatrics or cutaways, is expressed in many of his music videos as well. From Suzanne Vega to Steve Earle, he chooses to almost watch as an audience member.

One of Demme’s interests is in process. He will use all the tools of cinema and an imposing command of filmic vocabulary to hide the filmmaking. It is the Talking Heads concert, David Byrne’s narrative structure and staging, but it complements Demme’s sensibility.

Stop Making Sense earned terrific reviews and did great business for an indie concert film. But Demme said:

As joyful as I was about how Stop Making Sense had turned out, I remember more the horror of what can happen to you in this line of work…just seeing how tough people can be and how mean they can be to you. I didn’t want to see that again. I went on a really lonely trip to the Caribbean and walked around on my

200 own for a couple of weeks and decided that I would hope to continue making movies, but only with people I really liked. So that’s my new rule, since 1984…. It’s worked pretty good so far.51

Swing Shift and Stop Making Sense are both about building communities – extended families if you will – the former about the camaraderie of women entering the work force who join together, the latter about how a band comes together to make music.

Demme’s cut of Swing Shift stars the community of women, the impact on their lives and sex roles entering the work force to do jobs previously done by men. Centered largely on women, the film explores the joy and freedom they find being liberated from the home.

Challenging even modern assumptions of sex roles, the film celebrates a period in time of liberation. Stop Making Sense matches the joy of the music to that of the performers. It is a celebration and a declaration.

201 Endnotes

Swing Shift

1 Swing Shift Tagline

2 https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/rosie-the-riveter

3 . “At the Moves; Unhappiness Over the Final ‘Swing Shift.’” New York Times. May 4, 1984 https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/04/movies/at-the-movies-unhappiness-over- the-final-swing-shift.html

4 Rane Peerson. “A Cinema of Quality Furniture: Auteurism and the Films of Nancy Meyers. Things We Watch, August 27, 2017. http://www.thingswewatch.com/2017/08/27/a-cinema-of-quality-furniture- auteurism-and-the-films-of-nancy-meyers/

5 Daphne Merkin. “Can Anybody Make a Movie For Women?” New York Times, December 15, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/magazine/20Meyers-t.html?pagewanted=4

6 New York Times, October 8, 1980. Section B, P. 8. (In researching anything to do with Goldie Hawn there are often two versions. Goldie’s given in interviews and her autobiography, and others gleamed from more objective sources.)

7 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

8 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

9 Janet Maslin. “At the Moves; Unhappiness Over the Final ‘Swing Shift.’” New York Times. May 4, 1984 https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/04/movies/at-the-movies-unhappiness-over- the-final-swing-shift.html

202

10 Janet Maslin. “At the Moves; Unhappiness Over the Final ‘Swing Shift.’” New York Times. May 4, 1984 https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/04/movies/at-the-movies-unhappiness-over- the-final-swing-shift.html

11 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

12 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

13 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

14 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

15 Goldie Hawn. A Lotus Grows in the Mud. Berkley Press: California, 2006.

16 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

17 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

18 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

19 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

20 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

21Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

22 Demme interview, NYC (August 28, 2015)

23 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22 2016)

203

24 Goldie Hawn. A Lotus Grows in the Mud. Berkley Press: California, 2006.

25 Demme interview, NYC (August 28, 2015)

26 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

27 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

28 Robert E. Kapsis. Jonathan Demme: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi: Oxford, 2008

29 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

30 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

31 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

32 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

33 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

34 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

35 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

36 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

37 Steve Vineberg. “Swing Shift – A Tale of Hollywood.” Sight & Sound, Winter 1990/91

204

38 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

39 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

Stop Making Sense

40 Stop Making Sense Tagline

41 Pete Anderson. “Making Sense of David Byrne’s Big Suit.” Put This On, January 26, 2017 https://putthison.com/making-sense-of-david-byrnes-big-suit-the-tom/

42 James Kaplan. “JONATHAN DEMME'S OFFBEAT AMERICA.” New York Times, March 27, 1988 https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/27/magazine/jonathan-demme-s-offbeat- america.html

43 James Kaplan. “JONATHAN DEMME'S OFFBEAT AMERICA.” New York Times, March 27, 1988 https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/27/magazine/jonathan-demme-s-offbeat- america.html

44 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

45 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

46 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

47 Melissa Locker. “David Byrne and Jonathan Demme on The Making of Stop Making Sense.” Time, July 15, 2014 http://time.com/2980989/stop-making-sense-anniversary-david-byrne-jonathan- demme/

205

48 Kory Grow. “Talking Heads on Stop Making Sense: ‘We Didn't Want Any Bulls—t’ Rolling Stone, August 1, 2014 https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/talking-heads-on-stop- making-sense-we-didnt-want-any-bulls-t-231875/

49 Melissa Locker. “David Byrne and Jonathan Demme on The Making of Stop Making Sense.” Time, July 15, 2014 http://time.com/2980989/stop-making-sense-anniversary-david-byrne-jonathan- demme/

50 Kory Grow. “Talking Heads on Stop Making Sense: ‘We Didn't Want Any Bulls—t’ Rolling Stone, August 1, 2014 https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/talking-heads-on-stop- making-sense-we-didnt-want-any-bulls-t-231875/

51 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

52 Adrian Wootton. “Interviw With Jonathan Demme.” , October 10, 1998 https://www.theguardian.com/film/1998/oct/10/2

53 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

206 Chapter 9: Something Wild (1985–1986)

Something different, something daring, something dangerous.1 –Something Wild Tagline

Swing Shift was released in April, 1984 followed by Stop Making Sense almost exactly six months later. Even though making the Talking Heads film was a great experience, Demme was far from completely recovered from the production ordeal at

Warner Bros. This wasn’t helped as film project after film project that he worked on fell apart. A positive development was that, after the concert film, he was offered a lot of jobs directing music videos. Post-production on the concert film took months but regardless he didn’t begin work on another feature until pre-production on Something Wild, which began shooting in March, 1986. There were other fallow periods in his career but this one was in the wake of Swing Shift.

Almost every chapter of this work could have offered a much more detailed history of Demme’s career by chronicling the projects he ended up not making. These were efforts that he was attached to and developed that either ended up in the hands of other directors or were never made. A quick look at the period between Swing Shift and

Something Wild indicates the enormous activity that went into projects he ended up not making. In 1984, Jaffe/Lansing Production optioned the script for Stealing Home for which Demme would direct. Nothing happened. In early Fall 1984, he was briefly attached to but left over creative differences with the star Debra

Winger, who soon left herself. As the year ended Carolco Pictures bought ’

Extreme Prejudice script for Demme to rewrite and direct but that also went nowhere. It

207 is difficult to figure out dates for some projects – Russell Bank’s novel Continental Drift, published February 1, 1985, was a project Demme talked about for years; he wrote a draft of David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which the producers didn’t like.

Working for PBS, Demme shot dancer Trisha Brown’s Accumulation With

Talking Plus Water Motor (for “Alive From Off Center”) as well as A Family Tree, a half hour comedy. The latter, where Demme first hooked up with Ed Saxon, his longtime producing partner, was screened in 1987 as the premiere episode for Trying Times, a PBS anthology series.

There were three Talking Heads videos that came out of Stop Making Sense as well as one for Tom Tom Club, drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth’s spin off. In 1985, he directed UB 40 and Chrissie Hyde performing, “I Got You Babe,” Sarah

Bernhard’s “Everybody’s Young,” and New Order’s “The Perfect Kiss.” Then Demme worked on a mammoth shoot for the anti-apartheid anthem “Sun City” written by Steven

Van Zandt, featuring a stunning array of talent from Miles Davis, , Run DMC,

Jimmy Cliff, and Ruben Blades to the Fat Boys, George Clinton, , Hall &

Oates, Kool DJ Herc, Big Youth, and Gil Scott-Heron.

Still, the search to find a film project was continuing to be fruitless. That is, until he accepted an invitation from his friend Adele “Bonnie” Lutz, David Byrne’s companion, to join her at a dinner party. There he was seated next to Orion Pictures co- founder Michael Medavoy. When they started talking, much to Demme’s amazement,

Medavoy immediately launched into how great Melvin and Howard was and grew to near disbelief when the producer urged Demme to send any project he was interested to Orion,

208 as they really wanted to work with him.2

In 1967 the conglomerate Transamerica, mostly involved in financial services, was diversified by purchasing United Artists, the . Treating film as just another commercial product lead to ever-escalating hostilities between the conglomerate and the studio’s management team. In early January 1978, chairman Arthur Krim,

President and CEO Eric Pleskow, and chairman of the finance committee, Robert

Benjamin, left UA and were soon joined by senior vice presidents William Bernstein and

Mike Medavoy, determined to create a film friendly studio. As soon as they had a financing and distribution deal in place with Warner Bros., they launched Orion Pictures, which began forming relationships with major talent and developing projects. It stayed true to its mission during the course of its existence, much to the benefit of filmmakers like Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, , and Demme.

Reluctantly and only as a favor, Demme agreed to look at Something Wild, a script by E. Max Frye, who not only lacked professional writing credits but had just graduated from NYU. Almost as soon as he started reading the script he fell in love with it. “I had no idea where the story was going…but I wanted to go along with it,” Demme remembers. “And every time I thought I had it figured out, it veered off in another direction.”3 When Ed Saxon had a similar reaction to the script, Demme deciding it was time to take Medavoy up on his invitation, sent the script to Orion Pictures. “Within twenty-four hours there was a deal. Orion not only approved, but was very supportive of the project, so relatively quickly, it went into production.” 4

Something Wild begins as a comedy, when Streetwise “Lulu” (Melanie Griffin)

209 notices that executive Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels) walks his check at a NYC coffee shop. Outside she confronts him. He denies it, but finally, with some embarrassment, admits it. Then Lulu plays him, offering him a ride to his office and instead “kidnaps him” driving into the Holland tunnel towards . He protests but is fascinated.

After throwing his pager out the window, this most unlikely of couples clearly has embarked on a wild adventure. They “enter a Kerouac-worthy back-roads America. Tak

Fujimoto, the film’s director of photography and a longtime collaborator with Mr.

Demme, said Mr. Demme ‘went through a period there where there was no backyard sale, garage sale, flea market that he didn’t stop at.’” 5

Although Demme’s cinema is loaded with love and relationships, there is not all that much sex. Demme evokes and details emotional intimacy but rarely depicts physical sexual encounters. In Something Wild, however, when Charlie and Lulu check into a motel, ending the film’s long introductory sequence, what follows is easily the most erotic scene in Demme’s filmography.

The next day as they travel to visit her mother, Lulu reveals her real name is

Audrey. After the visit, Audrey takes Charlie to her 10th high school reunion, where she presents him as her husband. Up to this point the film is a screwball farce, the narrative given by each characters’ lying about their identity. In ways similar to The Importance of

Being Earnest or Charlie’s Aunt intended to make things easier, the layers of deception only create problems.

This sweet joy ride, a celebration of the road, a love note to the country, written on the back of a garish picture postcard, seems to run out of energy at the reunion, which

210 meanders on and about for a time. But then the introduction of a new character finds it shifting gears into a dark thriller, more thug Hitchcock than mannerist.

Ray (), introducing himself as an old friend of Audrey’s, oozing with the too obvious charm of a creepy, snake-oil-salesman, is playing up to Charlie. Totally taken in, Charlie is flattered when Ray invites the couple to join him for drinks. Ignoring

Audrey hesitation and reluctance, Charlie insists. Still having a great time, Charlie is feeling very cool until they stop at a store, where Ray violently beats up a clerk. Stunned, it is only then Charlie realizes something is wrong.

A vicious criminal, Ray, not only an ex-con but her ex-husband, kidnaps Audrey.

This abrupt change in the film’s tone intensifies the drama. One is not just startled but uncertain as to what is actually happening. The lies revealed early on seemed almost charming but now the discoveries are harsh and sad. Rather than a carefree successful executive, Charlie, abandoned by his wife who took the children, is despondent.

Lulu/Audrey may be street wise but she is lost, uncertain, and scared of her ex-husband.

As charming and dangerous a thug as can be found outside of the cinema of Martin

Scorsese, Ray is a brutal criminal. Each of the characters, though somewhat related to whom they first seem to be, are more damaged. The film itself has been lying about its identity.

There are few films that effectively change tone. Screenwriter John Sayles (who is in the film) regards Something Wild as one of the very few that succeeds, noting that usually the tone change itself does not work resulting in significant damage to the overall film, as one tone swamps the other diluting it.6 The 180 degree shift in Something Wild,

211 which viciously propels the film into its frenzied conclusion, is so unexpected that surprised viewers are often left more emotionally exhausted than by obvious suspense thrillers, even when they are intentionally disturbing. The sharp change in tone emphasizes the film’s moral complexity without really challenging its general ambiguity.

Given Demme’s natural affection for his characters as well as his deep empathetic understanding of human weaknesses and flaws, there are very few real villains in

Demme’s filmography. Two of the most pronounced, Hannibal Lector (Anthony

Hopkins) and Ray are presented with such charisma as to make even more uncertain the films’ morality.

Shot in March 1986, post production was done at record speed, the film released in November of that same year. Many critics regarded it as part of a wave of “Yuppie

Angst” films including Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985), ’ Lost in

America (1985), Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) and David

Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) – all of which, according to Emmanuel Levy, suggest “that appearances are deceptive, that people should not be trusted simply on the basis of their look or verbal expressions. Nothing is what it appears to be and no one should be trusted for who they say they are.” 7

Demme asserts the films are very different, while acknowledging there is an underlying theme as “this mixture of violence was born of some eruption of what lurks below the American dream.”8 Still, Demme’s generosity wins out. As much as Something

Wild skewers yuppies and the suburbs it also understands them. Peter Rainer notes that,

“Demme has such a sympathetic embrace of wayward American Lunacy that you’re

212 grooved by how wild things are out there – how screw-loose everybody is if you give them half a chance. Among other things, Something Wild is probably the first film to demonstrate that yuppies have soul – although not at first glance.” 9

The film is more fascinated than contemptuous. “Yuppie” would come to be a cultural wave defined almost entirely in negatives by the areas of culture that stood in opposition to it and its values. Demme, as usual, was more interested in how it functioned for those living the lifestyle, looking for surprising points of convergence, rather than comfortable points of dismissal.

The thrust of the film is clashing cultures – urban and rural, manufactured and real, the square homogenized straight culture against the sharper, cutting edge new wave.

The former is very much white culture, which makes the soundtrack even more ironic. As much as anything the film’s skeleton is music it isn’t opera – the characters don’t sing – but it is close to a musical. Introducing the film at a Demme retrospective at BAM, my co-presenter Paul Thomas Anderson said:

[It] was historic how much music was in that movie. Watching it again, it’s there and it does everything, but it doesn’t overpower it. There’s all these long silences, too. I still can’t figure out how he did it.10

The songs complement, comment on, and/or support the action. Beginning with the opening song to the last rap, Something Wild races forward, ruled by the soundtrack. The main characters are white, but the film is peopled with minorities and international music. A montage of New York City opens the film and the visuals cut to the Latin rhythms of Celia Cruz and David Byrne performing his song Loco de Amor. As

213 they head out on the highway, the soundtrack is mostly World Music.

The use of the high school reunion in the film is odd and effective. It slows the film down, concluding the first part it is followed by a change in narrative, tone, and characterizations. All are noted and marked by a change in music. The reunion functions as a palate cleanser – a sorbet between the gliding exuberant street, rap, and world music featured on the trip south and a much harder and more intense urban score – punk and new wave.

The reunion band is The Feelies, a legendary independent group known for their irony and quirky melodies. They are certainly not the first and maybe even the last band that might be considered. This perverse choice finds them not just performing covers but originals as well.

High school reunions most often feature hits that were contemporary when the original graduation was, usually with an emphasis on danceable tunes. The Feelies are not a dance band. The seemingly inappropriate choice fuels the dichotomy of the reunion.

They cover The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer” (Neil Diamond) and David Bowie’s “Fame” as well as two of their original songs. The reunion is neither organic to what comes before or related to the rest. Clearly articulating this other worldly surrealism, Demme’s longtime associate and sometimes producing partner, Gary Goetzman, joins the Feelies to sing Freddy Fender’s monster hit “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” in Spanish – Y estare contigo cuando treste estas.

Interestingly, the film turns dark and the music gets hard. Musically heading deep into Lou Reed country, it should be noted that the convenience store sequence was cut to

214 “Walk on the Wild Side,” but the song was replaced because it was so very expensive they couldn’t afford it. The ending of Sister Carol in a storefront rapping a very long version of “Wild Thing” is not the usual match between music and closing credits. The film, beginning in the city and returning to the area, is anchored in New York City, but it takes place in a white world – city, suburbs, country, high school – and is about identity and culture. The charismatic and authentic performance of Sister Carol being diegetic is a bit startling. Despite the preceding violence, the film is still set in an imagined world, though one defined by the mundane. That last “Wild Thing” rap is so street, that it rings true as more genuine New York City. It is not a rebuke to the film that comes before it, but a strategic expansion.

The unexpected and complete change of tone in Something Wild in many ways mirrored the major shift in worldview in Demme’s overall output. The first section of the film is very much a screwball comedy as Audrey essentially kidnaps Charlie Driggs out of his normal life. His success in business, he’s just gotten a major promotion, rings hollow as his life is empty, his wife having left with the children, he lives alone in a barely furnished house. Although more spontaneous and exciting, Audrey’s life is also empty but unlike Charlie she is not burdened and overwhelmed by the situation. Forcing herself into his life, Audrey pushes Charlie to open up and have fun. As much as he resists this, it is exactly what he needs. The first section is a wild and joyous car trip out of New York City into the heartlands. Driving the highway is not just an act of freedom but offers an embracing and optimistic view of America. There is not just the coming together of this unlikely couple but the people they meet and the hitchhikers they pick up.

215 This first part of Something Wild fits in neatly with the warmly humanistic comedies preceding it: Crazy Mama, Citizens Band, Melvin and Howard, Who Am I This Time? and

Swing Shift.

But crucial to her character, Audrey is also dangerous in the ways she is capricious, fickle and not tied down. Whereas the first part of the film explores the fun she brings into Charlie’s life, the last part the film turns deadly and violent, exploring the darker consequences of her personality. The dramatic change in tone and atmosphere of

Something Wild leaves it as both being the last of Demme’s Americana humanist films and then marking the new direction in his work. His next film was Married to the Mob, which despite being a comedy, is myopic and downbeat, set in the world of amoral gangsters and equally amoral federal agents. The films that followed – Silence of the

Lambs, Philadelphia and Beloved – very much depict a darker and meaner world than that of his Americana humanist films.

Although the film was critically extremely well received, as happened too often with Demme’s work, it was a major disappointment at the box office. The fact that there are so few major studies of Demme’s work might be foreshadowed by the contradictory reception of Citizen’s Band, Melvin and Howard and Something Wild, which were praised by critics but proved commercial failures. The major difference in Demme’s career with

Something Wild was that now he was at Orion. Thus instead of hurting his career, this time there were no major repercussions so that by the time Something Wild opened,

Married to the Mob was already in production. Demme had found a home at Orion where they not only believed in him but were committed to his talents. After Married this would

216 really be brought home when they brought The Silence of the Lambs to him.

217 Endnotes

1 Something Wild Tagline

2 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

3 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

4 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

5 Marc Spitz. “Something Genre Crossing, Something Bold.” New York Times, May 13, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/movies/jonathan-demmes-something-wild- from-criterion-collection.html

6 John Sayles in conversation (date)

7 Emanuel Levy. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. NYU Press: New York, 2001. p. 148-158.

8 John Boorman. Projections 1: A Forum for Film-Makers. Farber & Farber: Boston, 1992. p. 181.

9 Peter Rainer. Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. November 7, 1986.

10 Paul Thomas Anderson (Q&A at Brooklyn Academy of Music [BAM], August 4, 2017)

218 Chapter 10: Married to the Mob (1988)

They're her family...Whether she likes it or not…1 –Married to the Mob Tagline

It was so amazing working with Orion. It really was Camelot. They were like, ‘We are financiers and distributors. We like to work with filmmakers who are terrific filmmakers, and we don't try to help make the film.’ They were true to that.2 –Jonathan Demme

Demme might not have even been aware of the extent of their commitment.

Michael Barker, current Co-Head of , then running Orion Classics, remembers being in Krim’s office at Orion when an accountant came in with early box office returns for Something Wild. Showing them to Krim and Pleskow, he noted how poorly the film was performing. Without missing a beat, Krim took the sheet, crumbled it, and tossed it in the waste can as he turned to Pleskow saying, “Let’s talk about

Married to the Mob.”3

Loving gangster movies but not gangsters, he wanted to play with the genre without glorifying criminals. Demme had always wanted to do a but with a unique and fresh approach. When Orion sent him the script for Married to the Mob he wondered, “What kind of movie is this, anyway? A kind of postfeminist bedroom farce in which people are shot to death?”4 Working with and Mark R. Burns, the original writers, and his partner Ed Saxon, Demme concentrated on crafting a generic hybrid, a gangster comedy that played with the genre’s characteristics and conventions, distorting and inverting them, dipping in and out of tones and styles. Always inconsistent and often promiscuous, the film was a deliberate jigsaw puzzle, not quite fit together.

219 Angela de Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer) hates being married to the mob. When after an early morning hit, her husband Frank “The Cucumber” De Marco (Alec

Baldwin) returns home she complains – “Everything we wear, everything we eat, everything we own -- fell off a truck.” She doesn’t like hanging out with the other mob wives, in particular Connie Russo (), wife to mob boss Tony “The Tiger”

Russo (). Connie and the other wives more than reciprocate her feelings.

When her husband Frank is killed by Russo she uses the opportunity to flee the suburbs and the mob moving into the inner city. Despite her lack of interest, Tony pursues her.

Thinking Tony and Angela are having an affair, the feds closely watch her. She falls for neighbor Mike Downey (), unaware that he is an FBI agent spying on her. When she finds out, he encourages her to stay connected to Tony. A mob boss, Tony is still scared of his wife Connie, who also suspects he is having an affair with Angela.

Clearly a gangster film, Married is less concerned with being faithful to the genre than it is in using it as a way to play around with tone and content. Never settling into a singular tone, it is a mob picture, aware of the classic conventions. It is also very much a revisionist work – a satire and a comedy, the characters threatening and cartoonish. A main consideration for Married to the Mob was how to present a gangster story from a woman’s point of view. Angela de Marco’s antagonist is not Tony Russo, mob leader, even though he is after her romantically, but Connie Russo, his wife. The actresses playing these roles had to bring contradictions to life. In focusing on women, the film does not maintain the typical generic archetypes and characteristics found in most gangster films prominently featuring role reversal. In this way, it is unlike Bloody Mama,

220 Forty Guns and Rancho Notorious where outlaw women take traditionally male roles or even Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) in Bonnie and Clyde (Clyde is impotent) or Annie Laurie

Starr (Peggy Cummins) in Gun Crazy, where women are the dominant partner. Both de

Marco and Russo fit into the traditional characteristics of women in the gangster genre, though they are expanded here far beyond the norm. They are not meta-men, but very real women. Connie is a wife, she does not lead the mob, though tough Angela is a woman.

Orion’s Mike Medavoy suggested Michelle Pfeiffer as Angela de Marco. Having watched her work in John Landis’ Into the Night (1985) (Demme was one of 17 directors who had cameos in the film), Demme knew she was ideal. Not just beautiful but a skilled and intelligent actress Pfeiffer was capable of drama and comedy. Demme was excited.

Having read for the Lulu role in Something Wild and not getting it, Pfeiffer thought

Demme didn’t like her so she was hesitant. As Pfeiffer remembers, “Jonathan came out, took me to have sushi and to see Suzanne Vega and within 10 minutes we were talking about how my character should do her hair.”5

Even though mob boss Tony Russo is after her, the real danger is Connie Russo,

Tony’s wife. Mercedes Ruehl, having only done some theater and small film roles, was excited about the role, but everything went wrong. Preparing to meet Demme “she got a huge permanent, and was chagrined when her licorice-slick hair turned into a Brillo fright wig. Then Ruehl was out of town when the wardrobe crew was looking for her.” Ruehl continues, “Then I got a case of poison ivy, rampant poison ivy, from my neck to my toes, two days before the shooting. And I arrived at the first reading close to 40 minutes

221 late.” Not sure if she was serious about the role, Demme asked her directly. Ruehl responded that, “contrary to appearances, I really want to do this film. I clearly have a few bones to pick with my subconscious here, but I will prevail.”6

Bringing a definite manic energy and near lunatic drive to the role she threads that most difficult eye of the needle, creating dramatic intensity out of a largely comic performance. Ruehl’s cohorts, the three other mob wives – , O-Lan Jones, and

Joan Cusack – work together beautifully as a gossiping bitching coven. Mob boss Tony

Russo’s is an odd character – a ruthless killer, mob leader, duplicitous and amoral, who lives in terror of his wife. It is not wildly inappropriate that a clown attempts to assassinate him at a fast food drive-in. Casting him was not easy, Demme reveals:

“Originally I had a completely different actor in mind, but then I saw Dean’s picture in a trade ad and I thought, ‘Who the hell is this? Dean Stockwell!’ He’s such a chameleon that I didn’t even recognize him. That's what makes him special – he has such mercurial presence as an actor.”7 Demme was rapidly convinced that Stockwell was the right choice for the role. “Frankly, I knew that I didn’t know what to expect from Dean, which is probably what makes him so intriguing. All I knew was that whatever Dean would do would be completely different from the last time I saw him.”8

During the entire shoot, Stockwell stayed in character. He embraced the role so much so that Demme recalled that, “whenever he’d come to the set, we’d treat him as

Tony the Tiger, bowing and scraping, paying homage to him.” On set, Stockwell was always, “talking like a gangster, walking like a gangster, always rolling his neck around like he was ready for a massage. Then he’d look around the set – very imperially – and

222 say, ‘It’s so nice to see how you people operate in the movie business.’” 9

The weakest performance in the film is Matthew Modine as undercover federal agent Mike Downey. Instead of slightly shifting to accommodate the film’s rolling tone, his performance is noticeably unfocused and uneven. Often, he seems to be watching the film from outside rather than acting in it. Modine later acknowledged that initially he didn’t find anything funny about the script.10

The terrific cast includes Demme regulars and Trey Wilson, rockers and David Johansen, real life eccentrics Captain Haggerty and Mr.

Spoons, Sister Carol who rapped over Something Wild’s closing credits join Dorothy

Demme, Jonathan’s mother, in the cast. It is ’s first major screen role.

Producer Gary Goetzman, who stole the film singing “Until the Next Teardrop Falls” in

Spanish in Something Wild, turns in yet another memorable music performance as the guy at the piano who sings the “Tony The Tiger” song whenever Russo enters the restaurant.

Who Is Married to the Mob?

Married to the Mob, although clearly a mob film, is very much up to something out of the ordinary. The traditional action of the genre is criminal activities – sometimes a series of crimes such as robbery, murder and/or kidnapping. Other times the focus is on a single spectacular heist. These activities can be the main subject of the film, or are utilized in telling a greater story, often that of the rise and invariable fall of the criminal protagonist(s).

223 Married to the Mob is different, there is no McGuffin triggering the story. Instead, it is character driven, very much about the everyday lives of its characters, all of whom are married to the mob in one way or another. This includes male mob members, rival mob members, the wives of those in the mob and, in a strong sense, the representatives of the law that track them. The connection to the mob defines them and their lives. The vision of the Mafia in The Godfather was so romanticized and stylized, that the mob recreated itself to match the film’s presentations. A blasted , Married to the Mob brings the mythic world of the film gangsters into the suburban homes where they really live.

In each of the film’s three acts, the location is different. Opening in the suburbs, everything is clean, familiar, and a little forced. As Ebert notes: “Shot in Demme’s patented dreamy/wide-awake style (his cameraman, for the seventh time, is the gifted Tak

Fujimoto), Married to the Mob brings an absurdist sit-com effervescence to its domestic scenes.”11 The second act is set in the grimmer and crowded inner city. Demme uses a lot of hand held camera to restrict, rather than open up the setting, offering a narrower landscape. There is the all-too-obvious contrast between the open and light Long Island suburbs and the dark NYC slum.

All of the action moves to Florida for the third act. There is a climatic confrontation, but it is more high farce than staged violence. A far more fantastic setting than the suburbs or the city, Demme indulges his inner Preston Sturges in the way he layers the action, portrays the characters, works the camera, and heightens the pacing.

Not as convoluted as Sturges, the last scenes still match the “we need to wrap this story

224 up” pacing of Miracle at Morgan’s Creek and the Palm Beach Story.

Filmed with a budget of around $10 million, Married to the Mob was a modest box office hit grossing just over $20 million, still making it Demme’s most commercially successful film to date. But Married proved to have an outsized influence on the gangster genre by moving them to the suburbs. Gangsters had long been very much creatures of the big-city, lower-class neighborhoods where they were raised. Married, released in

August 1988, followed just over two years later by Martin Scorsese’s (1990) both featured gangsters living in the suburbs, not as undercover aliens or aberrant parasites but ideal suburbanites, who fit right into their neighborhood. Although criminals, their dress code, manners, ambitions, and dreams are similar to that of their neighbors. Far more prominent than Married, Goodfellas is generally accepted as a modern masterpiece, influencing the gangster films that came after it. But as Owen

Gleiberman, noted in Variety, Demme “had figured out a new way to deploy his humanity on screen: by taking genre material and playing it for real. He did [this] in

Married to the Mob (1988), his tale of a suburban Mafia wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). It's almost a study for GoodFellas – but more than that, it's really a dry run for ,

[as] Demme tried to get past underworld-movie clichés to ask the question that he was always asking: What is this person’s experience? What would it feel like if you were in her shoes?” 12

225 Endnotes

1 Married to the Mob Tagline

2 Demme interview (1988)

3 Michael Barker story (March 2017)

4 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

5 Patrick Goldstein. “Jonathan Demme on making ‘Married to the Mob’ and why he’s attracted to movies about independent women.” LA Times, April 26, 2017.

6 Jacqueline Tresscott. “Mercedes Ruehl, Driven.” Washington Post, March 26, 1992 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1992/03/26/mercedes-ruehl- driven/

7 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

8 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

9 Demme interview (1988)

10 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

11 . “Married to the Mob Review.” August 19, 1988. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/married-to-the-mob-1988

12 Owen Gleiberman. “The ‘Silence of the Lambs’ director Jonathan Demme passed away aged 73 last Wednesday in New York of cancer complications.” Variety, April 7, 2017

226 Chapter 11: Silence of the Lambs (1989 – 1991)

“…Starling. Believe me, you don't want inside your head.” –FBI agent Jack Crawford to Clarice Starling1

The Silence of the Lambs earned Demme an Academy Award for directing and was one of only three films – along with (1934) and One Flew

Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) – to sweep the top five categories. Already well regarded by critics and the industry, Silence’s phenomenal critical and commercial success elevated Demme to the very top of the list of hot American film directors. He was proud of the film and also relieved by its success, which lifted off of him certain pressures, especially the commercial ones. In a career stretching back to Caged Heat (1974), only

Stop Making Sense and Married to the Mob made money at the box office, although neither did that well.

Appropriate to Demme’s strange and idiosyncratic career, The Silence of the

Lambs is clearly the pinnacle in so many ways – by and far the most successful and well known, it stands apart from the rest of his work, not aesthetically but as a cultural presence. It is the one title of his that almost everyone knows. (Philadelphia and Stop

Making Sense are also known but less so). The film’s dominating presence, both in his filmography and in culture, actually might be a factor in the lack of literature on Demme, a concern of this work. In box office, content, genre, and purpose it is so dramatically and jarringly different from most of his other films that it may have served to overshadow and distract from the rest of his output.

Based on Thomas Harris’ best-selling novel, The Silence of the Lambs is very

227 focused on story, offering a much tighter and more coherent narrative than most of his other films. Often, Demme’s films just follow their characters and the narrative comes from them or else mostly provides a framework. Detailing the story in Silence is the most forward focus, though the characters are extraordinary with Clarice Starling and Hannibal

Lector, so memorable that their cultural presence has transcended the film.

At first it seems the oddest fit in Demme’s filmography. Writing on it much earlier was one of the few times I felt like I was stretching to fit a film into certain criteria.

Especially given how different so many of Demme’s films are from each other, I was treating it as though it was removed. I was trying to fit the film into Demme rather than finding Demme in the film. But reworking chapters, I began thinking of how Melvin and

Howard might have turned out if Mike Nichols had directed it. Conversely, instead of

Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married, what would the film have been if

Demme had directed it? Missing the forest for the trees, it took a while to realize that though it is very different in scope and especially in reception, the successes of The

Silence of the Lambs very much is because it is a Jonathan Demme film. This genre effort based on the novel of the same name, a best seller, didn’t change his style or filmmaking; instead on his terms he realized it. Talking about Demme as auteur in the first chapter, I noted that his work consistently evidences a “…passion for the material…insistence on the film’s cinematic integrity…fascination with the characters.”2 Crucial to Silence is how characters are crafted, the importance of women, and the innovative uses of cinematic techniques to match and emphasize its narrative and tone.

Comparing Demme’s Silence to other Thomas Harris adaptions make the

228 director’s influence even more apparent. A gifted filmmaker, ’s underrated

Manhunter (1986), based on Thomas Harris’ , is the adaptation that comes closest to Silence. More confined, the film is less innovative, more conscious of genre, its gorgeous cinema far less restrained and focused, often overwhelming rather than just complementing the narrative. Lacking Demme’s playfulness, Mann’s version is not comedic and lacks the kind of ironic moments found in Demme’s work. The 2002 remake of Red Dragon by Brett Rather is probably the director’s best film, mostly because he imitates Silence. But his literalness, lack of imagination, and the broad strokes of his very commercial filmmaking leave the film flat. Adapting Thomas Harris’ Hannibal, the novel following Silence, Ridley Scott, an excellent director, mostly ignores characters and story.

Devoted entirely to style, Hannibal dazzles, but it’s all cinema and no content. Overly sensational, it lacks subtlety and emotional power.

Taking it further, imagine what Silence would be like if it had been directed by

John Carpenter, Brian DePalma, David Fincher, Francis Ford Coppola, ,

Sam Raimi, Quentin Tarantino, , M. Night Shyamalan, Martin Scorsese,

George Romero or even ? Each of these directors has such a strong personal style that just mentioning their names suggests the ways they might have filmed the novel.

As much a character study as horror film, Silence of the Lambs is about personality and purpose, about the healthy and the twisted, where the healthy are not without sickness with the twisted of interest. This is not a genre set piece where two- dimensional characters predictably interact to advance an overly plotted narrative. Almost

229 every character is not only strongly etched but contributes to the film and especially the richness and trajectory of the narrative. The cold, knowing, monstrous, long-imprisoned

Hannibal Lector is interviewed by the far more naive but sharp and hard-as-steel FBI agent Clarice Starling four times. Starling is trying to find out anything she can on the serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill. In the beginning, Lector is playing her but rapidly she learns the rules. Lector dominates the first session and in some ways all of them, but by listening, understanding, and anticipating Lector, especially the games he is playing, by the end she gets the information she needs.

Often in horror films the nightmarish inhuman antagonists (“the evil,” however it is presented), is the most interesting aspect of the film. Horror films usually concentrate on scaring the audience, often with grotesque creatures or electrifying cinematic bursts, shots or scenes that are there to surprise the audience, which has come to be disturbed, awed, and terrified. Whether a creature or an atmosphere or both, no matter how intense the scene, it is safely on the screen.

In Silence, rather than just shocking the audience with surprise or monsters,

Demme does something different. “You want the audience to be in the character’s shoes,”

Demme explained. “The more deeply into the character’s shoes the audience is, the more they’re going to care about what’s going on.”3 He uses his cinematic tools not to shock, which tends to have viewers sometimes briefly turn away; but rather he seduces and draws them in. The film manipulates point of view, especially close-ups and camera angles, as well as pacing and texture. The subjective camera is designed not to emphasize certain exclamation points but to keep the audiences unnerved. Pushing POV conventions

230 into the new and unknown, it is a symphony of close-ups, with the always moving camera often focusing tighter and tighter, shot at slightly askew angles, it sucks viewers ever forward, drawing them in until soon the screen is no longer a barrier; instead they are deep inside the film.

As with many horror films, the multi-layered ambitions of Silence include story, narrative undercurrent, focus, and purpose. The story is about the FBI’s efforts to catch the serial killer Buffalo Bill especially because his most recent victim is a senator’s daughter. But that is just a setting for FBI cadet Clarice Starling. Attempting to get information about Buffalo Bill, she interacts with incarcerated manipulative serial killer

Hannibal Lector who cannibalized his victims. Still overtly focused on tracking down the

Buffalo Bill, the film is about the relationship between Hannibal Lector and Clarice

Starling. All of those layered on each other are experienced by the viewer through the film’s intrusive cinematic style.

History

Written and directed by Michael Mann, Manhunter, the first film to feature Hannibal

Lector, was released in the summer of 1985. An adaptation of Thomas Harris’s novel Red

Dragon (1981) the title was changed because producer thought it too similar to his Year of the Dragon, directed by Michael Cimino, which had so spectacularly bombed when released the previous summer.4 The title change didn’t help.

Manhunter, which cost roughly $15 million earned only around $8 million. As such, De

Laurentiis gave up his rights to its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs (1988) .5

231 After reading the novel, got his friend and Orion chairman Arthur

Krim to partner with him on optioning it. Planning on directing and starring, Hackman hired to write the screenplay. After his daughter read the book, she pleaded with her father not to do the film. Hackman, listening to her, quit the project, leaving Orion’s

Krim the sole owner.6

Having found a project he liked and really wanted to make, Demme gave Orion’s

Mike Medavoy a copy of the script “about a road rage victim, where somebody goes ballistic and chases our hero through the rest of the movie.” The next day Medavoy called to say, “Jonathan, this is a good script…but I want you to read something else first.” It was The Silence of the Lambs.7 Demme didn’t ask for Silence; they gave it to him. They gave it to him because they had such confidence in him as a filmmaker. Medavoy said,

“he hadn’t done this kind of movie, and I thought it was time he did. It was a little bit of a stretch, but all of us believed in him.” By the time the film was finished, Medavoy had left Orion to join Tri-Star but even at a rival studio he found Silence “brilliant – I knew he was going to do it." Enthusiastically he added, “For those people who didn't think he could do this kind of movie, it'll convince them that he can do anything.”8

“Under normal circumstances, I would never have read a book about serial murders unless I was stranded in an airport,” Demme noted. But when he did, “It was all there. This brilliant novelist Thomas Harris, at the peak of his powers, telling this classic

American story, with this great leading woman part. I was like, ‘Oh my God, yes.’ I just knew it could be scary as hell.”9 Years later Demme would say, “God bless Gene

Hackman’s daughter, if that’s true, and that’s what I’ve always heard. God bless her.10

232 After he had just read the first three pages about Clarice, “I knew I wanted to make a movie out of this,” Demme says. “I love women's stories. They're a little harder to find than any other kind of good story, but I love them. Because women are my heroes.

His first choice to play Clarice Starling was Michelle Pfeiffer who he had just worked with on Married to the Mob. Scriptwriter Ted Talley thought she was too beautiful but

Demme asked her anyway. She turned it down. 11

Knowing Jodie Foster, who had just won an Oscar for The Accused, was very interested, the producers advocated for her as did Talley. Demme wasn’t impressed, because he thought, “She’s such a California person…I didn’t believe her Boston accent

[in The Accused]. I saw her ‘acting’ all over the place and I wasn’t impressed.12

Foster flew herself to NYC to meet the director. At the end of their meeting,

Demme asked why she wanted to play the role. She explained, “I’m always playing victims,” her hands flirting about, “Oh help me, save me! This is about a woman saving another woman. And in order to do that, she’s faced with the overwhelming obstacle of all these men. I want to do that.”13

Demme loved what Foster had to say, but was still not persuaded, Meg Ryan was then asked. She not only turned it down but was angry it was offered to her. Next he thought of but studio executives turned her down because she wasn’t that well known. It was then, reluctantly, Demme gave into three producers on Jodie Foster.

Almost immediately he fell in love with her performance and her. 14

After being turned down by , Demme asked , saying it was “easy for me to see that Anthony would be a superb Dr. Lecter because he

233 had been such an amazing good doctor in The Elephant Man. He had been as believable a doctor as you can imagine, and he was good. What if you cast Anthony Hopkins in the part of Dr. Lecter, who is not the worst doctor, but he’s a…good doctor turned bad? That was my engine for Anthony Hopkins.”15 Before Hopkins had even finished reading the script, he committed to the project.

Demme remembers that, “We had a read-through in the boardroom at Orion, a week before we started shooting. All the executives were there. There was electricity in that room, coming off of what Hopkins was doing. He had found Lecter, and I remember when he delivered the last line. The room was just silent. And my producer, Kenny Utt, just goes, real quiet, ‘Oh…yeah!’…I thought, this could be the scariest movie ever, and I wanted to make that movie. I wanted to make a Psycho caliber fucking terrifying movie.”16

The production moved forward smoothly and rapidly. Tally recalls, “[Demme] read my first draft not long after it was finished, and we met, then I was just startled by the speed of things. We met in May 1989 and were shooting in November. I don’t remember any big revisions.”17 Finished in March 1990, The Silence of the Lambs went into general release on Valentine’s Day, 1991.

Demme, Clarice, Lector, and the Lambs

In many ways, the film emanates from Jodie Foster’s first interview as Demme realized

“that this is a story of a young woman trying to save the life of another young woman.

Maybe it’s a thriller. Maybe it’s a horror movie, but you have to honor that core story.”18

234 Purposefully subversive, Silence at its core is about identity especially when it comes to gender, with sex roles re-imagined. In horror films, women are usually helpless, traditionally they are victims, or else horrified and terror stricken they are as almost a chorus emphasizing the menace. In Silence, women are played against type, raising questions like: How does a woman function in a man’s world? When she does function, who is she? What can she hope to aspire to in terms of job and role? How is she viewed by others, who does she think she is?

Unlike too many sick, voyeuristic horror films, this is not a have-your-cake and eat-it-too effort; it does not show unimaginable horror or offer gruesome dramatic torture only to in some way condemn them. In Demme proudly noted that for “a two- hour movie, there are very few minutes devoted to anything that would be described as a scene of violence or gore. It makes you think about awful things and tries to stimulate the audience to use their imagination as much as possible.”19

The protagonist is a woman going for a role in a man’s world, the FBI, and the villain is a man who wants to be a woman. Even his latest victim is no weeping, blathering wreck. She is tough and angry; her mother is a senator. Catherine Martin, though a victim, is resistant and resourceful. The Senator is very much in the tradition of powerful politicians – except her devotion and deep love for her daughter gives her unique depth and humanity.

Consider the opening of Jaws (1975) where a woman goes swimming. We hear that brilliant score, she is attacked and disappears. This is a classic horror film opening

(one that is now used routinely on television police procedurals). The victim is

235 introduced, sometimes carefree, sometimes panicked. Cut away. Morning comes, and the victim is dead. This is just one possibility in an expansive vocabulary of openings.

Contrast that with the opening of The Silence of the Lambs (suggested by Foster).

A woman (Jodie Foster) runs through the woods. The music is dramatic, though not menacing. As she continues her run, pulling herself a steep climb, hand over hand, on a rope, we hear her breathing. Her breathing gets heavier. She is pushing herself harder. But then her run is interrupted. But not by violence. Here, Demme is not trying to fool us.

This isn’t the beginning of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah, 1974).

She is not a victim.

Clarice Starling, a student at the FBI training program at Quantico, is sent for by agent Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn). While waiting in his office she notices a wall covered in clippings about the Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) killings – a serial killer who, after kidnapping young women, kills the victim three days later. Given the moniker because he skins each body before dumping it. When Crawford arrives, she asks if this is about

Buffalo Bill. He says it isn’t. Claiming it’s just a routine survey, he sends Starling to talk to the manipulative and dangerous Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins), a serial killer who ate his victims, who is imprisoned in an insane asylum outside Baltimore. Crawford lies but everyone in the film lies or misleads. The film floats in the cross currents of such confusion.

The film is marked by four meetings between Starling and Lector. Their initial meeting is classic, arriving at the hospital she first meets asylum head Dr. Chilton

(Anthony Head), an unctuous creep, dripping with sleaze. He notes how clever Crawford

236 is for sending her because she is so pretty and Lector probably has not seen a woman in the eight years he’s been locked up. Then they walk into the depths of the institution, tracked by a camera moving along with them, until she leaves Chilton. Barney takes her down the hall as she comes upon Lector’s cell. At first, because of her angle, it appears empty. Then, suddenly, standing in his glass cell is Hannibal Lector. FBI agent Crawford has misled Starling. Very much wanting information, he is using her as bait to hook

Lector, hoping that perhaps he’ll reveal something to her he would not share with a more obvious investigator.

Early on Lector asks her, “You’re not real FBI are you?” She answers “I’m still in training at the Academy”. Somewhat bemused but also analytical, he feigns indignation.

“Jack Crawford sent a trainee to me?” Like a cat toying with a mouse, Lector is probing her looking for her intellectual and emotional vulnerabilities. Pushing back not with strength but strategy, her answer is too overly earnest. “Yes, I’m a student. I’m here to learn from you. Maybe you can decide for yourself whether or not I’m qualified enough to do that.” Deferring to him she empowers herself. She also realizes that Crawford deliberately misled her. Both of them lifelong outsiders, this is the beginning of an attraction that grows between them, more intellectual than emotional. But as Roger Ebert points out, “[they] both share similar childhood wounds. Lecter is touched when he learns that Clarice lost both her parents at an early age, was shipped off to relatives, was essentially an unloved orphan. And Lecter himself was a victim of child abuse.”20 (On the

DVD commentary track, Demme says he regrets not underlining this more.) 21

Over the course of their meetings, the relationship changes. At first the one

237 fishing, he is soon being more successfully fished. He thinks he is sucking her soul, getting to taste her most painful and still fresh memories, but he is really getting only the whiffs of a cooking banquet. She gets exactly what she needs, information to help track down Buffalo Bill.

At the second meeting, when he asks if Crawford wants her sexually, she tells him how beneath him that question is, comparing him to “Multiple” Miggs who had been in the cell next door before Lector had talked him into killing himself. It is a crucial moment in terms of their relationship. She scores on him. In that same meeting, he states that he wants to be transferred and will trade information to make it happen.

Dr. Chilton, head of the hospital, angrily challenges Starling when she just shows up for the third meeting. She brushes him aside. Lector proposes his eccentric deal: he’ll swap information in return for her honestly answering questions about her past, especially the most painful parts. They begin.

Dr. Chilton upstairs in his office listens to them. He then visits Lector, telling him the offer is phony, he proposes a deal. Lector accepts. Calling the Senator’s office,

Chilton is taking over.

Lector so easily playing Chilton and the Senator and her team, emphasizes how

The Silence of the Lambs belongs to Clarice Starling. A female player in a man’s world, there is little respect shown to her but she is the only one who really knows what is going on. Sexual equality is missing, as is peer recognition; especially lacking is any acknowledgement of her work and accomplishments. On her safest ground, in the FBI community, she is not at peace. Early on she enters an elevator filled with male agents.

238 All taller than her, she seems out of place. A few times she is surrounded by much larger men.

When a new victim is found in , after flying there, Crawford and

Starling enter a room filled with local law enforcement. The sheriff starts talking, but

Crawford interrupts him, suggesting that they discuss the case in private. This is a ploy by Crawford, but it profoundly disrespects Starling.

Later in the car they talk about it. Crawford explains: “Starling, when I told that sheriff we shouldn't talk in front of a woman, that really burned you, didn't it? It was just smoke, Starling. I had to get rid of him.”

She doesn’t dispute this, but responds, “It matters, Mr. Crawford. Cops look at you to see how to act. It matters.” “Point taken,” he answers how sincerely?

Starling is the sharpest of the agents on Buffalo Bill’s trail, but that doesn’t help her much. After the case is closed, regardless of her involvement, she still participation in solving it, she still won’t really be welcome in the boys club that is the FBI.

The last meeting between Lector and Starling ends when Chilton and the cops come in and hustle her away. It doesn’t matter that much that Chilton is not just ignorant but dumb and the cops are about to become victims. Starling has gotten the clues, she just needs to figure them out.

Hannibal Lecter is a powerful, lethal, larger-than-life character, Hopkins plays him that way. Starling matches him, but Foster plays her very real, much smaller and contained. Lector is clearly brilliant but Starling uses his power against him. Adding another layer to their relationship, Lector also functions as her therapist helping her to

239 shed her childhood demons. They are connected but as a couple, rather as day is followed by night, the ocean defined by the shore and drought is created when rain ceases.

In romantic comedies, no matter how intensely the two leads may detest each other, we root for them to come together. This is the case with Lector and Starling.

Engaged in a vicious battle of wits, they verbally and mentally thrust and parry during each meeting. Watching, we want him to open up to her; we want her to match him. We look forward to beauty talking to the beast, the beast answering.

Jame Gumb is almost a classic monster like Frankenstein’s, obviously sick and dangerous. A psychopath, any discussion of Gumb’s sexuality is missing the point – it doesn’t matter. It is not about sex; it is about appearances, about viewing and being viewed. Rather than a conveniently twisted evil homosexual villain driven by uncontrollable lusts, Gumb is lost in the land between reality and desire. He is deafened by the silence of the lambs, destroyed by what is not there, which in his case is a sexual center, any world in to which he could fit effortlessly. He is both a man and a woman, and he is also neither. In his most aroused moment he hides his penis between his legs.

Talking about him, Demme notes:

The character is defined by the fact that he wants to transform himself…He was so profoundly abused as a child, no doubt, he’s so filled with self-loathing that he wants to that he wants to become something completely different and he's tried many things. One of them even was Benjamin Respell (the head in the jar) was his lover for a moment. He was “trying” to be gay. But he has now taken on the persona of the old lady who he killed…it’s not his gay thing.22

The final confrontation between Gumb and Starling, given all that has come

240 before it, has to be so powerful as to not be “anti-climactic.” Instead of the and ever present sense of tension already evidenced throughout the film, this scene goes for straight horror. In every way disconcerting, the use of light and darkness is disorienting, while the strange and haunting loveliness of moths and butterflies resonates against the violence. All of this just the setting for Gumb’s POV from behind night vision goggles shot in an eerie green haze. The scene is dragged out, arguably going a couple of beats too long but that just emphasizes the terror.

Silence of the Lambs has two monsters – Lector and Gumb – but only one villain:

Dr. Chilton. There is a real strategic brilliance in having the most hated character in the film be the doctor. This grants the audience the freedom to slide into the film’s emotional slipstream, allowing breathing room for Lector and Gumb.

Demme does play with the unbreakable moral line necessary for such a film to work. Arguably compromising it with Lector’s escape, in a sense, the film’s closure seems to almost forgive Lector. Lector’s code follows the Dylan line, “In order to live outside the law you must be honest.”23

After Lector’s escape, Starling is certain he won’t come after her. At a celebration she gets a phone call. It’s Lector. He ends by saying, “I do wish we could chat longer, but…I'm having an old friend for dinner. Bye.”

He hangs up, Clarice keeps calling him: “Dr. Lecter?...Dr. Lecter?...Dr. Lecter?...

Dr. Lecter?…”

He is off following () his dinner, Dr Chilton. Which is exactly what most of us want.

241 Many argue that the big reveal in Silence is how similar they are to each other, but that is obvious. In the disappointing ending of Hannibal, the sequel to Silence, Thomas

Harris has Lector and Starling come together as a couple, which is just wrong. Demme is the perfect director for this movie because in his affection for both, he brings them as close together as he can but this just clearly illustrates their differences. Lecter is a brilliant thinker, an astute observer, and a sly psychopath lacking morality. How close he comes to appearing normal, he is never close at all, which makes him so horrifying.

It is no wonder that Demme cites Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as an inspiration, not just because it evokes horror rather than depicts it, but that it takes

Sarte’s observation that “hell is other people” to an extreme. The greatest horror is often not what you see, but what you imagine. Instead of what is there, this film is a catalyst to what is not there: the missing. This is clearly articulated in the title. The horror is not the lambs’ painful cries, but their lack of noise. The Silence of the Lambs is a gasp of horror at the ways of the world. Lector lacks morality. Gumb lacks sexual identity. Their evil is considered against the backdrop of mediocre dishonesty, lying, and sexism – Crawford not only lies and insults Starling, he also ultimately represents the patriarchy (FBI) that oppresses her, Chilton is a creep, the lack of respect for Starling is seemingly shared by all the men in the film.

In order for Silence to work, given the ground it treads as it sways back and forth between the acceptable and the unacceptable, it needs a solid center. Ignoring what others think, suffering any indignity and expecting no reward, Starling is a woman out to save a woman, Catherine Martin, nothing more and nothing less, her righteousness anchors the

242 film.

Cinema

The filmmakers worked hard to make a film that matched the ambitions and textures of the novel. Instead of trying to shock and scare by what was on the screen, they designed

Silence to get inside people’s heads like a nightmare, haunting viewers long after they left the theater.

Demme noted that the creative team, which included production designer Kristi

Zea, Tak Fujimoto, writer Ted Talley, and Demme “knew it was imperative that we honor the horrific nature of the book, because if we didn’t it would be a watered down version of the novel. Also you have to accept the fact that one reason why people find the book so powerful is that it is so horrific.” 24 But they also didn’t want to be too grotesque or gruesome. They wanted a film that got to those who were watching it, but also wanted as general an audience as possible.

“The most powerful shot of all,” according to Demme, “is when you put the viewer right in the shoes of one of the characters so that they are seeing exactly what the character is seeing.”25 Tak Fujimoto and Demme had been working on long takes and experimenting with point of view since early on. In Married to the Mob they had really played with subjective cinema through camera angels, positioning and point of view shots. In Silence they decided they really had to shatter the fourth wall, the imaginary one that existed that between screen and audience. They wanted audiences to be cinematically enveloped, watching not as outsiders but almost participants. In order to do this, they

243 positioned the “camera so the actors are speaking directly to the audience in close-up and extreme close-up shots, suggesting the characters in the film recognize the audience’s presence.”26

Much of the film is told from Clarice’s point of view, which Demme said was “an easy shot to set up because all you have to do is watch what Jodie Foster does in rehearsal and what she looks at; the cameraman watches that and then it’s his turn to duplicate what she saw. Just copy what the actress is doing.”27

There is example after example of how the filmmaking team, in solving problems, help create a unique and thrilling film. Unhappy with the way Lector looked behind bars, feeling it negated the intimacy between Lector and Starling, the team discussed different approaches. Someone said, “My God we should just put him behind thick glass like they do rats in a laboratory, then we Could see everything.” 28

The use of music is always of the utmost importance in a horror film. For Silence,

“that aspect of [Demme’s] personality found perhaps its most enduring expression in his approach to and enthusiasm for music. He deployed it in his work in ways that surged across genres, slyly making pluralistic points while avoiding being merely cool or touristic, and always emphasizing fun.”29

Powerful, outrageous, elegant, and subdued, Silence’s score swirls to the richest majestic sound of full orchestration, slows down to the rhythm of breathing and sometimes goes silent. Composer , who would also score Philadelphia, explained that he, “tried to make the music just fit in. When you watch the movie you are not aware of the music. You get your feelings from all elements simultaneously –

244 lighting, cinematography, costumes, acting, music.” Shore added that, “Jonathan Demme was very specific about the music.”30

Few directors have used songs as well as Demme. The scene of Gumb transforming himself into a woman, or at least thinking that is what he is doing, is creepy enough. Just the visual power of the scene – his grotesque physicality, putting on lipstick and a wig before tucking his genitals – personifies horror. As he shimmers and shakes to

Q Lazarus’ “Goodbye Horses,” muttering, “Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me.”

Demme always tried to make the best film he could for the audience. He wanted them to be not just engaged but to enter his films. Silence is Demme at his finest, bringing together every element in a way that proved unique and defining. He created not just as hit but a masterpiece.

Reception

Well received and reviewed, Silence opened with a smash box office on Valentine’s day and remained in the list of the top 15 box office hits through the end of June, four months later. The movie received terrific reviews from mainstream media critics. The Hollywood

Reporter’s Duane Byrne exclaimed, “Silence is dead-out spellbinding during the cat-and- mouse exchanges between the wily serial killer and the gutty law enforcement trainee.

Under Jonathan Demme’s masterful cinematic surgery, we get into Lecter’s twisted skull and, through this outrageous descent, we come to see this sinister in the everyday.” 31

In many of the reviews, the critics demonstrated an intimacy, with Demme’s films. Sheila Benson in the LA Times noted: ‘The Jonathan Demme of Something Wild or

245 Melvin and Howard or Stop Making Sense might not be the first director one would think of for suspense or bloody terror; his touch has always seemed lighter, his interests more quirky and off the mainstream. So much for pigeonholing. Demme's vision of The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris’ truly terrifying novel, is stunning.”32 David Ansen in

Newsweek wrote, “Jonathan Demme’s terrifying thriller…is evil of a particularly baroque flourish, and readers of the novel might wonder how Demme could bring such nastiness to the screen without crossing the line of stomach-turning exploitation. The Silence of the

Lambs is an electrifying exercise in suspense.”33

Backlash

As much as the mainstream press praised The Silence of the Lambs (with only a few exceptions), it was extremely controversial in the alternative press. In the gay community, widely attacked, especially for its portrayal of Jame Gumb. One GLAAD leader said:

“The killer in the movie is a walking, talking gay stereotype. He has a poodle named

Precious, he sews, he wears a nipple ring, he has an affected feminine voice, and he cross-dresses. He completely promotes homophobia.”34

An important forum for the debate, presenting a range of views, was an issue of the Village Voice where writer Lisa Kennedy invited a number of writers, many of them film critics both gay and straight, to comment on the furor surrounding The Silence of the

Lambs. Among their reactions, Stephen Harvey indicted, “Should this movie incite some credulous homophobe out there in the dark to work out his problem in the streets, Lecter and Gumb won’t be the only ones with blood on their hands.” Jewel Gomez argued: “The

246 director chose to make the symptoms [of Buffalo Bill’s homosexuality] through what the general audience accepts as typical gay male affect: nipple rings, swishing scarves, crude makeup, etc.…it’s clear that gay men are not a community Demme considers worth handling with care.”

Finally Larry Kramer, who weighed in against Demme again and again, offered

“The Silence of the Lambs is a dumb, stupid, manipulative, gripping, well-made, and ultimately unbelievable movie. It is not scary, it is just unpleasant.”35 But when

Philadelphia was released he was more vicious. Writing in a op-ed,

Kramer wrote, “I bring up the painful reminder that Demme also directed The Silence of the Lambs, which many gays consider one of the most virulently and insidiously homophobic films ever made.36

In light of Demme’s politics and consistent humanist point of view, he was asked his reaction to these attacks:

‘It’s complicated,’ he says pensively. ‘The film very clearly says that Jame Gumb spends his life altering himself to escape from the terrible fact of who he is, and how he’s been abused. So it makes sense that if he’s heterosexual, he’ll try being homosexual, and vice versa. But people heard the line about him having a male lover, and saw him looking effeminate, which was enough for some audiences. But I knew in my heart of hearts that Gumb wasn’t gay, so I was happy that the film opened the door on discussing negative portrayals. I welcomed that other viewpoint.37

The reaction was more mixed when considered by writers who questioned if the film was feminist, feminist friendly, or simply traditional chauvinism disguised? The reactions spanned the spectrum – some criticized the film for being deeply sexist regardless of its surface support of women, while others defended it because of its

247 portrayal of Clarice Starling as a strong protagonist. “What marks out is that it is a profoundly feminist movie. For women I know, most of whom have seen it more than once, the film is as exhilarating as it is harrowing,” Wrote Amy Taubin. The Silence of the Lambs “takes a familiar narrative and shakes up the gender and sexuality stuff. It’s a in which the woman is hero rather than victim, the pursuer rather than the pursued.”38

In Bitchmedia, Sarah Marshall concluded: “Twenty-five years later, it is still rare that we get the chance to encounter a heroine like Clarice – one who, as Jodie Foster put it, emerges victorious because of ‘her emotionality, [her] intuition, her frailty and vulnerability.’ It is rare, in other words, for us to encounter a heroine who succeeds not in spite of the fact that she is a woman, but because of it.”39

This piece was sharply challenged by Jos Truitt in “My Auntie Buffalo Bill: The

Unavoidable Transmisogyny of Silence of the Lambs”:

Far from inadvertently stumbling upon a trans-misogynistic supervillain, Silence of the Lambs actually actively promoted a trans-misogynistic idea, birthed by people operating under the feminist label, that trans women are the ultimate representation of male violence. I know the people at Bitch want their feminism to be inclusive of trans women. But they can’t do that by ignoring the real harm that’s been done to us by cis feminism.40

The more conservative press largely ignored it. When they did, not surprisingly to anyone that conservative traditionalists felt that it endorsed, rather than condemned, immorality.

The always contrarian conservative Michael Medved wrote:

248 the horrifying aspects of this film cannot be written off as some small portion of the whole, some brief and nightmarish in an otherwise uplifting experience. The ghoulish and shocking contents of The Silence of the Lambs are not incidental to its essence, they are, in fact, its very blood and bones. When the academy chose to anoint this particular picture, it is therefore not offering its applause in spite of its grotesque themes but because of them? 41

Many of the more political critics seemed to be reviewing a film they wanted to hate rather than the one Demme made. The analogy that best comes to mind is twenty angry folks looking at an elephant. The critics look at one part of the film or another with a very narrow focus.

Elaine Dutka in the LA Times offered the following:

From the beginning, the film has been under attack from individuals and special-interest groups who believe it is excessively gruesome and violent and that it degrades women and perpetrates negative gay stereotypes…Whether these accusations are valid is a subject of debate even within the groups themselves, raising questions about issues ranging from First Amendment rights and creative freedom to the impact of screen imagery on moviegoers.34

Any close examination of Silence as a whole reveals the exact opposite of what its critics charge, though any such contemporary thriller or horror film walks a fine line between castigating and secretly endorsing what it portrays. The Silence of the Lambs

(1991) marks the end of the first half of Demme’s career, if not exactly chronologically. If we begin with Angels Hard as They Come in 1971, he was twenty years into his career.

Demme continued working until his death in 2016, twenty-five years later. But The

Silence of the Lambs changed everything. In the years before the commercial success of

Silence he made roughly as many films as in the years following. But the body of work before Silence is more cohesive.

24 9 Leaving out Married to the Mob, in just its opening weekend, Silence grossed more than any of Demme’s other films did during their total theatrical runs. The film ended up earning $130 million domestic and an astonishing $270 million-plus worldwide.

It was the fourth highest grossing film of the year, after 2: Judgement Day,

Robin Hood, and Beauty and the Beast.

The previous year, in November 1990, Orion had released the even more successful box office hit Dances With Wolves, which not only earned over $180 million domestically but seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for

Kevin Costner. The terrible irony is that by the time of the triumphant performance at the

64th Academy Awards show in March 1992, Orion Pictures had already declared bankruptcy.

250 Endnotes

1 From The Silence of the Lambs

2 Louis Black. Jonathan Demme: Champion of the Soul

3 Elizabeth Flock. “What director Jonathan Demme, who made ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ brought to filmmaking.” PBS, April 26, 2017 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/director-jonathan-demme-made-silence- lambs-brought-filmmaking

4 Ben Steelman. “De Laurentiis Had Style of Old-School Hollywood Moguls.” Star News, November 17, 2010 https://www.starnewsonline.com/article/NC/20101117/News/605067709/WM/

5 Newman. “ Review.” , February 5, 2007 https://www.empireonline.com/movies/hannibal-rising/review/

6 Mike Fleming. “Jonathan Demme And Untold ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ Tales: Hannibal, Clarice, Tally, Hackman, And A Discarded Scary Ending” Deadline, April 26, 2017 https://deadline.com/2017/04/the-silence-of-the-lambs-25th-anniversary-untold- tales-jonathan-demme-ted-tally-hannibal-lecter-clarice-starling-1201703981/

7 Mike Fleming. “Jonathan Demme and Untold ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ Tales: Hannibal, Clarice, Tally, Hackman, And A Discarded Scary Ending” Deadline, April 26, 2017

8 Nikki Finke. “Jonathan Demme on his transition from exploitation movies to his 'best work: 'Silence of the Lambs” LA Times, February 10, 1991 https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-archive-jonathan-demme- 20170426-story.html

9 Nikki Finke. “Jonathan Demme on his transition from exploitation movies to his 'best work: 'Silence of the Lambs” LA Times, February 10, 1991

251

10 Mike Fleming.“Jonathan Demme and Untold ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ Tales: Hannibal, Clarice, Tally, Hackman, And A Discarded Scary Ending” Deadline, April 26, 2017.

11 Maxim Staff. “5 Creepy Facts You Didn't Know About ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ Maxim, April 26, 2017 https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/silence-of-the-lambs-25-years-movie- trivia-2016-2

12 Conversation with Paul Thomas Anderson, (October 26, 2013)

13 Jodie Foster talking at Jonathan Demme’s funeral (April 28, 2017)

14 Nick Levine. “Silence of the Lambs Director Admits He Didn’t Want to Cast Jodie Foster.” NME, April 2, 2015. https://www.nme.com/news/film/silence-of-the-lambs-director-admits-he-didn-t- wa-874781

15 Mike Fleming.“Jonathan Demme and Untold ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ Tales: Hannibal, Clarice, Tally, Hackman, And A Discarded Scary Ending” Deadline, April 26, 2017.

16 Christopher Hooton. “Jonathan Demme's First Choice for ‘Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter turned down the film as he thought it was ‘disgusting’” Independent, April 27, 2017. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/jonathan-demme- dead-dies-silence-of-the-lambs-hannibal-lecter-sean-connery-anthony-hopkins- a7705276.html

17 The Silence of Lambs, Jonathan Demme, Production, https://www.gradesaver.com/the-silence-of-the-lambs/wikipedia/production

18 Mike Fleming.“Jonathan Demme and Untold ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ Tales: Hannibal, Clarice, Tally, Hackman, And A Discarded Scary Ending” Deadline, April 26,

252 2017.

19 Peter Plagens. Violence in Our Culture.” Newsweek, March 31, 1991. https://www.newsweek.com/violence-our-culture-201272

20 Roger Ebert. “Silence of the Lambs Review.” February 18, 2001. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-silence-of-the-lambs-1991

21 Silence of the Lambs DVD Commentary

22 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

23 Bob Dylan. “Absolutely Sweet Marie” Blonde on Blonde (June 20, 1966)

24John Boorman and Walter Donahue, eds. Projections: A forum for Filmmakers. London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992.

25 Rob Feld. “Plugged In” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015

26 Kate Bellmore. “Evil Eyes: Breaking the Fourth Wall in Silence of the Lambs.” October 2, 2011. https://reelclub.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/evil-eyes-breaking-the-fourth-wall-in- silence-of-the-lambs/

27John Boorman and Walter Donahue, eds. Projections: A forum for Filmmakers. London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992.

28John Boorman and Walter Donahue, eds. Projections: A forum for Filmmakers. London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992.

29 Katherine Dieckman. “Jonathan Demme’s Musical Moments Make Sense” The Record:

253 Music News from NPR, April 27, 2017.

30 Matthias Büdinger. “Interview with Howard Shore.” Soundtrack Magazine, 1991.

31 Duane Byrne. Hollywood Reporter February 4, 1991.

32 Shelia Benson. Los Angeles Times, February 13, 1991.

33 David Ansen “Of Cannibals and Kink.” Newsweek February 17, 1991. https://www.newsweek.com/cannibals-and-kinks-205540

34 Jeffrey Bloomer “When Gays Decried Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme Became an Early Student of Modern Backlash.” Slate Magazine, April 28, 2017. https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/04/director-jonathan-demme-faced-down- silence-of-the-lambs-gay-backlash.html

35Lisa Kennedy. “Writers On The Lamb; Sorting Out The Sexual Politics Of A Controversial Film.” Village Voice, March 1991. (forum)

36 Larry Kramer. “Playwright and Gay Activist Larry Kramer Explains Why He Hated Jonathan Demme’s ‘Philadelphia.’” LA Times, January 10, 1994.

37 Ryan Gilby. “Odd Man Out.” Independent.co.uk. November 14, 2004.

38 Amy Taubin. “Wolves, Lambs – And Clarice Starling: The Rise Of The Serial Killer In 1990s Cinema” BFI Film Forever, Sight & Sound, November 4, 2017. https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/wolves- lambs-clarice-starling-rise-movie-serial-killer-twin-peaks-silence-lambs-henry- portrait

39 Sarah Marshall. “Over 25 Years, Clarice Starling’s Impact On Film Heroines Still Resonates.” and Rachael Johnson. “Reflections on a Feminist Icon.” Bitchflcks, March, 2014. http://www.btchflcks.com/2014/03/reflections-on-a-feminist- icon.html#.XPA9sZNKjGK

254

40 Jos Truitt. “My Auntie Buffalo Bill: The Unavoidable Transmisogyny of Silence of the Lambs” Feministing, March 10, 2016. http://feministing.com/2016/03/10/my-auntie-buffalo-bill-the-unavoidable- transmisogyny-of-silence-of-the-lambs/

41Michael Medved. Hollywood VS. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992.

42 Elaine Dutka. Los Angeles Times. March 20, 1991

255 Chapter 12: Philadelphia (1993)

“No one would take on his case... until one man was willing to take on the system.” 1 –Philadelphia tagline

Philadelphia, his next film after Silence of the Lambs, was a personal project – conceived and developed by Demme and his team specifically to address the AIDS crisis.2 Fascinated by the AIDS epidemic, at first mostly as to how it was perceived and understood, it soon became much more personal to Demme. All along he had been thinking about how a filmmaker could address this: “He never intended to make the film for a gay audience but saw himself as the ideal viewer.” 3

The project began to jell in 1988, when Demme learned that, “virtual family member Juan Suarez Boats, the great Spanish artist, Jo-Anne's best friend on the planet, came down with AIDS.”4 Ed Saxon’s best friend and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner’s nephew both got sick around the same time. These three and others would gather at

Demme’s NYC apartment to talk about what they could do to help. Not surprisingly they decided to make a movie, not to warn about or portray it. Instead they sought out to make a message film, one that they hoped would help change attitude and educate people, serving to overcome the general public’s disinterest and apathy. Maybe, at the very outside, they thought it might to result in more research, perhaps leading to a cure.5

Orion, where Demme had very happily made his last three films, was very interested in the project from the beginning. Unfortunately, the studio was already in such bad economic shape that even the extraordinary success of Silence came too late to save it from bankruptcy. Having left Orion, Mike Medavoy was now chairman at TriStar,

256 making it a logical choice to pitch the film. When Demme and Saxon sat down with

Medavoy and Marc Platt, President of Production, they didn’t even have a story, much less a finished script. Instead Demme says they offered them a “notion.”6 TriStar was happy to underwrite the project, with all agreeing on Nyswaner as writer.

Nyswaner and Demme began working on the script. Working their way to the film they wrote draft after draft. They had Juan Suarez Botas read the drafts. Demme remembered that in one draft “we had a cure found. Andrew Beckett almost dies and the cure is found. Juan goes, 'this is bullshit!' You know, you can't do this. I go ‘eh.’” 7

Demme loved working with Nyswaner, who had written the shooting script for

Swing Shift but still it ended up being 23 drafts. They were working on what would turn out to be one of the last drafts when they received a phone call from Tom Hanks agent.

They could tell by the agent’s voice that he was pained and unhappy, as he told them, “I have been instructed by my client Tom Hanks to make you aware of his keen interest in Philadelphia and he would like to throw his hat in the ring.” The tone of his voice was explained when he added, “and he has also instructed me to tell you he will do the film for minimum.” 8

Around the same time, executive producer Gary Goetzman, seated next to Denzel

Washington on a flight, was reading the latest draft of the script. According to Demme,

“Denzel (never ‘Washington’) asked what it was. Then he asked if he could read it.” 9

The next day Washington called. Demme spoke to him, telling him that he had been thinking about or . Washington’s response was, “Uh-huh, let me tell you Jon, I can be very, very funny.”10 TriStar, already committed to the film was,

257 of course, thrilled with these developments.

In the beginning they started “with angrier scripts, very political. Scripts that were informed with the rage I felt when confronted with society’s not only indifference but hostility to my sick, courageous friend. Ron and I were pissed, and we were not only aggressive but assaultive.” 11 Over time the script was toned down, as more and more they came to realize their purpose was to reach a general audience.

Philadelphia is the tale of an accomplished lawyer Andrew “Andy” Beckett (Tom

Hanks) working at Philadelphia’s largest corporate law firm. Paper work he has prepared for an important case is lost leading to the firm firing him. Having been highly regarded and very successful until then, Beckett is sure the lost paperwork was a set-up, figuring that the firm realizing he has AIDS, doesn’t want him to be associated with them.

Instead of fading into the night he decides to fight back by suing the firm. No lawyer is willing to take the case. Having to represent himself Beckett is researching in a law library when he is seen by African American personal injury lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel

Washington) who had already turned down the case. Homophobic, Miller being so afraid he could get AIDS from simple contact, had checked with his doctor, who assured him otherwise. Realizing this was really just another version of discrimination, Miller approaches Beckett telling him he’ll take the case. In court Miller faces Belinda Conine

(Mary Steenburgen), one of the firm’s top litigators.

Unusual for Demme, Philadelphia is a classic social issues Hollywood release, both as a production and a traditional court room genre piece, but that is its goal. Bill Chambers dismissed the effort stating that: “Being under the PC microscope

258 transforms Demme into the bastard offspring of Stanley Kramer and .”12

Except that is the idea driving the film.

It could have more vividly detailed the gay sub culture but towards what end? As with so many of Demme’s films, it hosts a profound and deep humanism that argues against its being a more sectarian work. If constructed so as to satisfy the overtly political critics, it would have lost the thread of celebration of human decency that runs through

Demme’s films. At the end of the day, changing people’s minds is best achieved by winning their hearts.

Still, Philadelphia does have very clearly defined heroes and equally obvious villains (the firm’s partner), though they are not particularly evil or dangerous. Although

Beckett lives with his lover Miguel Alvarez (), the real focus is on the growing relationship between the Miller and him, as they learn not only to trust each other but that they are not so very different. In a way, the villains are a MacGuffin; they don’t drive the plot as much as provide the circumstances for it.

Demme is sending a message and he is not using Western Union. Philadelphia is not redemption for Silence, as some claim, or penance for being straight in the time of

AIDS. It is not a cinéma vérité exposé of the disease or an outraged political tract. The film focuses on the devastation of AIDS, but from a removed and mainstream viewpoint.

Ultimately this often revolutionary, consistently unique, regularly groundbreaking director is neither singing to the chorus or confronting homophobic and conservative political adversaries; instead, he consciously created an anachronistic work, a larger than life film that tells a human story about the deadly consequences of an inhumane disease.

259 The clear goal of Philadelphia is to have a wide spread public impact by changing minds.

Not quite a United States army anti-VD effort, it is closer to films like Gentlemen’s

Agreement and Pinky.

Given his intentions, the film he made before it, his reputation as a filmmaker, and especially , in many ways the film Demme was determined to make was destined to be rejected by a large swath of community where his work often found favor

– political radicals, gay activists, film purists, and critics. Rather than subversive, the film is a more overtly liberal criticism of the mores of mainstream American society. It certainly wasn’t made for those engaged in the fight but it also wasn’t about energizing people to become involved in the struggle. It was about understanding and acceptance.

When released though generally well-reviewed, not surprisingly this earnestness was a major consideration. Appreciated by some critics, feeling as Todd McCarthy wrote in Variety: “[An] extremely well-made message picture about tolerance, justice and discrimination is pitched at mainstream audiences, befitting its position as the first major

Hollywood film to directly tackle the disease.” 13 Roger Ebert clearly got it, noting that

“for moviegoers with an antipathy to AIDS but an enthusiasm for stars like Tom

Hanks and Denzel Washington, it may help to broaden understanding of the disease.” 14

Others were less understanding, Frank Rich in the New York Times complained,

“In this cautious effort, the grays of human nature are erased. The gay characters are uniformly saintly. With the strong exception of the conflicted lawyer played by Denzel

Washington, too many of the straight characters are either deified (the hero's uniformly supportive family) or demonized (the hero's monstrously bigoted former legal

260 colleagues).”15 Desson Howe in the Washington Post was more contemptuous: “In propaganda terms, it makes Leni Riefenstahl's pro-Nazi documentaries of the 1930s look like the work of Super-8 movie amateurs. ‘Philadelphia’ is not a movie, it's a prophylactic. It's the kind of safe-sex filmmaking that protects its viewers from all discomfort and sensation, while congratulating them for getting a little closer to the disease.” 16

Already suspicious that Demme was going to make exactly the film he made, some critics in the gay community felt that Philadelphia represented as blatant an exploitation of gay life as Silence did a bigoted assault on it. Not surprisingly, playwright, author and LGBT rights activist Larry Kramer, in the Chicago Reader, viciously attacked it:

Philadelphia doesn't have anything to do with the AIDS I know. Or the gay world I know. It doesn't bear any truthful resemblance to the life, world, and universe I live in. And every person I know lives in. And every gay or PWA the film's director, Jonathan Demme, and its screenwriter, Ron Nyswaner, now lives in. To believe any viewer – particularly those I would like to have experience something meaningful watching this movie – would change his or her point of view after seeing it is like thinking Jesse Helms or George Bush or would change after watching an episode of Another World.17

In Cineaste, Roy Grundmann and Peter Sacks dismissed it as:

A predictable attempt in the liberal tradition of films such as ’s Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and Stanley Kramer's Home of the Brave (1949) to present personal narratives of prejudice and civil rights discrimination in clearly- defined moral terms. Yet, Philadelphia is different from the others because it cannot wholeheartedly denounce the social bigotry and prejudice it seeks to expose. In the end, the film is unable to make up its mind about the communities it feels obliged

261 to champion because homophobia (and the fear of AIDS, for that matter) is still a socially pervasive and popular attitude.18

Given his entire career, there is something strangely appropriate that Demme was now being criticized for being too straight. The real irony is that much of the criticism was because Demme made exactly the film he wanted to. Demme noted, “The thing about Philadelphia…I didn’t have some better version – some deeper, more complicated version – of this movie that we turned away from. We set out to make a movie dealing with AIDS discrimination, and there it is.” 19

Interestingly, Philadelphia is one of Demme’s least ambitious films in certain ways, designed to be a Hollywood studio socially conscious film, its Demme making his

Frank Capra film. In almost every one of his narrative films there is something noticeably subversive in his approach. Philadelphia, by its very nature, is so subversive, which

Demme respects by offering straight Hollywood moviemaking. Still, there are any number of Demme touches in it. Given Demme’s brilliance and range at presenting music, it is so appropriate that here he presents a segment of an opera in a unique and powerful way. Dominating the screen with a sweeping encompassing shot, the film’s protagonist Andrew Beckett listens Maria Callas’ recording of “La Mamma Morta” from

“Andrea Chénier.”

Every film Demme made he hoped would prove a box office success, though few did. But for Philadelphia to really succeed, given its purpose, had to be a hit. No matter how well intentioned its creators, if Philadelphia had failed at the box office it would likely have made the path to produce any similarly socially conscious movie much more

262 difficult.

It was a huge hit. The last time I ever interviewed Demme was at a restaurant that was part of motel near his home in Upper Nyack. At the very end I noted that

Philadelphia is still the most commercially successful gay themed film. Always very proud of the film, somewhat excitedly Demme asked me if it did “even more than

Brokeback?” 20

I pointed out that though Brokeback Mountain did better domestically with a box office of $88 million compared to the $77 million take of Philadelphia, it was 2005 dollars compared to 1993 dollars. Still, the international gross of Brokeback topped out at about $178 million, Philadelphia did over $205 million.21 He smiled broadly, clearly pleased, then stood up as we were leaving. We hugged. It was the last time I saw him alive.

263 Endnotes

1 Philadelphia tagline

2 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

3 Mark Zelinsk. “The Philadelphia Phenomenon.” https://glreview.org/article/the-philadelphia-phenomenon/

4 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

5 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

6 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

7 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

8 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

9 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

10 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

11 Anthony DeCurtis. “The Rolling Stone Interview: Jonathan Demme on Philadelphia, Tom Hanks, Homophobia.” Rolling Stone, March 24, 1994.

12 Bill Chambers. Film Freak Central. 1994. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/source-559?page=34

13 Todd McCarthy. “Philadelphia” Variety, Dec. 6, 1993. https://variety.com/1993/film/reviews/philadelphia-1200434876/

264

14 Roger Ebert, Philadelphia. January 14, 1994. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/philadelphia-1994

15 Frank Rich. “Journal; the Other Quake.” New York Times, January 23, 1994. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/23/opinion/journal-the-other-quake.html

16 Desson Howe. “Philadelphia” Washington Post, January 14, 1994. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/philadelphiarhowe_a0b026.htm

17 Larry Kramer. “Philadelphia Sorry” Chicago Reader, January 13, 1994.

18 Roy Grundmann, Peter Sacks. “Philadelphia.” Cinéaste Vol. 20, No. 3 (1994), pp. 51- 54. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41687331?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

19 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

20 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

21 Box Office Mojo. Philadelphia

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=philadelphia.htm

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=brokebackmountain.htm

265 Chapter 13: Beloved, The Truth About Charlie, and The Manchurian Candidate (1998-2004)

In the wake of Silence and Philadelphia, rather than aim at being a Hollywood high roller and mainstream director, Demme slowed the pace, devoting time to his growing family. Even with those successes, there were problems getting the films into production that he wanted to make. Philadelphia was supposed to be followed by Parting the Waters: A Biography of Martin Luther King being adapted by Anna Hamilton, set to be co-produced and star Harry Belafonte. Demme thought of it as a “cross between

Nashville and The Battle of Algiers,”1 but unfortunately it found no traction.

The terrible irony of Demme’s career is that in the early part, without a hit, he took the films he was offered. A sometimes almost desperate journeyman he turned out half a dozen or so masterpieces more by circumstances than choice. Blackmailed into directing Crazy Mama, he joined the project ten days before shooting as he also did with

Who Am I This Time? He was happy to make Citizen’s Band, which had already been turned down by over 20 directors, and Melvin and Howard, which Mike Nichols had developed. Landing at Orion he got to make Something Wild and Married to the Mob and then, though he hadn’t asked for it, they gave him Silence of the Lambs, which changed everything.2 Clearly Philadelphia was a personal project. Finally achieving success as a director he was able to pick and choose projects, yet his next three films are among his least interesting. I’m not sure how to account for this, except that each project seemed so much more promising than it turned out. Oprah Winfrey asked him to do Beloved (1998), which he always claimed as his favorite. Always wanting to do his own French Nouvelle

266 Vague, after watching ’s Charade, he thought he had found the perfect film to remake and realize that ambition. The Truth About Charlie (2002) fell short.

Sherry Lansing and Denzel Washington talked him into making The Manchurian

Candidate (2004).

Beloved (1998) “The past has a life of its own” 3

Oprah Winfrey had spent over a decade trying to get a film made of Beloved, Toni

Morrison’s bestselling novel. She wanted: “Beloved to be an experience, not just entertainment. The film, like Toni Morrison's novel, was meant to answer the question, what was it like to be a slave?” During that time, “lots of people (had told her) it couldn't be done, asking ‘how you gonna put that on the screen?’” 4

When Oprah approached Demme in 1996, his first reaction was to find it hard to believe that such “an aggressively different kind of movie was actually going to be financed.”5 He was interested but first had a crucial question about her plan to star as

Sethe: “How do you plan to do it. I don’t mean physically. How do you plan to create this character, because you are so known?”6 Oprah answered:

You know, I think I’m going to open myself up and let her come through. I think I’m going to just channel her. I think, because I don’t have the experience, I can’t imagine what that kind of pain is – that you would feel so low, so devastated, so hopeless that you would feel the need to remove your children and yourself from this earth. 7

Before it, Demme’s other films from Crazy Mama to Philadelphia are largely

267 white (in Philadelphia Denzel Washington got cast over white stars because he actively pursued the role). Ironic in that one of the aspects most attractive about Caged Heat was how multi-racial its cast was. When I asked Demme about the scant racial representation in his films he reminded me that his filmography was haphazardly constructed out of the films he got to direct. He often came on a work when it was in some stage of pre- production. Most of the projects he developed he didn’t get to make. He lamented that, “I sought those films out as a filmmaker, because as a moviegoer I wanted to see more

African American subject matter. But I couldn't get anything off the ground.” 8

Trying to never do similar projects, he headed out into uniquely experimental waters with Beloved, even if was a mainstream Hollywood release. Essentially a cinema tonal experiment, it is a unique blending of the novelistic and cinematic, of the traditional and unique, of the past and the present; of John Cassavettes, Alfred Hitchcock, Sam

Peckinpah and Tobe Hooper; of Rosemary’s Baby, and Mandingo, blaxploitation and horror, melodrama and . Toni Morrison thought it couldn’t be filmed.

Winfrey and Demme worked hard at figuring out the adaptation. They knew they did not have the option of realizing a version of the whole book. Constructed out of nightmares, memories, and flashbacks, the novel is too epic, multi-layered, and dense. Continually shifting from the past to the present, it is heavily dependent on atmosphere and characters’ internal thoughts.

Set shortly after the Civil War, Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) with her daughter Denver

() lives in a house haunted by a terrible ghost. While a slave, Seethe had briefly escaped from the plantation but was captured. Stopping by to visit, Paul D (Danny

268 Glover), an old friend from the plantation, succeeds in driving the ghost away. Then Paul

D decides to stay. Then Beloved (Thandie Newton), a strange somewhat deranged drifter, is taken in by Sethe. Beloved, a very evil spirit, disrupts the household in a number of ways including driving a deep wedge between Sethe and Denver.

Richard LaGravenese, the first of three writers credited, realizing that there was no way the classic three-act structure would work, wrote it more as a “symphonic piece”9

Feeling that LaGravenese had tried to include too much, Demme cut that draft down considerably but the movie is still sprawling and hard to follow.

The main purpose of many ghost stories is horror, the spirits of the dead intruding on the land of the living designed to evoke fear. The otherworldliness of the spirits crucial to unsettling the audience. Beloved, the darkest of Demme’s films, is certainly a horror story filled with ghosts. But these spirits haven’t come up out of the depths of hell

– they are the allegorical ghosts of slavery and the consequences of slavery. When the book was written and the film produced, segregation had officially ended three decades earlier; but it was still very present, the laws may have been removed but the oppression and discrimination were very present and real. Sadly and ironically, Beloved points out that the ongoing ravages of slavery are visited upon the descendants of slaves. We know that in the real world racism is ongoing, that discrimination still very present, which makes an unhappy ending even more tragic.

Given Oprah Winfrey was behind it and Demme had just had two consecutive box office smashes, the film’s failure at the box office was surprising, if given its subject matter, not completely unexpected. Demme thought part of the problem was that the

269 picture was sold with a certain sense of “it’s time to take your medicine, America,” which may have been appropriate but was not the way to attract an audience.

Demme has said that that only twice in his career did he get to make movies that:

certainly on paper, were hard sells in terms of [generating] high end results: Melvin and Howard was one of them-the story of this very poor family in pursuit of the American Dream. The other one was Beloved, which is this harrowing look at our country's legacy of slavery. In both situations, I just thought I was so lucky to make them.10

During the last fifteen years of his life whenever Demme was asked his favorite movie, his response was always “Beloved.”

The Truth About Charlie (2002)

Everybody Has a Secret 11 –Truth About Charlie tagline

Having always loved the French Nouvelle Vague , Demme had longed dreamed of making a film similarly styled. After watching Charade with family and friends,

Demme decided that remaking it would provide him the ideal opportunity. His three previous films – Silence, Philadelphia, and Beloved – had been darker and more serious than most of his earlier work. The Truth about Charlie was going to be a return to a lighter and breezier cinematic style and form. Remembering the early French Nouvelle

Vague films he saw excited Demme: “I mean, talk about movie magic! It was my introduction to a whole other dimension of movies.”12

If not exactly the Rosetta Stone for interpreting Demme’s filmography, those

270 French films are crucial for understanding many of his eccentricities and passions when it comes to filmmaking – there is his love of archaic techniques like wipes, his affection for jump cuts, and in general the small and larger ways he likes to disrupt a film’s surface and how he plays with narrative and tone.

Box office success was probably less the goal than to take a mainstream

Hollywood Stanley Donen// sophisticated comedy and, by opening it up, render it more as a French New Wave farce. Demme had consistently produced some of his best work when he slipped away from traditional generic anchors.

Self-educated when it came to film, he always talked of backing into his career in filmmaking. In so many ways, Charlie was going to be Demme going back to those beginnings, leaving the circle of his filmmaking unbroken. “I felt I was getting the chance to make the film I never got to make right out of film school – which I never attended,”

Demme laughed.13

Talking about it once, he commented to me that if he were doing a faithful remake, he would have cast in the Grant role, a la Ocean's Eleven.14

Clearly taking it as a filmmaking challenge, he had thought a lot about the film he wanted to make and the ways it would be different – very different – from the original.

Starting from roughly the same place, his film was going to be looser, with jazz- like cinematic visual and narrative riffs. Given his love of almost all his characters, without pasteurizing the villains, he certainly was going to humanize them. Set in Paris, he would feature the city in the present but also as it’s imagined and portrayed. Finally, there was film history, not just the films made in Paris or about the city, but the sweep of

271 cinematic innovations and daring birthed there.

Returning to Paris from a holiday, Regina Lambert (Thandie Newton) finds that her husband Charlie has been murdered. Not only does his identity turn out to be fictional but a number of people are threatening her, assuming she knows far more than she actually does.

A catalyst for the project was Demme’s excitement over Newton’s abilities, after working with her on Beloved. “She has this fusion of brains, charm, decency – and of course, she’s beautiful to look at,” says Demme. “But she’s also a very contemporary woman, and no director has really made use of that yet. I wanted to be the first.” 15

Recalls Newton: “The one note he gave me was, ‘I want you to play you in these situations.’ On face value, that sounds like ‘Okay, I’ll just do nothing for three months.’

But it was a challenge, because you feel so much more exposed when it’s just you.” 16

Demme’s original idea for the lead was Will Smith who would have perfectly matched and complemented Newton. Together they would have not been Grant and

Hepburn but would have the power, grace, and glory to drive the film as it headed off in its unique direction. Unfortunately, Smith dropped out to accept the lead in Michael

Mann’s Ali. The studio then suggested and enthusiastically endorsed casting Mark

Wahlberg. Demme’s friend Paul Thomas Anderson told him what a positive experience working with Wahlberg had been on .17

A great director of actors, Demme got legendary performances from so many actors in his films. Even the smallest roles warranted his full focus and consideration. It is thus beyond ironic that the failure of at least two of his films was in casting – Roy

272 Scheider was just too lackadaisical for The Last Embrace and Wahlberg who proved so completely wrong for his role in The Truth About Charlie.

The film is structured around and dependent on the chemistry and interactions of the two leads. Regina Lambert and a mysterious stranger she hooks up with (who has several names) played by Wahlberg. The ambiguities of his actions – is he hero or villain

– are crucial to the dynamics. Wahlberg is just too flat and obvious.

Truth soars in some moments, Newton is perfect for her role. But too frequently her performance is the sound of one hand clapping. Wahlberg is no match for her.

Wahlberg is terrific in certain films, especially action-driven narratives, but here he never found his character’s center. His performance, lacking rhythm and charm, continually derails the film. The rest of the performances as well as a subplot involving the police commandant offer strong evidence as to the film Demme wanted to make. This isn’t it.

Manchurian Candidate (2004)

....is anyone seeing the truth? –Manchurian Candidate tagline

A Cold War/red scare paranoid classic, produced and directed by John

Frankenheimer, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) screenplay was by based on ’s novel. The plot centers on brain washing and political intrigue, with enemy foreign powers attempting to subvert the U.S. government. Released in October 1962, according to rumor removed the film from distribution after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963. But this has been

273 disputed.

Regardless, the film seems like a very strange choice to follow The Truth About

Charlie. When he told me about it, I tried to talk Demme out of it. At one point he had even decided against it. Studio Head Sherry Lansing and Denzel Washington both called, getting him to change his mind. Knowing my objection to the project, he asked me to write notes on drafts of the script. What follows are excerpts from those notes. (Scripts by

Daniel Pynes based on the novel by Richard Condon and the screenplay by George

Axelrod.)

February 27, 2004

This is a brilliant script that would make for an amazing movie, especially as directed by you. Still, my first vote would have been against doing it. Not because of the script but the second remake in a row for the most boisterously original and brilliant American storyteller?

Timing: Every day you are working on MC, the political situation birthing this film will change. Between when it's finished and it's released, everything will change.

Your work has always been ahead of the cultural curve. Here there is no curve. What is going to happen in Iraq and after Iraq is a complete crapshoot. The amount of time to make MC and get it distributed will distance it. Which might work to its advantage but might not. The world it is released into won't be exactly the world now. It may not be very different; it may be. MC may be even more relevant.

Content: Hey, this is your old knee-jerk liberal pal calling in. This script doesn’t

274 go far enough. The film defines the enemy as the boogeyman we all agree on now.

Renegade CIA operating with multinational corporations boasting no morality, no ethics, no center. Throw in tobacco and you hit the trifecta. Without being too big a jerk, there is a Lethal Weapon-type quality to the villains. Pogo said that we have met the enemy and he is us.

Coda: I want this to be 1930, when directors were forced to make five films a year. I want a John Ford filmography from you (146 films, not just 26). Not a film every two and a half years - more Jonathan Demme films.

May 6, 2003

1) The Good: As a 2003/4 updating/adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, this script is great in so many ways. It is fast, twisted, and deeply paranoid. The action unravels forward, backward, and around itself. We are not sure exactly who is what. The mise-en- scène allows for a substantial disorientation. The script is much more complex, ideologically loaded. And filled with political and event references. The ending really rips. Still, I have hesitations. But I did race through the reading in one sitting.

2) The Bad: The MC in 2003/4 is a different vehicle than in 1962. In 1962, brainwashing was exotic, and paranoia as an internal American theme was innovative.

My concerns are that with X-Files, Alias, and 24 on TV, what drives this movie? Aren't the twists and turns conventions instead of innovations? This may be too faithful an adaptation, no matter how different. Again, I'm terrible at reading scripts and seeing their movie, not my movie. This was great to read. But is it unexpected enough? In '62 the

275 thought of killing the president was so traumatizing that after '63 Sinatra yanked the movie for a couple of decades. Now, this territory isn't that taboo. Instead of being re- imagined for the new century, is this just imaginatively rewritten with a greater depth of character?

3) The Ugly: The online fan boys carry no great intellectual weight, but they set a tone. They bemoan the old, demand the new, but all they really care about is Lucas,

Cameron, and Spielberg, and they can't wait for the next Matrix. They want to appear smart. They rent the DVD and then without thinking denounce remakes unless personal favorites are involved. This movie is vulnerable.

Too many contemporary critics are hardly more sophisticated. They rent the

DVD, then offer the lazy review of comparing it to the original. With Charlie, so many reviews also re-reviewed Charade…Mess around more. Make characters more ambiguous.

August 1, 2003

The Script: Easily and by far the best. Pumps along. Doesn't overdo the flashbacks.

Doesn't linger too long anywhere but races forward layering information. Structurally it seems much tighter, much more focused. I wish I had the time and energy to lay the three scripts out side by side, just to see the changes, the decisions. But this one seems more economical and tighter, but the relationships and personalities, very clearly depicted, allows the tension to build.

Why Remake MC? The original was produced in the paranoid heat of the cold

276 war at the tail end of the red scare/blacklist period. Horror films used to feature monsters, creatures from out of space and unreal maniacs, but then monsters became people who looked like us, our families and community – coming not from the laboratory or outer space but from the nuclear family – itself part of the horror. Communism was ideology as the enemy and the red scare illuminated that it was spreading among us. MC brought this all home. The enemy didn't only look like us but was our heroes and our protectors/ champions – the military. Our core ideology – participatory Democracy and our way of life – a free open society – was under attack. Their goal was to take over our government, control all of us, and change our lifestyle, not just to kill a few people or destroy a city.

What Is the 2004 Version About? We can't trust our own government and politicians, not that we ever did. But now the ones who most passionately preach freedom seemed determined to subvert it; talking straight at the common guy the president distorts and manipulates information to lead us into war and undercut the economy. Right wing talk radio and hard-right Republicans argue the real threat is the Democrats: they are traitors, they are the enemy within. Democrats argue the hard right wingers are almost fascists, determined to save America even if it means destroying every principle and freedom that define the nation. The threat to America is Americans and even freedom itself. What Is the Theme and How Is It Relevant? As the problems are within us, the answers are within us. As the enemy is of us, the hero is of us. The modern world is overwhelming, the enemy has lost its familiar face, and we feel threatened in all directions. But as the monsters are us, the solution is us, deep within us, our basic decency as people and Americans, our shared humanity.

277

Thanksgiving 2003

My family visits the set of MC that is shooting in NYC. We see them shoot and watch dailies.

On MC: I still think the film is going to be a hard sell with critics, as most of them will watch the DVD right before and review that, but that said, I thought it was terrific. The first was about the foreign threat, insidious new technologies and the ways in which our enemies could look like us/pass as us. This came across much more as about us, the political system as it is now. In light of Florida; the California recall; our own redistricting fiasco; Bush's seemingly bland, good-old-boy statements that have terrible consequences for working people; and the whole situation in Iraq. The deepest danger is from those who really believe they love the country and are doing right but feel democracy/ the people/traditional politics can't exactly be trusted. That what they are doing is for good.

Thanksgiving 2004

(The film was released in July 2004, we visited Demme at home in Upper Nyack, New

York.)

Late at night I asked him what was next. He said he wasn’t sure but we agreed to meet some time in the future to look back over and talk about his films, his career and his future. Making a Hollywood big budget film had burned him out, the experience was

278 very unpleasant. He planned on taking a year or even more off. Instead, for a number of reasons, he entered one of the more productive periods of his career.

279 Endnotes

1 Louis Black - email to Demme

2 Demme interview, Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

Beloved

3 Beloved tagline

4 Alan A. Stone. “Oprah’s Nightmare” Boston Review, February/March 1999 Issue http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR24.1/stone.html

5 Demme Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

6 “Winfrey’s ‘Beloved’ Role” CBSNEWS.COM Staff, October 19, 1998. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/winfreys-beloved-role/

7 “Winfrey’s ‘Beloved’ Role” CBSNEWS.COM Staff, October 19, 1998. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/winfreys-beloved-role/

8 Eric Harrison. “Breaking the Rules for 'Beloved'” Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1998.

9 Eric Harrison. “Breaking the Rules for 'Beloved'” Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1998.

10 Phillip Williams. The Truth About Jonathan Demme” Movie Maker, October 11, 2002. http:/ www.moviemaker.com/

The Truth About Charlie

11 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

12 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

280

13 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

14 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

15 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (2004)

16 Thandie Newton (March 8, 2018)

17 Paul Thomas Anderson (March 8, 2018)

Manchurian Candidate

18 Tagline

281 Chapter 14: Rachel Getting Married, Ricki and the Flash (2008 - 2015)

Interlude: Taking Time Off?

Visiting Demme at his home in Upper Nyack, New York during Thanksgiving, 2004, he was clearly tired. In December 2003, The Manchurian Candidate had finished shooting but post production had continued until late June, finishing only weeks before the film’s premiere in mid-July 2004. Demme said he was going to take some time off, probably more than a year and was probably never again going to do anything that involved traditional film narratives. Making the film had really burned him out – a Hollywood production with a large budget meant he had to make endless decisions as well as deal with all kinds of executives and protocols.

A few months earlier in April 2004, Demme’s friend Neil Young announced he would not be recording any new material in the foreseeable future. Instead he planned on spending at least 18 months organizing and releasing his archives, a multi-album, multi-

DVD project. Unexpectedly in March 2005 Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm.

This proved a catalyst because despite his assertation of taking time off, he wrote all the songs for – an entire new album – between the diagnosis and the successful operation a couple of weeks later.

Demme heard a tape of the songs and was so deeply moved and inspired that he pitched the idea of a performance film to Elliot Roberts, Young’s manager, who agreed.

Demme had filmed Neil Young and Crazy Horse in October 1994 at the Complex Studios in LA performing four songs from Sleeps With Anger, their then recently released album.

282 Neil Young – Heart of Gold was the result of Demme filming two shows featuring Young backed by different combinations of musicians at the legendary Ryman Theater in

Nashville on August 18th and 19th.1

Pre-production had not even begun when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on

August 25, 2005. Without a specific plan, Demme working with Daniel Woolf began filming in New Orleans in January of 2006. They would return three or four times a year to document the city’s struggle to recover in the aftermath of the storm. Calling it the

“Right to Return Project,” Tavis Smiley devoted a week of his show, airing 25 minute sequences each night in of the week of May 28 through June 1, 2007. 2 These were later combined with other footage from Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower

9th Ward (2007), followed by an episode of Tavis Smiley Reports titled: New Orleans:

Been in the Storm Too Long, shown on July 16, 2010 and another film, I’m Carolyn

Parker: The Good, The Mad and The Beautiful in 2011.

Later it turned out that even before Demme told me how burnt out he was on filmmaking, he was feeling a renewed interest. Talking to Denzel Washington in late summer 2004 Demme asked him about the movies his kids liked: “They're obsessed with this film called Napoleon Something,”3 Denzel answered. Ordinarily Napoleon Dynamite was not the kind of film that would be on Demme’s radar, but realizing that it was a favorite of his children’s as well as Washington’s, he went to see it. Then he went to see it again and again and again.4 He loved it: “Napoleon Dynamite, which was made for like

$150,000. I thought, ‘My movie was $90 million, and here’s this other thing, a million times better than Manchurian Candidate. I’ve been making movies for around 30 years;

283 I’ve learned a lot. Surely, I can make a Napoleon Dynamite. I’m going to try to do that.” 5

It wasn’t that he began aggressively looking but that he was ready when a projects fell in his lap, not only did it come from a friend but was about women, identity and family.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

This is not your family, but this is your family. 6 –Rachel Getting Married Tagline

Demme’s interest in Rachel Getting Married began with the script – not just its writing and characters, but its timeliness and relevance. He talked about how when in the 60s and

70s feminism was so important, that it was great to get to do a film like,

Caged Heat that visualizes women coming together or Crazy Mama, which…shows a family of women and other outsiders coming together. Both as a hippie and as a feminist, these were great things. This was just my luck in a way – if you're going to do a women's prison movie and if you have attitudes about certain things – there’s a lot you can do. In Caged Heat there's that whole subplot about them doing psycho-surgery, lobotomies. Well, that was going on in American prisons and our little movie talked about it…an exploitation movie but we were having fun feeling that it was connected to what was going on in the world.

It's the good fortune almost always of just getting a script that (moans) turns you on and you dive in and then maybe years later at a coffee shop with a writer you realize, ‘Ooh that is very thematically aligned.7

In the summer of 2006, his friend, the director Sydney Lumet, asked him to look at a script titled Dancing with Shiva that his daughter Jenny had written. Reading it

Demme thought: “This is so original and I love that she hasn't tried to make us fall in love with these characters. But by page 50, we care so much about all of them. It was a

284 great script.”8

He was impressed enough that he asked Sony Classics Co-President Michael

Barker, an old friend, to read it. Watching Napoleon Dynamite actually “led to Rachel

Getting Married. [With Rachel] I felt like I found a new indie niche – much lower budgets and lower directing fees, but a good niche. I wasn’t interested in doing larger budget movies.”9 Still, he was more asking for advice as Sony Classics acquires and distributes specialty films including documentaries, independent, art, and foreign films – rarely do they actually finance a production. After talking with co-President Tom

Bernard, Barker came back to Demme to tell him that not only did they think it was a great script but they would produce it.10 Given its very modest budget, the film came together quickly (I have a copy of the script still titled Dancing with Shiva from

September 2006.11) Working with Jenny on fine-tuning the script, after a few more drafts,

Rachel Getting Married began shooting in September 2007.

Hollywood films about addiction often end awash in tragedy with the protagonist’s complete acquiescence to addiction or death. The more hopeful find the junkie taking the first very tentative steps towards sobriety, almost always by entering a treatment program. They miss the point that the true horror is once you’ve kicked your habit, all the life problems that drove you to addiction are not only still there but have almost invariably been made worse by the the bad decision-making of addicts. While one is in rehab, problems don’t go away; they compound.

Richard Linklater talking about his films mentioned how most films often are about the beginning or ending of relationships because the middle part, about more

285 mundane everyday life is so sluggish.12 Some of Linklater’s best films concentrate on the middle, life at its most ordinary. In many ways Demme’s work, similar to Linklater’s, concentrates on life rather than hyped-up drama. The focus in Rachel is unique. Kym

(Anne Hathaway) is furloughed from the rehab facility where she has spent the last nine months to go home for the wedding of her sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). Not even a year straight, she is far enough along to understand that there is nobody and nothing really left to blame but herself. At home and sober, Kym knows that if you are still focused on those you’ve long blamed, in her case her mother, sister, and father, then there is little hope of a true . Everything is not entirely well in Rachel – there are enormous tensions and still-very-much-present wounded feelings – but everything is not irrevocably broken. The traditional family structures provide grace, not saving grace, not deux ex machina divine intervention but simple grace. Which doesn’t always improve the situation.

Portraying this return is far less convenient than ushering a drunk/addict/ depressive into a hospital at the end of a narrative to indicate that everything is swinging towards the positive. Instead of a pitched dramatic high points, this film is about the day- to-day, the day after she comes home and the day after that, her life is not exaggerated for the sake of the narrative, instead it is awkward, sprawling and messy.

Kym has returned to the situation, memories and feelings towards her that lead to addiction but without the tools she previously relied on to get through each day. Although clean, she hasn’t changed all that much, crashing through every situation, emotionally overly sensitive and somewhat tone deaf to other people’s feelings. Her problem is with

286 herself first, but then her family. Her father () leans over backwards trying to accommodate her while her step mother (Anna Deavere Smith) tries hard but is more frustrated. Kym wants to be the center of attention, continually upsetting Rachel whose wedding it is. Rachel’s husband to be, Sidney (TV on the Radio band member Tunde

Adebimpe) is always kind but not involved. The worst tensions and hostilities are with her mother, Abby (Debra Winger), who’s feelings toward Kym are still unresolved and hostile.

Watching a film where the main character is the most disagreeable person on the screen is difficult. Kym is not a traditional villain; she is an ex-addict. An almost impossible role, Demme had wanted to work with “Anne Hathaway since watching her in a crowd at a screening five years earlier, already being an admirer of her appearances so far in the movies I'd seen.”13

Hathaway was thrilled to be offered the role. She remembered that the first time she read the script: “I was in my old apartment in the West Village , just pacing back and forth between the kitchen table and the couch. I somehow wound up on the floor sobbing by the last page.”14 Talking to him at the time I must have sounded a little quizzical about Hathaway because he quickly responded that she was amazing and that she had chops she didn’t even know about yet. When I mentioned this to Hathaway at

Demme’s funeral she began to cry.15 An equally difficult role was Abby, her mother.

Demme really wanted Debra Winger for that part. Finally, he “was able to pump up the nerve to ask her to be in the picture because we had met several times at a film center close to both our homes.”16

287 The way the film is shot, often in an almost cinema verité way and the intense but naturalistic performances worked together but Hollywood style cutting and editing would have made it feel too artificial and unreal. Instead, Demme utilizes his interests in and skills at all different kinds of filmmaking narratives, documentaries performance and music films. Talking to the DGA publication he offered:

What struck me at a certain point was that with features we’re trying to make everything seem real, and when we do documentaries we attempt to make them very entertaining. It’s a wonderful contrast, but I learn something every time I shoot, so in that way there’s been tremendous cross-pollination, but it changes every time for me. For instance, I’d shot a number of documentaries with Declan Quinn, so for Rachel Getting Married, I thought it would be exciting to pretend that’s what we were doing. We never preplanned shots, just knew where the staging was and that the actors were comfortable with the scene. Declan was with his camera; I’d be in my chair at the monitor. I’d say, ‘Action!’ and suddenly a shot comes alive. I felt like we were getting better shots than you could ever design.17

Utilizing a restless ever-moving hand-held camera, Demme turned the family house into an expanded theatrical set, where almost every action had resonance, history, and meaning. Some have found the non-stop camera movement in Rachel off putting, but

I think in the film this form matches both the overall dynamic of the mild chaos of the wedding itself and the more personal theme of Kym in recovery dealing with her sister’s wedding. Unable to find a center, she is constantly a bit disoriented and still somewhat unraveling.

The sound design was also deliberate, as daring a use of diegetic music as in

Something Wild where the radio was almost always turned on. Here, according to

Demme, it:

288 proceeded on the premise that, over the course of this weekend, there were musicians around who would always be practicing or noodling, so the sound was going to be real. We wanted it to feel and sound like a documentary. That was my strongest effort to make a Dogme film; a number of the vows of chastity were honored there, including no music added. There’s so much music in that movie, all recorded live while the actors were working.18

One of the most transcendent moments in the film is when, at the wedding,

Sydney sings Neil Young’s “” a capella to Rachel: “You know it ain't easy / You got to hold on / She was an unknown legend in her time”

Rachel Getting Married is the madcap screwball comedy imploded. It is what happens after the young daughter pretends to be daft in The Philadelphia Story? If the free life of an artist can flourish like a fire, it can also destroy. Screwballs are dependent on a nearly demented and usually unlikely driving narrative where so much of the characters’ actions are nerve-wracking, the potential for failure and disaster in near every scene. Yet they usually end quite happily, all the loose ends neatly tied up. This film stays closer to the edge. At the end of the film Kym returns to the hospital. Her goal is to eventually rejoin the family, though if she does there is at least some likelihood she’ll leave it again. But maybe she won’t. Kym is very hard to like which makes her very real.

“I was inspired to make Rachel Getting Married very much by my love for the films of

Robert Altman,” Demme begins, “and by other American movies that choose to take an approach that departs from reliable and time-honored ideas about how to fashion story and style in an effort to move the audience.”19

Rachel was a critical and commercial success, appearing on quite a few year-end top-ten lists as well as earning over $13 million at the box office (Sony Classics Michael

289 Barker has always said it made money 20). It won a couple of dozen awards on the festival circuit and an Academy Award nomination for Anne Hathaway.

Rachel has aged well, seeming better on each viewing. There are few films that deal with addiction in the ways it does. Although different in certain ways, the film is very much related to Demme’s earlier Americana Humanist films; an eccentric work, though a little more grounded, it is not as naive and somewhat sadder than those earlier films. Without denying the many problems and pains resulting from family, it is viewed in a more positive way with a greater affection than it had been treated in those earlier films. In those films the nuclear family was toxic but in Rachel it is an anchor. Along with this newfound appreciation for family, the film also returned to demonstrating

Demme’s impressive affection for culture and people, with music as important to the plot as story or theme.

Demme had ended an interview in 2004 saying, “For anyone who wishes to do something offbeat, there could be no greater challenge than Napoleon Dynamite, made on a shoestring. I hope I find in the next year or two that, yes, I too still have the courage and ability to make a movie like that.” 21 Rachel getting Married proved that he did, though it took a little longer.

Ricki and The Flash (2015)

Get Ready to Rock. Get Ready to Love.22 –Ricki and the Flash Tagline

As with Rachel, this really wasn’t a project inspired or pursued by Demme.

290 Diablo Cody wrote the script for Ricki and the Flash tailored to Meryl Streep so she was very pleased when the actress became attached. Streep then insisted on Demme directing.

He was more than ready.

Demme was constantly developing projects that weren’t made, which has been touched on already. But his immediate filmography in the years following Rachel is especially deceptive. It includes only two narrative features, (2013) and

Ricki and the Flash (2015), before his death. It was actually a very productive time, he directed a number of TV episodes and five music related features (four performance films and a doc). Among projects he never filmed but worked on were Courage Consort,

Michael Faber’s 2002 novella (2008); Dave Eggers’ novel Zeitoun, intended to be an animated film (2009); The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, to star Jeff Brides in a remake of

The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum (1997); an Israeli film (2010) and Honeymoon With Harry to star Robert DeNiro and ; ’ script rewritten by , but Demme, tired of DeNiro’s indecisiveness, quit in 2011.

In 2012, he directed A Master Builder, adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s play, which re-teamed Andre Gregory with Wallace Shawn over 30 years after My Dinner with

Andre, which they had spent the last 15 of those years developing it. Released in 2013, co-starring Julie Haggerty, Demme had come on board when they found financing.

With Rachel Getting Married, Demme felt he had found his comfort zone in making narrative films by working on independent productions that had “much lower budgets and lower directing fees, but a good niche. I wasn’t interested in doing larger budget movies. I had terrific little films, little documentaries”23 Still he had such a great

291 time making A Master Builder and Neil Young Journeys (2011): “But these pictures were not being seen very much, and you want people to see your work. Everybody works so hard. Then at that moment came Ricki and the Flash, and ‘wow!’ And it’s a studio movie.”24

Demme, who got the script in early in 2014, in June e-mailed me:

as you may know already, marc platt, Gary goetzman and i are starting a picture called “ricki and the flash” in early october. script by the fabulous diablo cody. meryl streep plays Rick, leader of the tight but fringey band the flash. for most of her adult life, ricki – whose got great chops, vocally and on power-chord guitar – has been going for it, trying to make it in l.a., but her career never achieved lift-off, nor will it at this late stage of the game. YET ricki’s still going for it, but has hit that worrisome circuit where old rockers play cover versions of old hits for basically small audiences of old groovers in bars that have seen better days. karaoke night brings more folks in than covers night anymore. 25

After auditioning a number of guitarists, they finally settled on Rick Springfield and began shooting in October, 2014.

The central metaphor of Ricki and the Flash is almost too convenient, the film celebrates the redemptive power of family, extended family (both by blood and as in a band), love, and music, especially music. In some ways seriocomic, like Married to the

Mob, Demme goes for an even more ethereal, less aggressively comic tone. The story, about failed ambition, familial tension and alienation, personal aging and the importance of reconciliation, in its leisurely pace and careful structure owes much to the strategies of a two sided vinyl disc (though more accurately it would have to be a two record set, with the last side left blank).

Many years earlier Ricki (Meryl Streep) left her husband and young family to find rock ‘n’ roll stardom. She never really did. An album came out but didn’t attract much

292 attention. Now Ricki and her band are still knocking it out, playing regularly in a rundown bar in Tarzana, CA. Used to the life and loving the music they just keep on, any expectation of success long gone. Presented as a hard-right winger, which is never really explored, Ricki works at a Whole Foods type place to get by. Then her ex-husband

() calls worried about their daughter Julie (played by Mamie Gummer,

Streep’s real daughter). Rocker Ricki returns to the family she abandoned, where she is not really welcome. In a downward spiral because she has again been deserted, this time by her husband, Julie is far more resentful than grateful about her mom’s visit. Ricki discovers that her soon to be married son Joshua () is not planning on inviting her to the wedding. Awkwardly she asks Adam (Nick Westrate), her other son, if he is seeing anyone, not realizing he is gay.

You don’t get to be still taking the stage every night to rock out in your 60s if you are easily dissuaded. Way too late but with absolute determination, Ricki begins to fight to bring her family together. Appearing even more inappropriate in their suburban kitchen, emphasizes that Ricki is an outsider, but it also strengthens her character, not only is she tough and smart but resolved to have her way.

The script was by Diablo Cody (Brook Michele Busey), who had won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Juno (2007) and then created and wrote the series The

United States of Tara for Showtime (2009-2011). In 2008, after Cody had become romantically involved with Daniel Maurio (Chelsea Lately actor and producer), he took her to New Jersey to meet his family. Nobody had thought to mention to Cody that

Maurio’s mother fronted Silk and Steel, a New Jersey bar band. The first time Diablo

293 “saw her band playing at this bar on the shore and I said to my husband, ‘This is a movie.’ Because as a screenwriter, you’re always looking for movies all around you.”26

Over the next few years she kept thinking about her mother-in-law but rather than detail her life, she used it as a starting off point for considering what might be some of the consequences of staying a rocker. She came up with “the idea of her being estranged from her adult children.”27

Thinking of it as a real rock ‘n’ roll production, Demme read and loved the script but felt that in this case, rather than the extensive pre-production planning he often did on projects, the best strategy was to find the film by making it. Thus purposefully Demme did not make a lot of decisions on how to shoot the film until he got together with cinematographer Declan, Production Designer Stuart Wurzel, and Assistant Director

H.H. Cooper when he asked them how they envisioned the film. His one main thought was:

I want the picture to look rock ‘n’ roll because Ricki is pure rock ‘n’ roll. I’m wondering if there is a certain palette that comes with rock ‘n’ roll? We all wound up thinking primary colors. So we used bright primary yellows, oranges, and reds whenever we could. And then we looked at some of the Fassbinder movies that had very bold, primary palettes. ‘Yeah, look how effective that is.’28

After using hand held so much in Rachel, there was no plan to do the same with

Ricki. When they started shooing however they kept finding scenes where “the camera just wanted to be off the dolly. In keeping with rock ‘n’ roll, we found that we used many different stylistic approaches than we had originally thought. We’d do the beautiful dolly

294 and crane shots, but it kept opening up from there.”29 Having those discussions, agreeing on ideas and executing them, Demme looked at the finished film thinking, “So that’s what (it) looks like!’ They had found their film.30

There is an extraordinary courage in Streep’s performance as Ricki. She is not playing the noblest of characters but is also willing to look painfully bad, to have all the miles of the life she’s lived etched on her face. All the time she wakes to the one too many mornings of her life, somehow stuck in her life. Her clothes don’t always belong with her face. the reality of how she looks, dressed in leather and t-shirts like a young rocker, is set against the issue that she abandoned her family for a career that never went anywhere. But this disassociation is crucial to the narrative.

Which leads to the question: if her career in music had really taken off accompanied by commercial, would the story be different? The answer is that in some ways, of course. As Bob Dylan said, “There’s no success like failure / And failure is no success at all.”31 It would make for a different movie, although it still might not change her estrangement from her daughter. But there has been no such success.

Her character is immediate with every crack showing, every bad turn sketched under her eyes. Up close, painful and real. The toll of a life lived the way she led it. This is about rock ‘n’ roll, but very definitely not about drugs and sex. Much more concernedwith family and relationships, its primary focus is the music. The story is not of

Ricki’s failure; nor is the band’s brilliance even mentioned. In a way this is about worship, and belief: about a life of devotion and what that involves and how it can cost an individual but also what gifts it bestows.

295 Ricki is a cinematic meditation that becomes a voyage of discovery. Demme having been a cross between Miles Davis and Chet Baker in his young years evolved into the more contemplative John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. Too many times in

Demme’s career one gets the sense of the critical audience determination to see a different film from the one the director made. Certainly Rachel is a film where so many critics missed the point. His output is so unpredictable, driven by creative ambitions his films are often quite different from each other, which has perhaps worked against him.

Known for his brilliant use of music in his films, Ricki is even more intense as he so much of the film on the music. It is supposed to be a working-all-the-time rock band, one floundering in the wreckage yard of lost rock dreams, playing run down clubs to hard core audiences. Yet Demme recruited an all-star band, one that really rocks. Neil

Young mainstay Rick Rosa, always referred to as “Rick the Bass Player,” who unfortunately died shortly after the film finished shooting, also performed with Joe

Walsh, Johnny Rivers, Ron Wood, and Jerry Lee Lewis.32 Starting his career playing with the Amboy Dukes and Joe Walsh’s Barnstorm drummer, Joe Vitale was a songwriter, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. Even after Barnstorm, Vitale continued to collaborate with Joe Walsh, played with the Eagles, David Crosby, Dan Fogelberg, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. His credits perhaps not as extensive, Bernie Worrell on organ, if anything was even more a legend, a founding member of Parliament/Funkadelic and long time Talking

Heads keyboardist. While the almost too good looking, Rick Springfield is Ricki’s romantic interest he is a mean guitar player as well.

Streep spent months taking guitar lessons, first from an acoustic and then an

296 electric guitarist. Although there is a lot of reporting and some footage of Neil Young teaching her, they only worked together for maybe 40 minutes. Young and his manager

Elliot Roberts laughed when I asked, reminding me that Demme had started as a publicist.33 She then begin intense rehearsals with the rest of the band members “right up to the first day of filming and then film all the performances right away. We finished rehearsing on a Friday and shot on Saturday.”34

All of which really paid off – the band is amazing, but that is a little distancing. It is as though this is a fantasy band. Not her real band, not a real Ricki playing in

California dive bars with musicians grown old with little success. Instead it a somehow imagined life, one dreamed about rather than lived. Such an outstanding group, the musicians so gifted and the band so tight, that being stuck in a dead-end career playing dives is not just noticeable but feels wrong.

As with Something Wild, this is another Demme mutant musical, almost an operetta, though a big difference is that rather than the rich and varied collection of styles and sounds of the former, Ricki is centered on a bar band. Demme loved the band, after calling cut at the end of one performance sequence, the band kept playing as producer

Gary Goetzman and Demme weildly danced around. In between takes the band would jam, including one memorable time when Bernie Worrell lead them in an emotionally dense, uniquely brilliant version of “House of the Rising Sun.” 35

Demme so enjoyed the band that in the finished film instead of just excerpts they often play complete songs. This became a major criticism of the film , shared by marketing and studio people as well as critics, there is just too much music. Writing in

297 The Oregonian, Jeff Baker teased: “Voices are raised, tears flow, weed is smoked, and the power, the power of ROCK will make everything right. Sorry. The sight of the 66- year-old Streep gyrating her way through ‘Wooly Bully’ has a way of blocking out rational thought. It goes on and on. There’s lots more music, and a wedding. Voices are raised, then lowered, then raised in song.”36

Echoed by Mick LaSalle in the Chronicle: “After she sings one song (“American Girl”) at the top of the film, we think, fine, we get it, they’re showing this to establish the character and the situation. But when she starts singing another, we understand. This is just the way it’s going to be…a combination of influences that make

[the concert scenes] something to endure, not enjoy.37

In The Christian Science Monitor, Peter Rainer was more pointed complaining:

“Given the grinding sameness of the interfamily dynamics, it’s perhaps no accident that

Demme overloads the film with concert sequences featuring the Flash….too often I felt as if I were watching a demo reel of the band. Demme doesn’t just give us snippets of the band’s concerts, he offers up – especially in the big, overblown wedding party finale – extended play.”38

The film leaves any mimetic restraints behind with an improbable almost magical realist ending where not only do the families come together – a gathering of the tribes – but the bartender from the bar shows up in the crowd and somehow the whole band is there when a plot point had been that Ricki had to hock instruments to pay her way. In the same way the wedding at the ending of Citizen’s Band, or Howard Hughes and Melvin

Dummar in Melvin and Howard singing in the truck as they drive across the desert, or

298 Christin Lahti and Goldie Hawn hugging in the dizzying end shot at the end of Demme’s cut of Swing Shift, the wedding here is an improbable celebration that by effortlessly combining so many elements actually insists on hope and possibility. “My Love Will Not

Let You Down” by Bruce Springsteen is quite appropriately the last song played at the wedding:

Oh, well hold still now darlin’, hold still for God's sake ‘Cause I got me a promise I ain’t afraid to make I ain’t afraid to make

My love, love, love, love, love, love will not let you down My love, love, love, love, love, love will not let you down 39

Ricki was not well received critically and, given its production budget of around

$18 million, a box office disappointment with its total gross only around $40 million.

Critics looking for flash and bang, as well as missing the filmic drum-bashing, sharp- cutting, and fireworks narratives of many modern stories, found the film too old fashioned.

As with Rachel, Ricki very much connected to his earlier films. The Americana humanist run, which included Crazy Mama, Citizen’s Band, Melvin and Howard, Who

Am I This Time, Stop Making Sense, Something Wild and his cut of Swing Shift, had been between 1975 and 1986, early in Demme’s career. Over the next two decades, however, none of the films he made fit comfortably into that grouping. Returning to that narrative and thematic territory, late in his career, served to also enrich those earlier films as well as cast significant light on his whole filmography.

In ways, Rachel and Ricki both reflect, refract, and revisit Demme’s earlier

299 themes and thoughts about family. These films, offering a more benign look at how the individual members function and relate to each other as family. The earlier films were about a movement away from family. Crucial to the narratives of both Rachel Getting

Married and Ricki and the Flash are weddings, which offer the most traditional and conservative ritual of family renewal. In Rachel, Kym returns from rehab to attend her sister’s wedding. It is the reluctant invitation to her son’s marriage that brings Ricki back to reconcile with her family. Kym is a bit overwhelmed by the extended family/community gathered for her sister’s wedding while in Ricki it is a complete celebration of family and relationships, bringing her chosen family – the band – together with her blood family. Family can be a source of pain but it can also be redemptive. In both films, the nuclear family, with all its problems, provides a reliable anchor in the midst of life storms. Undoubtedly the growth of Demme’s own family contributed to this evolving view. The return of the damaged and wounded to family, instead of being a reactionary retreat, can be a creative act of growth for family and self. In both these films the coming together is a much needed first step towards healing.

In retrospect, though made over a long period of time, Demme’s Americana humanist films seem connected as though songs on a two-sided long player album.

Rachel and Ricki both make meaning by story and characters, but the genius is in the resonance – the riffing that goes on about the rhythm. Considering the earlier grouping of his Americana humanist films, Crazy Mama is a wild hymn to teenage love and lust forever, to cars, surfboards, motels and neon, while Something Wild, clearly related, is a more tempered and knowing song chanced upon while listening to the radio. Still making

300 music two decades later, Rachel is a sad, evocative, emotionally rich ballad like “Ode to

Billy Joe” while Ricki is more of a jam played on-the-beach-by-the-ocean welcoming the dawn’s rising sun, a soaring anthem to dreams, family, love, music, and especially rock

‘n’ roll. One motto running through Demme’s life and career is captured in Jonathan

Richman song “Roadrunner:” “I'm in love with rock ’n’ roll, and I'll be out all night!” 40

301 Endnotes

1 I helped write the press material and worked on the press kit for the film

2 Many sources say this happened in 2006. Stacey Pleasance. “Filmmaker Jonathan Demme Documents Post-Katrina Struggles to Rebuild on PBS.” , May 26, 2007 https://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20070526/News/604162591/GS/

3 Sheila Johnston. “Film makers on Film: Jonathan Demme.” The Telegraph, November 29, 2004 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmmakersonfilm/3632563/Film- makers-on-film-Jonathan-Demme.html

4 Films in general played much longer then. Napoleon Dynamite’s peak earning period ran from July 16, 2004 – October 29, 2004

5 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015 https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1501-Winter-2015/DGA- Interview-Jonathan-Demme.aspx

6 Rachel Getting Married Tagline

7 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

8 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

9 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015 https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1501-Winter-2015/DGA- Interview-Jonathan-Demme.aspx

10 Michael Barker conversation (need date)

302

11 Jenny Lumet. Dancing with Shiva. September 8, 2006 (author’s collection)

12 Louis Black and Karen Bernstein. Richard Linklater: Dream is Destiny. IFC, 2016

13 Sony Classics Press Kit: Rachel Getting Married https://www.sonyclassics.com/rachelgettingmarried/externalLoads/rachelgettingm arried_presskit.pdf

14 Naomi West. “Anne Hathaway: Oscar Contender Who Is The Real Deal” The Telegraph, January 9, 2009 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/4125213/Anne- Hathaway-Oscar-contender-who-is-the-real-deal.html

15 Demme interview NYC (August 28, 2015)

16 Sony Classics Press Kit: Rachel Getting Married https://www.sonyclassics.com/rachelgettingmarried/externalLoads/rachelgettingm arried_presskit.pdf

17 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015 https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1501-Winter-2015/DGA- Interview-Jonathan-Demme.aspx

18 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015 https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1501-Winter-2015/DGA- Interview-Jonathan-Demme.aspx

19 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

20 Michael Barker conversation (March 2018)

21 Sheila Johnston. “Film makers on Film: Jonathan Demme.” The Telegraph, November 29, 2004

303 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmmakersonfilm/3632563/Film- makers-on-film-Jonathan-Demme.html

22 Ricki and the Flash tagline

23 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015

24 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015

25 Email From Demme to Daniel Wolff, Bill Bentley, and Louis Black (July 1, 2014)

26 Julie Miller. “Meet the Woman Who Inspired Meryl Streep’s Ricki and the Flash Character” Vanity Fair, August 5, 2015 https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/08/meryl-streep-ricki-and-the- flash?verso=true

27 Julie Miller. “Meet the Woman Who Inspired Meryl Streep’s Ricki and the Flash Character” Vanity Fair, August 5, 2015

28 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015

29 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015

30 Rob Field. “Plugged In.” DGA Quarterly, Winter 2015

31 “Love Minus Zero” by Bob Dylan

32 The only bass player to perform with all three of Young’s major groups, he played with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, played a tour with Crazy Horse when bass player Billy Talbot got sick and when Young reunited with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay he played bass.

304 33 Elliot Roberts (March 2018)

34 Chris Lee. “How Meryl Streep Turned into a Rock Star for Ricki and the Flash,” , August 7, 2015 https://ew.com/article/2015/08/07/how-meryl-streep-turned-rock-star-ricki-and- flash/

35 Witnessed firsthand when I was visiting the set of Ricki and the Flash

36 Jeff Baker. “Ricki and the Flash Review” The Oregonian, August 6, 2015

37 Mike LaSalle. “Ricki is fine, except when Streep is singing” , August 6, 2015 https://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Ricki-is-fine-except-when-she-s-singing- 6427533.php

38 Peter Rainer. “Ricki and the Flash is Just Another Movie About Famlies Gone Wild” Christian Science Monitor, August 7, 2015

https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2015/0807/Ricki-and-the-Flash- is-just-another-movie-about-families-gone-wild

39 “My Love Will Not Let You Down” by Bruce Springsteen

40 “Roadrunner” by Jonathan Richman

305 Conclusion

I don’t care what I get remembered for – or don’t get remembered for. That’s of no interest to me whatsoever. I just love making movies.1 –Jonathan Demme

“I always say my favorite female director is Jonathan Demme…. He really is my favorite female director that I’ve ever worked with. He was the one guy who really understood Silence of the Lambs and was able to say, ‘This is a movie about a woman who is our hero…. He’s the Braveheart of that woman’s voice.2 –Jodie Foster

Remember, no matter what, it’s better to be a live dog then a dead lion.3 –Motel Philosopher, Something Wild

Watching Jonathan Demme’s directorial debut Caged Heat at a drive-in theater in

South Austin in 1976, I fell in love with the director’s filmmaking and over forty years later I still am. In 1981, I met Jonathan, which began a friendship that lasted until his death on April 26, 2017.

Demme was obsessed with culture and with family – he had three children, loved dogs (especially poodles), and was fanatical about music artists like Gene Clark, Sister

Carol, David Byrne, Alejandro Escovedo, Laurie Anderson, Daniel Johnston, and Neil

Young, among so many others. A collector of Art, over a half-dozen art shows featured pieces from his collection. He contributed to, co-wrote, introduced, or edited ten books. He loved watching movies and presenting and curating films and film series. All of these interests were reflected in his work.

Early on I had trouble writing about Demme’s films, the connection with the films

306 so intense and my relationship with Demme so deep and personal it was hard to be analytical. On and off I’ve been working on this effort for two decades, so I’m well aware how difficult it is to consider Demme’s films as a cohesive body of work. At one point, I considered ending this study with Philadelphia (1993) because Beloved (1998), The Truth

About Charlie (2002), and The Manchurian Candidate (2004) didn’t fit my basic premises. But then came Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Ricki and the Flash (2015), which were far more connected to his earlier films.

The reason there is so little substantial critical work on Jonathan Demme’s body of films, I believe, is because dealing with them together is so hard, his films so radically different from each other in so many ways. There are a number of major reasons for this.

Demme, who was passionate about directing, so loved making films, that he would often take any project he could get funded. Part of his core aesthetic was to approach each work on its own terms. So that, rather than impose a similar set of characteristics on different projects, he worked hard at staying true to each work, making every effort to deal with each film on its own terms. Given the range of projects and this aesthetic approach, the diversity of his output he made is staggering.

There were also some major detours in his career. When I co-produced and co- directed the documentary Richard Linklater: dream is destiny (2016) for PBS’ American

Masters series, I asked Linklater about films of his that had bombed at the box office like

Newton Boys (1998) and Me and Orson Welles (2008). He was, of course, unhappy that they didn’t do well, but pointed out that in both cases, at least he got to make the films he wanted to make.

307 On two occasions, Demme didn’t get to make the films he wanted. Swing Shift

(1984), taken away from him, reshaped and re-edited with new footage added, was released in a butchered form. The experience was terrible in every way. The documentary project, Bob Marley: Stay with the Rhythm, was taken away from him in 2008 because he wouldn’t add famous talking heads like Mick Jagger and Bono to comment on Marley.

Then it was given to other filmmakers to finish.

Any individual film by Demme easily lends itself to careful analysis, but making sense of the complete filmography is much harder. Taking a step back to add some perspective, it becomes more apparent how these films are interrelated, functioning as a coherent body of work, sharing some major dominant themes.

Unlike many directors, Demme liked almost all his characters, which really helped as his films are character driven. Yet the individual characters are just a starting point, the real focus of his films are on relationships, evidencing his fascination with how individuals interact with each other in their families, communities at work, as friends, and when romantically involved. Most often his films are set in the present, which is neither trivialized or overdramatized, his characters comfortable there and not longing for an imagined ideal past or fearful and dreading the future. More than exaggerated melodrama, the films detail mundane, imperceptible changes in culture, family, and relationships, interested in how we communicate, love, nurture, argue, hate, and try to figure each other out.

In most of his films, Demme likes to see what happens when his characters are slightly out of control. He is especially interested in their reactions when they are pushed

308 out of their comfort zones, sometimes in minor but significant ways and other times in life-changing ones. He likes putting them on the edge to see where it takes them. Again and again, they rise to the occasion; taking chances, they stand up for what they believe.

Sometimes this makes them better people, other times it hardly affects them.

There are few traditional villains in Demme’s films – the corporate bosses in

Philadelphia being perhaps the most typical Hollywood villains. Ray Liotta’s character in

Something Wild is a special kind of monster, charismatic and deadly, with Hannibal

Lecter going even farther out there in The Silence of Lambs.

Among the elements that initially attracted me to Demme was that in the worlds he presented in Caged Heat and Crazy Mama, the heroes were all women, with the former prominently featuring women of color and lesbians. Citizen’s Band played with all kinds of variations on normal role and family representations. In the films he directed from Melvin and Howard through Something Wild and Married to the Mob, there are always strong women characters but not much diversity in the race or sexual preferences.

Backgrounds are populated by minorities, but the main characters are almost all straight white people. The films after Silence of the Lambs return to more adventurous portrayals of race, sexual preference, and sex roles. Demme told me that this was simple coincidence resulting from the projects he got to make.1

Interestingly, this director who so celebrated street art, cultural vibrancy, and music in every manifestation stayed away from sex. Driven by a sensibility divorced from mainstream Hollywood, Demme focused on a range of relationships but mostly stayed away from the physical act of sex. Few of his films are traditional romances,

309 mostly deriving their dramatic drive from some other narrative strategy (as in Rachel

Getting Married, Philadelphia, Silence of Lambs, Beloved, Handle with Care, and Caged

Heat). The ones that are more focused on romance such as Something Wild, Married to the Mob, and Melvin and Howard featured relationships that were more innovative than traditional.

Almost always about working class people, Demme was not interested in the rich upper-class world portrayed in such a ferociously positive way in the films by Ernst

Lubitsch, , and David O. Selznick as well as most screwball comedies.

Instead, he examined American life and work without condescension or lazy stereotyping characterization. There is a rare affection for both the working class and yuppies in his films. The suburbs and the middle-class neighborhoods, presented as decent homes, are not shown to be inherently corrupt and secret hotbeds of moral decay (as in the films of

Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols, Gary Ross, Todd Solondz and David Lynch).

Music is one of the most important elements in his films. Strategically used as both a diegetic and non-diegetic device, what is played and who plays it becomes so crucial to the film. A fan from an early age, he remained passionately interested and deeply involved throughout his life.

A life-long film fan as well, Demme’s encyclopedic knowledge of world cinema was never used to show off but rather to service the project at hand. Part of the ongoing brilliance of his films is that the narrative voice and thematic purpose of each film respects the characters within it, taking them very seriously and compassionately. There is no condescending, elevating, mythologizing, or demonizing by angle, attitude, or

310 cutting.

Dealing with the films grouped together here as his Americana humanist series – maybe Caged Heat, certainly Crazy Mama, Citizens Band, Melvin and Howard, Who Am

I This Time?, his cut of Swing Shift, Stop Making Sense, and Something Wild – helps define the authorial personality that created these films. These films are so clearly connected that they remain a standard by which to consider his other films from Married to the Mob in 1988 through The Manchurian Candidate in 2004. Even greater clarity is provided when he returns to the narrative and thematic interests of those earlier films with Rachel Getting Married (2008) and Ricki and the Flash (2015).

Looking too closely at the forest can cause the trees to stand out so much they obscure the greater ecosystem, obscuring its meaning and denying it a certain depth and resonance. This work is an attempt to define the forest in such a way as to not just champion its greater meaning but to do so in such a way as to even further highlight the strengths of the individual films rather than diminish them.

311 Endnotes

1 Demme interview Upper Nyack, NY (June 22, 2016)

2 Madeline Raynor. “Jodie Foster Says Jonathan Demme Is Her Favorite Female Director.” Vulture, April 2016. https://www.vulture.com/2016/04/jodie-foster-jonathan-demme-favorite-female- director.html

3 Something Wild

4 Demme interview, Tappen Zee Bridge, New York, 2005

312 CODA

The Air He Breathed, the Baby Blue Sunglasses He Wore: Jonathan Demme, 1944- 2017

Somewhere on a desert highway She rides a Harley-Davidson Her long blond hair flyin’ in the wind She's been runnin’ half her life The chrome and steel she rides Collidin’ with the very air she breathes The air she breathes – “Unknown Legend,” Neil Young1

It is an American tale, it has to be, nothing else makes sense. It is rock & roll radio blasting out of a car racing down the highway through a . But before the dawn the story ends abruptly with a great sadness. Jonathan Demme died on April 26,

2017.

One of the great soloist and unique voices in the choir of American culture is now silent. Rather than reading words, go watch his films, all his films, wildly dancing to them as though they were music because they are.

There's so much that's wrong in the world – so much horror, so much darkness – but Demme's work, while acknowledging this, usually resists the idea of hopelessness.

Too fascinated by people and culture to entertain the all-too-commonly-held idea that the best of everything is in the past. Not just seriously excited by today, Demme’s films always eagerly anticipated tomorrow. In a time of darkness, his films offer light; in a time of despair, hope; in a time of lamentation, they often celebrate joy.

Jonathan Demme loved. He loved family and friends, film and filmmakers, music and musicians, art and artists, always feeding his outsized appetite by racing madly

313 forward through the culture sucking everything in. Then pouring all this energy and grace into narratives and documentaries, music videos, performance and concert films, TV and movies. He loved until his heart was full, and loved still more, caring not for boundaries or tradition, he created unique works because he cared not for boundaries but enthusiasm, not for genre but passion, not for ego but work.

New York City, NY May 5, 2017.

We flew to New York City for Jonathan Demme's funeral. On Saturday in a cab on the way to St. Mary's Church on West 126th Street, I started to become overwhelmed with sadness. I was thinking about how much Jonathan had changed my life, as he had the lives of so many.

All the speakers who talked the service that afternoon said the same. Loving life, with an ever astounding enthusiasm and endless energy, Demme lit up the world and those around him.

Austin, Texas 1976.

This story begins in a car watching Caged Heat – Demme's first directorial effort, a women-in-prison genre film – at a South Austin drive-in theatre in 1977 literally changed my life. In many ways it was a film I had long carried in my head without knowing it – a political action film both feminist and exploitative, both cinematically savvy and street- wise. It worked on so many levels – narrative, acting, cinematic, musical, and political.

Demme's talent seemed to promise the extraordinary. Ironically, over the years he lapped

314 those expectations again and again and again.

We saw Crazy Mama, fighting mad. Sometime later Ed Lowry and I, with two quarts of Coca-Cola and a bottle of rum at a Dallas drive-in, caught the remarkable Citizen's Band. Then later we saw Melvin and Howard. We sent him a letter containing some of the pieces we had written about his work. Sometime after he called to say he was coming to Austin; could we pick him up at the airport? Sure. How would we recognize him? “I'll be wearing baby blue sunglasses.”

Estoril, Portugal.

One morning while watching Kaili Blues, we each kept turning away from the other, both trying to hide that we couldn't keep our eyes open. Later, as we got into the film, when both of us realized the film was 10 minutes into a long take, with no cuts, he playfully punched me. The take continued for 41 minutes. Such deliciously audacious cinema left us intoxicated and giddy.

New York City, NY October 10, 1981.

On his first visit to Austin I showed him short films by Austin Filmmakers This evening

Jonathan Demme Presents Made in Texas. Six new films from Austin showed at the

Collective for Living Cinema in New York City. The program consisted of six short films: Invasion Of The Aluminum People by David Boone, Leonardo, Jr by Lorrie

Oshatz, The Death Of Jim Morrison by Tom Huckabee and Will Van Overbeek, Fair

Sisters by Missy Boswell, Edward Lowry and Louis Black, Mask Of Sarnath by Neil

315 Ruttenberg, Speed Of Light by Brian Hansen.

[This Program proves] not only that independent features are alive and living on the Third Coast but they can outrun those by New York and Los Angeles indies. D. Boone’s Invasion of the Aluminum People, a 45 minute super-8 extravaganza (possibly processed in a washing machine) is…a video/film/music/jumpcut glaze by this tyro Godard who seems to be sired by Godard out of . Quite impressive (and infinitely slicker) is Speed of Light, a New Wave melodrama that’s as good looking as Written on the Wind.2

–Carrie Rickey, The Village Voice, Oct. 1981

…David Boone’s Invasion of the Aluminum People [shot] in murky black-and- white with a super-nervous, super-aggressive, super-8 trigger finger, Invasion is a DEVOesque time machine collapsing ’50s lobotomization on ’70s ecological blight to breed a future race of broiler-foil mummies. Virgil, the hero, follows a path through the nuclear-age inferno that parallels Kevin McCarthy’s in the original Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, but Boone’s blithe disregard for linear continuity produces a more divinely “spacey” comedy than Hollywood ever imagined. Speed of Light puts a similar time-warp theme through an opposite set of film stylistics. Hansen’s considered use of the wide-angle lens, his obliquely angled framing, and his low-key sound mix create and sustain a chilling sense of impending doom. A series of slow superimpositions breaks open the ground under a red-and-white checkered picnic lunch, separates a mother from her daughter, and removes our last hope of an anchor in the ordinary. Working the desert glare with underwater rhythms….3

–Amy Taubin, SoHo News Oct. 7 - 13, 1981

Austin, Texas.

Demme’s show in NYC changed the Austin film scene significantly and permanently.

Demme showed up quite unexpectedly at the Chronicle offices on 12th Street, being in

Texas to film 3 Talking Heads concerts (Houston, Austin, Dallas) to prepare for Stop

Making Sense. He had enlisted local shooters David Boone and Brian Hansen to walk

316 around filming the concerts. He was looking for ideas but also always encouraged talented young filmmakers. With Jonathan it really was about the music.

Nashville, Tennessee.

In town to watch Demme film Neil Young in concert the next two nights at the Roman

Auditorium, we answered the phone ringing in our hotel room. It was a call inviting us to come right over for the last rehearsal performance before the actual filming. There were maybe 40 other audience members in the hall watching the show as the crew figured out shots and Young rehearsed the band.

New York City, New York.

Demme, shooting Manchurian Candidate, had invited me to be an extra. The scene involved Fab 5 Freddy and me traveling down an escalator, then walking across a large hall. FFF and I didn't know each other but by the fifth take we were fast friends, still are.

Jonathan loved bringing people together.

Tappen Zee Bridge, New York 2005.

Heading across the Tappen Zee Bridge after just presenting Conrad Rooks' Chappaqua (a film we both loved, which at best is a minority position) as part of Demme’s Rarely Seen

Cinema Series at the Jacob Burns Cinema in Pleasantville, N.Y. We were heading to his home in Upper Nyack.

I remarked that his films were so positive, suggesting he was an optimistic

317 director, a trait not generally shared by filmmakers.

He thought about this before carefully responding something along the lines of,

“You can have a deep affection for your characters, you can feel that they have a future.

Tomorrow has the possibility of being as good or even better than today. In their lives there is always the possibility as well as the reality of things getting better. There are, however, many other options for what might happen and how it might be perceived. This, then, is not ‘optimistic,’ which has to do with naively underestimating the terrible situations and dire circumstances that people confront every day. You can believe and hope without exactly being optimistic.”4

Westchester County, New York.

Visited Jonathan for the first day of shooting Ricki and the Flash, I texted Rick Linklater on his first day of shooting Everybody Wants Some in Austin, Texas. Serving as a go- between I texted greetings and encouragement between them. Two of the finest film directors working, sharing respect and admiration for each other. A week later in a warehouse in Brooklyn Ricki and the Flash was shooting. Meryl Streep played the leader of a bar band featuring Rick Springfield, (bass player with Neil Young among others, who died a couple of weeks later), Joe Vitale (drummer with Joe Walsh,

Crosby, Stills & Nash, the Eagles), and Bernie Worrell (Funkadelic, Talking Heads).

During a break Worrell launched into a transcendent version of “House of the Rising

Sun.”

318 New York City, New York.

After the gathering in the church, folks congregated in the yard. Introducing myself to

Anne Hathaway, I told her that when shooting Rachel Getting Married, Jonathan had said to me that she was an amazing actress who had “chops she doesn't even know she has yet.” She started crying.

Brooklyn, New York.

Aug. April 4, 2017. Paul Thomas Anderson and I introduced the first three nights of a month long Jonathan Demme retrospective at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Anderson noted admiringly that critics never knew what to expect from Demme. “It seemed like no one could really keep ahead of him,” he said. “There’s no corralling him at all.”

The PTA said “Louis may know more but I’m a bigger fan!” 5

Maybe? But maybe not.

319 Endnotes

1 Neil Young, “Unknown Legend”

2 Carrie Rickey. The Village Voice, October, 1981

3 Amy Taubin. SoHo News October 7 - 13, 1981

4 Jonathan Demme interview, Tappen Zee Bridge, New York, 2005

5 Paul Thomas Anderson (Demme Retrospective at BAM, August 4, 2017)

320 Appendix 1: Books on Jonathan Demme Contemporaries Tarantino, Scorsese, Coen Brothers

TARANTINO (44)

Barlow, Aaron. Quentin Tarantino - Life at the Extremes. Praegar, 2010.

Barnes, Alan & Marcus Hearn. Tarantino: A to Zed. 1996.

Bernard, Jami. Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies. Harper Perennial, 1995.

Biskind, Peter. Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. Simon and Schuster, 2004.

Bottig, F. & Wilson, S. The Tarantinian Ethics. Sage, 2001.

Bouzerau, Laurent. Ultraviolent Movies: From Sam Peckinpah to Tarantino. 2000.

Carradine, David. The Kill Bill Diary… Harper, 2006.

Charyn, Jerome. Raised by Wolves: The Turbulent Art and Times of Quentin Tarantino. Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006.

Clarkson, Wensley. Tarantino - The Man, the Myths and His Movies. John Blake, 2007.

Clarkson, Wensley. Quentin Tarantino: Shooting From the Hip. Piatkus Books, 1995.

Dassanowsky, Robert. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of . Continuum, 2012.

Dawson, Jeff. Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool. Appleuse Books, 1995.

321 Gale, Thompson. Contemporary Authors: Biography - Tarantino, Quentin. Jerome, 1963 – 2006.

Gallafent, Edward. Quentin Tarantino. Pearson Longman, 2006.

Greene, Richard and Mohammad, K. Silem. Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch. Open Court, 2007.

Harris, Aisha; Rosen, Adam, et. all. : The Complete Story of Quentin Tarantino’s Masterpiece. Voyageur, 2013.

Holm, D.K. Kill Bill: An Unofficial Casebook. Glitter Books, 2005.

Holm, D.K. Quentin Tarantino. Pocket Essentials, 2005.

Langely, Neville. Pulp Fiction (York Film Notes). 2000.

McGee, Patrick. From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western. Blackwell, 2006.

Mottram, James. The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took over Hollywood. February 2006.

Nama, Adilifu. Race on the QT: Blackness and the films of Quentin Tarantino. UT Press, 2015.

Page, Edwin. Quintessential Tarantino. Marion Boyars, 2005.

Peary, Gerald. Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. University of Mississippi Press, 1998.

Polan, Dana. Pulp Fiction (BFI Modern Classics). BFI , 2000.

Pratt, Mary K. How to Analyze the Films of Quentin Tarantino. Essential Critiques, 2010.

322

Sherman, Dale. Quentin Tarantino FAQ - Everything Left to Know About the Original Reservoir Dog. Appleuse, 2015.

Smith, Jim. Tarantino. , 2005.

Waxman, Sharon. Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System. Harper Collins, 2004.

Woods, Paul. Quentin Tarantino: The Film Geek Files. Plexus Books, 2000.

Woods, Paul A. King of Pulp: The Wild World of Quentin Tarantino. Plexus, 1998.

GERMAN LANGUAGE BOOKS / DEUTSCHE TARANTINO BÜCHER:

Fischer, Robert. Quentin Tarantino. 2004.

Geisenhanslük, Achim & Christian Steltz. Unfinished Business: Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” und die offenen Rechnungen der Kulturwissenschaften. 2006.

Kaul, Susanne & Jean-Pierre Palmier. Quentin Tarantino. Einfuhrüng in seine Filme und Filmästhetik. Juli 2013.

Lutz, Nitsche. Hitchcock - Greenaway - Tarantino: Paratextuelle Attraktionen des Autorenkinos. 2002.

Nagel, Uwe. Der rote Faden aus Blut: Erählstrukturen bei Quentin Tarantino. 1997.

Neiß, Sonja. Filme von Quentin Tarantino. 2007.

Scholten, Michael. Quentin Tarantino Unchained: Die blutige Wahrheit. Dezember 2015.

323

Tebbe, Kar. Narrative Strategien in den Drehbüchern von Tarantino. 1997.

FRENCH LANGUAGE BOOKS:

Deloux, Jean-Pierre. Quentin Tarantino. Fleuve Noir, 1998.

Morsiani, Alberto. Quentin Tarantino. Gremese, 2006.

Ortoli, Philippe. Le musée imaginaire de Quentin Tarantino. Le Cerf, 2012.

Séuvage, Celia. Critiquer Quentin Tarantino est-il raisonnable? Vrin, 2013.

Surcouf, Yannick. Quentin Tarantino. Mereal, 1998.

SCORSESE (44)

Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock'n'Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Blake, Richard Aloysius. Street Smart: The New York of Lumet, Allen, Scorsese, and Lee. University Press of Kentucky 2005.

Bliss, Michael. Martin Scorsese and Michael Cimino. Scarecrow Press, 1985.

Bliss, Michael. The Word Made Flesh: Catholicism and Conflict in the Films of Martin Scorsese. Scarecrow Press, 1995.

Bruno, Edorado. Martin Scorsese. Gremese, 1992.

Cashmore, Ernest. Martin Scorsese’s America. Polity, 2009.

324 Casillo, Robert. Gangster Priest: The Italian American Cinema of Martin Scorsese. University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Cieutat, Michel. Martin Scorsese. HathiTrust, 1986.

Connelly, Marie Katheryn. Martin Scorsese: An Analysis of His Feature Films, with a Filmography of His Entire Directorial Career. McFarland, 1993.

Conrad, Mark. The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese. University Press of Kentucky, 2007.

Dougan, Andy. Martin Scorsese. Orion Media, 1997.

Ebert, Roger and . The Future of the Movies: Interviews with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Andrews and McMeel, 1991.

Ebert, Roger. Scorsese by Ebert. Chicago. Press, 2008.

Ehrenstein, David. The Scorsese Picture: The Art and Life of Martin Scorsese. Carol Publishing Group, 1992.

Friedman, Lawrence S. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese. Continuum, 1997.

Greven, David. Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin. University of Texas Press, 2013.

Grist, Leighton. The films of Martin Scorsese, 1963-77: Authorship and Context. St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Gunden, Kenneth Von. Postmodern Auteurs: Coppola, Lucas, De Palma, Spielberg, and Scorsese. McFarland, 1991.

Hayes, Kevin J. Martin Scorsese’s . Cambridge University Press, 2005.

325

Kelly, Mary Pat. Martin Scorsese: A Journey. Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991.

Kelly, Mary Pat. Martin Scorsese, The First Decade. Redgrave Pub. Co., 1980.

Keyser, Lester J. Martin Scorsese. Twayne, 1992.

Kolker, Robert. A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.

Lindlof, Thomas R. Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars. University Press of Kentucky, 2008.

LoBrutto, Vincent. Martin Scorsese: A Biography. Praeger, 2008.

Lourdeaux, Lee. Italian and Irish Filmmakers in America: Ford, Capra, Coppola, and Scorsese. Temple University Press, 1990.

Miliora, Maria T. The Scorsese Psyche on Screen: Roots of Themes and Characters in the Films. McFarland & Co., 2004.

Murri, Serafino. Martin Scorsese Milano. Editrice Il castoro, 2000.

Nicholls, Mark Desmond. Scorsese's Men: Melancholia and the Mob. Pluto Press, 2004.

Nyce, Ben. Scorsese Up Close: A Study of the Films. Scarecrow Press, 2004.

Rausch, Andrew J. The Films of Martin Scorsese and . The Scarecrow Press, 2010.

Raymond, Marc. Hollywood’s New Yorker: The Making of Martin Scorsese. State

326 University of New York Press, 2009.

Riley, Robin. Film, Faith, and Cultural Conflict: The Case of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Praeger, 2003.

Sangster, Jim. Scorsese. Virgin, 2002.

Scorsese, Martin and Michael Henry Wilson. A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. 1st ed. Hyperion, 1997.

Scorsese, Martin; Brunette, Peter. Martin Scorsese: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 1999.

Scorsese, Martin. Scorsese on Scorsese: The Update. Faber & Faber, Incorporated, 1996.

Sotinel, Thomas. Martin Scorsese. Cahiers du Cinema, 2010.

Stern, Lesley. The Scorsese Connection. Indiana University Press, 1995.

Stone, Tom. Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective. Abrams Books, 2014.

Thompson, David and Ian Christie. Scorsese on Scorsese. Updated ed. Faber, 1996. Weiss, Marion. Martin Scorsese: A Guide to References and Resources. G.K. Hall, 1987.

Wernblad, Annette. The Passion of Martin Scorsese: A Critical Study of the Films. McFarland & Co., 2011

Woods, Paul A. Scorsese: A Journey Through the American Psyche. Plexus, 2005.

COEN BROTHERS (23)

327 Adams, Jeffrey. The Cinema of the Coen Brothers: Hard-Boiled Entertainments. Press, 2014.

Bergan, Ronald. The Coen Brothers, Second Ed. Sky horse Publishing Co. 2016.

Buckner, Clark. Apropos of Nothing: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, and the Coen Brothers. SUNY Press, 2014.

Coen, Joel; Coen, Ethan; Allen, William Rodney. The Coen Brothers: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2006.

Conard, Mark T. The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. University Press of Kentucky, 2009.

Doom, Ryan P. The Brothers Coen: Unique Characters of Violence. Praeger 2009.

Falsani, Cathleen. The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers. Zondervan, 2009.

Fosl, Peter S. The Big Lebowski and Philosophy: Keeping Your Mind Limber With Abiding Wisdom. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

Hamen, Susan E. How to Analyze the Films of the Coen Brothers. ABDO Publishing Company, 2012.

Ingle, Zachary. Fan Phenomena: The Big Lebowski. University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Jones, Jenny M. The Big Lebowski: An Illustrated, Annotated History of the Greatest of All Time. Voyageur Press, 2012.

King, Lynnea Chapman. The Coen Brothers Encyclopedia. Rowman & LIttlefield Publishers, 2014.

328

King, Lynnea Chapman; Wallach, Rick; Welsh, James M. No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film. Scarecrow Press, 2009.

Levine, Josh. The Coen Brothers: The Story of Two American Filmmakers. ECW Press, 2000.

Luhr, William. The Coen Brothers’ Fargo. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Mottram, James. The Coen Brothers: The Life of the Mind. Brassey’s Inc., 2000.

Palmer, R. Barton. Contemporary Film Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen. University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Redmon, Allen. Constructing the Coens: From Blood Simple to . Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

Robertson, William Preston; Cooke, Tricia. The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film. W. W. Norton, 1998

Robson, Eddie. Coen Brothers - Virgin Film. Ebury Publishing, 2011.

Rowell, Erica. The Brothers Grim: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen. Scarecrow Press, 2007.

Russell, Carolyn R. Films of Joel and Ethan Coen. McFarland, 2001.

Weishaar, Schuy R. Masters of the Grotesque: The Cinema of , , The Coen Brothers and David Lynch. McFarland & Co. 2012.

329 Filmography

Demme's involvement

A - Director B - Producer C - Assistant Director, 2nd unit D - Actor E - Writer F - Other G - idea/story H - Thanks/Special Thanks I - Presenter J- Cinematography, Shooter

DEMME FILMOGRAPHY AND CHRONOLOGY

16mm Short (Never Finished): Good Morning Steve

FEATURE FILMS AS DIRECTOR (OFTEN PRODUCER AND/OR WRITER AS WELL):

1974: Caged Heat (AKA Caged Females, Renegade Girls) (E)

1975: Crazy Mama

1976: Fighting Mad (E)

1977: Handle with Care

1979: Last Embrace. (D uncredited Man on Train)

1980: Melvin and Howard

1984: Swing Shift

1984: Stop Making Sense (E)

1986: Something Wild (B)

1987: Swimming to Cambodia

330 1988: Married to the Mob

1991: The Silence of Lambs

1992: Cousin Bobby

1993: Philadelphia (B)

1998: Storefront Hitchcock

1998: Beloved (B)

2002: The Truth About Charlie (B, E)

2004: The Agronomist (B, J)

2004: Manchurian Candidate (B)

2005: Neil Young: Heart of Gold (B, J)

2007: Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (B, E, J)

2007: New Home Movies From the Lower 9th Ward (B)

2008: Rachel Getting Married

2009: Neil Young Trunk Show (B, Original Music)

2011: Neil Young Journeys (B)

2012: Kenny Chesney: Unstaged

2012: Enzo Avitabile Music Life (B)

2013: A Master Builder

2015: Ricki and the Flash

2016: Justin Timberlake & The Tennessee Kids

TV WORK

1978: Columbo: Murder Under Glass. Written by Robert Van Scoyck with Louis Jordan.

331 (A)

1981/82: A series of commercials for the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way. The spots, titled "Eggs,” “Music,” and "Sports,” were produced by Norman Lear and featured , , and Goldie Hawn, celebrating Freedom of Expression (A)

1982: Who Am I This Time. American Playhouse (PBS) Based on Kurt Vonnegut short story. (A)

1984: Accumulation With Talking Plus Water Motor. “Alive From Off Center” (PBS). “Choreography of Trisha Brown: Alive from Off Center” (1984) TV series 1984- 1987 (A)

1987: A Family Tree. By . Pilot episode for Trying Times (PBS Anthology Series). with Rosanna Arquette and David Byrne. (A)

1988: Haiti: Dreams of Democracy Part I. (A, B, J with Jo Menell)

1997: Subway Stories Tales From the Underground. TV series. Executive Producer. Subway Car From Hell. Episode of Subway Stories. (A)

1998: Oprah Winfrey Show

2007: Right to Return: New Home Movies from the Lower 9th Ward (TV Mini-series documentary) (A)

2010: Tavis Smiley Reports: New Orleans: Been in the Storm Too Long (A)

2011: A Gifted Man (TV Series, 1 episode, pilot, executive produced 6 episodes) (A, B)

2011: Enlightened (TV Series, 2 episodes: Lonely Ghosts; Sandy) (A)

332 2011: P.O.V.: I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, The Mad and the Beautiful (A, B, D, J)

2014: Line of Sight (TV Movie) (A, B)

2013 - 2014: The Killing (TV Series, 2 episodes: Eden, Reckoning) (A)

2015: What’s Motivating Hayes (3rd episode in Alex Gibney’s The New Yorker Presents Series) (A)

2016: Protection Not Protest: The People of Standing Rock (A, Short)

2017: Shots Fired: Hour Six: The Fire This Time (A)

2018: Brenton’s Breath (Season 1, Episode 2, Seven Seconds)

Odds and Ends

1991: Women & Men II: In Love There Are No Rules (Or Women & Men II: A Domestic Dilemma (directed by Kristi Zea). (B)

2015: Another Telepathic Thing (film of Big Dance Theater's "elegant and haunting" production (The Village Voice) of the same name, stage directed by Paul Lazar and choreographed by Annie-B Parson.)

2017: The Power of Rock (Short)

MUSIC VIDEOS

1970: Ginger Baker and/or Kaleidoscope (UK) 20-minute music short, (Associate Producer)

1979: Suburban Lawns “Gidget Goes To Hell” (edited by Bette Gordon?)

333

1984: Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love”

1984: Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime” (Live)

1984: Talking Heads, “Slippery People” (Live)

1985: Talking Heads, “Girlfriend is Better” (live)

1985: UB 40, Chrissie Hynde, “I Got You Babe” at Jones Beach

1985: Artists United against Apartheid, “Sun City”

1985: New Order, “The Perfect Kiss”

1985: , “Everybody’s Young”

1986: Fine Young Cannibals, “Ever Fallen in Love” for Something Wild

1987: Suzanne Vega, “Solitude Standing”

1987: Les Frees Parents, “Veye Yo”

1987: Les Frères Parents, “Chemin Victoire”

1988: Les Frères and Neville Brothers, “Konbit”

1988: The Feelies, “Away”

1989: Neville Brothers, “Sister Rosa”

1990: Neville brothers, “In The Still of the Night.” Red Hot and Blue, UK on video, US on

1990: KRS-1 and Various Artists H.E.A.L, “Stop the Violence, Self Destruction”

1993: Bruce Springsteen, “” (with Ted Demme)

1995: Bruce Springsteen, “Murder Incorporated”

2000: Bruce Springsteen, “If I Should Fall Behind”

2001: Bruce Springsteen, “American Skin (41 Shots)

334 2004: Steve Earle, “Rich Man’s War”

2010: , “Foul Deeds” Live Concert DVD - Director

Protection Not Protest: The People of Standing Rock (2016) (Short) - Director

LONGER MUSIC PIECES

1994: The Complex Sessions (A)

ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACKS AND ALBUMS

1984: Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads, Soundtrack. Re-recording Supervisor

1984: Stop Making Sense (Special Edition) Talking Heads Soundtrack

1986: Something Wild, Soundtrack. (B)

1988: Married To The Mob, Various Artists. Soundtrack. Executive Producer

1991: Konbit, A&M (B)

1991: Silence of The Lambs, Soundtrack. Executive Producer

1993: Philadelphia, Soundtrack Executive Producer

1998: Beloved, Soundtrack. Rachel Portman. Executive Producer

2002: The Truth About Charlie, Soundtrack. Producer

2004: Rachel Portman, Manchurian Candidate (Music from the Motion Picture)

2007: Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains, Soundtrack. Executive Producer, liner notes

2008: Real Animal, Alejandro Escovedo, liner notes

2008: Rachel Getting Married, Soundtrack. Executive Producer, liner notes

Demme's involvement

A - Director B - Producer

335 C - Assistant Director, 2nd unit D - Actor E - Writer F - Other G - idea/story H -Thanks/Special Thanks I - Presenter J- Cinematography, Shooter

**See Filmography

OTHER FILM JOBS AND CREDITS

1970: Eyewitness (F - Music Coordinator)

1971: Angels Hard As They Come (AKA Angels, Angels As Hard As They Come, Angels, Hell On Harleys). Directed, co-written and co-produced by Joe Viola (BE)

1972: Black Mama, White Mama. Directed by Eddie Romero (Story by Demme and Joe Viola)

1972: The Hot Box. Directed, co-written by Joe Viola (C, E)

1972: Fly Me (F-Assistant Director)

1973: Secrets of A Door to Door Salesman (AKA Naughty Wives). (Directed opening sequence)

1977: Incredible Melting Man (D - Matt)

1981: Ghost Sisters, Adam Brooks (J)

1981: URGH! A Music War (G)

1982: Smithereens. D: Susan Siedlman (F- Advised on music)

1982: Ladies and Gentleman…The Fabulous Stains (AKA All Washed Up) (C, credited as Rob Morton)

1982: Chambre 666 (AKA Room 666) TV (E)

1985: Into the Night by John Landis (D - Federal Agent)

336 1986: Eat The Peach (Irish) (I)

1986: True Stories. Directed by David Byrne (H)

1986: The Making of Sun City. Grammy award winner

1989: True Love. Directed by Nancy Savoca (H)

1990: . Directed by (B)

1992 Haiti: Dreams of Democracy (PBS 1988) - Documentary on the coup in Haiti (A, B, C)

1993: Household Saints. Directed by Nancy Savoca (B, I)

1993: One Foot on a Banana Peel, The Other Foot in the Grave: Secrets From the Dolly Madison Room. Producer, narrator. Directed by Juan Botas (B)

1993: Amos and Andrew. Written, directed by E. Max Frye (B)

1994: Roy Cohn/Jack Smith. Directed by Jill Godmilow (B)

1995: Devil In A Blue Dress. Directed by (B)

1995: Desolation Angels. Directed by Tim McCann (H)

1996: That Thing You Do! Directed by Tom Hanks (B, E playing Major Motion Picture director)

1996: Mandela. Directors: Jo Menell, Angus Gibson (B)

1996: Some Mother's Son. Directed by Terry George (H)

1996/97: Courage and Pain. Directed by Patricia Benoit (B)

1996: Into The Rope. Producer. Director: Lucas Platt (B)

1997: Ulee’s Gold. Directed by Victor Nunez (I)

1998: Shadrach. Directed by Susanna Styron (B)

1998: The Uttmost. Directed by Diana Choi (E)

1998: Snitch (AKA Monument Ave.) d: by Ted Demme (H)

337

1999: Hitchcock: Shadow of a Genius (AKA Dial H Hitchcock: The Genius Behind The Showman; (J, D)

2000: Maangamizi: The Ancient One. Executive Producer. directors Ron Mulvihill, Martin Mhando

2000: Oz, episode 4.5, Gray Matter, August 9, 2000. TV. Actor (Commercial Director)

2000: Blood Brothers: Bruce Springsteen and the . (V. Himself)

2000: The Opportunists Directed by Myles Connell (B)

2001: Inside the Labyrinth: The Making of Silence of the Lambs (V. Himself [archive footage])

2001: Forest Hills Bob (B)

2001: I'll Sing for You. (documentary) (H)

2002 Novocaine (H)

2002 Adaptation. Producer. Spike Jonez director

2003: People Like Us: Making Philadelphia (V. himself)

2003: Writer. Coen Brothers

2003: Beah: A Black Woman Speaks. D:Lisa Gay Hamilton (B)

2006: The Goodbye Kiss. Directed by Michele Soavi (I)

2008: The Alphabet Killer. Directed by Rob Schmidt (H)

2009: Crude Independence. Directed by Noah Hutton (B)

2012: Gimme The Loot. Directed by Adam Leon (B, I)

2012: This Time Tomorrow (H)

2013: Horses of God (I)

2013: Everett Ruess Wilderness Song (Documentary) (B)

338 2014: Nosferatu vs. Father Pipecock & Sister Funk (H)

2014: The Frontier (H)

2014: . Directed by Kate Barker-Froyland (B)

2014: Brothers of the Black List. D: by Sean Gallagher (I)

2014: Crescendo! The Power of Music (H)

2015: The Center. Directed by Charlie Griak (EP/B)

2015: Deep Time. Directed by Noah Hutton (EP/B)

2015: I Thought I Told You To Shut up!! In 1977, David Boswell created the comic book anti-hero Reid Fleming, the World's Toughest Milkman. More than 30 years later, the big screen Hollywood adaptation remains in contractual limbo. Narrated by Jonathan Demme. Director: Charlie Tyrell Stars: David Boswell, Jonathan Demme, Matt Groening

2016: Disturbing the Peace (H)

2016: Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny (D, H)

2017: Okja. The Director would like to thank Demme

2017: Her Magnum Opus (I)

2017: The Phantom Thread: Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, For Demme

2018: My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes Directed by Charlie Tyrell, in memory of Demme

2018: The Foreigner's Home Rian Brown, Geoff Pingree, Executive producer Demme, explores Toni Morrison's artistic and intellectual vision through “The Foreigner's Home,” her 2006 exhibition at the Louvre. (EP/B)

2018 Come Sunday, D; Joshua Marston, (H)

Director

2017: The Power of Rock, short for Rock and Roll Museum

2019: Last Disintegrated school, video doc, EP

339

ART EXHIBITS

February 9 - March 11, 1990: Haiti: Actualities & Beliefs Florida State University Gallery & Museum

October 19 – December 7, 1994: Haiti: Three Visions. South Gallery, Ramapo College of New Jersey

1997: Island On Fire: Passionate Visions of Haiti: From the Collection of Jonathan Demme.

2005: Odilon Pierre: Artis d'Ayiti: From the extensive personal art collection of acclaimed filmmaker Jonathan Demme. Selden Rodman Gallery of Popular Arts of the Americas and Caribbean, Ramapo College, Mahwah NJ. Waterloo Center for the Arts, Waterloo Iowa

November 10, 2007: Slotin Folk Art Auction: Self Taught & International Folk Art From The Collection of Jonathan Demme

September 17 – November 12, 2014: A Sense of Place: Cap-Haitian Paintings from the Collection of Jonathan Demme Rampo College, Mahwah, NJ

March 29, 2014: Direct from the Eye: The Jonathan Demme Collection of Self- Taught Art Material Culture, Philadelphia, PA

BOOKS

1990: Haiti: Actualities and Beliefs Exhibit Catalog Jonathan Demme Introduction Jim Roche, Guest Curator (Florida State University Gallery & Museum) 60 Pages

340 1992: Vedute tra film video televisione (Italian) Paperback – by Valentini Valentina (Author), Ciprì-Maresco, Demme Jonathan, General Caro Marc (Illustrator)

1994: Haiti: Three Visions (3V) Exhibit catalog from the Fall 1994 show Curated by Jonathan Demme Featuring works by Etienne Chavannes, Edger Jean-Baptiste and Ernst Prophete. Artist Interviews by Edwige Danticat. 93 pages

1997: Island on Fire: Passionate Visions of Haiti Exhibit Catalog From the Collection of Jonathan Demme

1999: By Hand By Dan: The Art of Dan Pressley Edited by Jonathan Demme and Pebo Voss

2001: Max and Gaby’s Alphabet, Tony Fitzpatrick Jonathan Demme, Contributor Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

2005: Odilon Pierre, Atis d'Ayiti. This is the latest book from Kaliko Press. It is edited by Jonathan Demme, with an interview by Edwige Danticat. Designed by Kirsten Coyne and Pebo Voss and Produced by Pebo Voss

2008: Thalia Book Club: 's 'Brother, I'm Dying' Audible Audiobook – Original recording, Edwidge Danticat (Author), Jonathan Demme (Narrator), Inc. Symphony Space (Publisher)

2015: Direct from the Eye: The Jonathan Demme Collection of Self-Taught Art Exhibit Catalog, Material Culture. Philadelphia, Penn

2016: Blue Days, Black Nights: A Memoir of Desire by Ron Nyswaner and Jonathan Demme, Lethe Press; New edition (June 3, 2016)

341 206 pages

UNREALIZED PROJECTS

BOLD – Produced by other filmmakers Italics underlined — Never produced

11/22/63: Novel by Stephen King; developed in 2011 – 2012 (Dropped)

About Last Night… (1986): David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago; screenplay by Tim Kazurinsky, Denise DeClue; Directed by ; with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Jim Belushi, Elizabeth Perkins

Adaptation (2002): Book by Susan Orleans; script by ; Directed by ; with Nicolas Cage, , Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper; , and Demme producer credits

Alejandro Escovedo Project (2007): Louis Black (producer) and Lee Daniel (cinematography)

American Splendor (2003): Graphic Novel by and Joyce Brabner; written and directed by Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

The Angriest Man In Brooklyn (2014): based on film The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum written and directed by Assi Dayan; Screenplay by Daniel Taplitz; Directed by Phil Alden Robinson; with Robin Williams, , .

Asylum (2005): based on Patrick McGrath’s novel; written by Patrick Barber, Chrysanthy Balis; Directed by David Mackenzie; Produced and starring Natasha Richardson, , Ian McKellen

Beth Henley Project: “Before doing Beloved (1998) I spent a year and a half working on a script with (Crimes of the Heart playwright) Beth Henley, and then, when we got a magnificent script and started scouting locations in , Florida,

342 Arizona, and San Diego, we couldn't get together a cast that justified the budget in the computer. It was a heartbreaking discovery, but you know, you can't always get what you want. And I think the script's too good for it not to be made eventually. But having had to accept not making it after getting so close – I don't know if I can get there again. The irony is that when something falls through, it creates an opening for some other wonderful thing. In this instance, if we had made that movie, then I wouldn't have made Beloved. And confronted with that reality, it would be ludicrous for me to complain.”

The Big Mamoo: on Robert Oppenheimer by Bud Shrake; developed from 1988 - early 2000s. Bud Shrake died 05/08/2009. Demme wrote me: “louis, such very sad news, it's true. one beautiful, hulking, gentle, poetic, kinda jocky dude. bud and anne richards. now that's a power couple. bud ended his brilliant never-produced- but-we-tried-like-hell screenplay ‘the big mamoo’ with an on-screen quote from little richard's ‘good golly miss molly’ after the detonation of the first atom bomb.”

Birdy (1984): based on novel by William Wharton; script by Sandy Kroopf, Jack Behr, Directed by : with Matthew Modine, Nicolas Cage, John Harkins.

Black Dracula: Perhaps script Vampires of Harlem (1974) never produced

Bleeder: Richard Price script, Neil LaBute was to rewrite and to direct. Developed around 1998: From Demme: “There are a couple of things that Clinica's doing that I'm really excited about, and that I hope come to fruition: Neil LaBute is now doing a rewrite on a script that I worked on with Richard Price about three years ago. It's called Bleeder."

Cast Away (2000): by William Broyles Jr.; Directed by ; with Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt

Chair Vs Ruth Snyder: to be written and directed by Sam Fuller; Demme and Martin Scorsese to produce. Developed 1993. The story of the first woman executed in the United States.

The Confidence Man (1974): Directed by Jonathan Demme, Screenplay by Demme, based on the novel by Herman Melville "Set on a Mississippi riverboat in the

343 1850s" Developed with Corman. Melville’s final novel.

Continental Drift: Novel By Russell Banks; Demme to direct; developed 1988.

Courage Consort: Novel by Michael Faber published in 2002. Demme optioned and planned to film in 2009.

Creator (1985): Novel and screenplay by Jeremy Leven; Directed by Ivan Passer; with Peter O’Toole, Mariel Hemingway, Vincent Spano

Crimes of the Heart (1986): Play and screenplay by Beth Henley; Directed by ; with , ,

Dawn of the Feelies: Was going to be a performance film. Demme said “…he hoped to make an entire film about the Feelies — calling it a mix between Night of the Living Dead and – but had trouble scrounging up the funds.”

Extreme Prejudice (1987): Story by John Milius, Fred Rexer; Screenplay Harry Kleenex and Deric Washburn; Directed by ; with Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe; In 1985 Demme was linked to the project.

The Eye in the Door: Novel by Pat Barker. “Jonathan Demme is slated to direct adaptation of Pat Barker's 1995 novel The Eye in the Door for Clinica Estetico. The Eye in the Door, a set in London during World War I, is the second in a trilogy. The first Regeneration was made into a 1997 U. K. film Behind the Lines.” Developed in 2003.

Famous All Over Town: Novel by Danny Santiago. Demme wrote me: “a book i optioned that was written by a fascinating blacklisted lefty hollywood screenwriter named………damn,what was his name!?…………i’ll think of it soon. fascinating guy, like him a lot. but he was a fiesty old liberal Daniel Lewis James — something like that i sure liked him, and what happened was i hired him to adapt his book and he wasn’t getting it close enough to what i wanted so i finally dove in and did my own polish that i loved and was ready to go to market with, but Danny was unhappy, wanted to be the only writer, so it all just kind of fizzled out. i’m tired right now here in venice, had some wine, not @ my most

344 lucid. there is a good, poignant story lurking behind the gibberish i just ///////////////////////./////////// hashed out there. lets revisit in the presence of lucidity!!!! Developed in 1988.

Hand Carved Coffins: By Truman Capote. Demme to direct. Developed in 1983 -1984

His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor of the Underground Railroad: Optioned by Tri-Star Pictures as a project for Demme to direct. 1996.

Honeymoon With Harry: Based on a still-unpublished novel by Bart Baker; Paul Haggis wrote the original draft and sold it to New Line in 2004; 2011 rewrite by Jenny Lumet; Set to star Robert DeNiro, Bradley Cooper. Still in development with a new team.

I Know This Much Is True: Novel by Wally Lamb; a Fox 2000-based adaptation that Jim Sheridan was developing. In July 2000 Demme and Ed Saxon dissolved Clinica Estetico, which was producing.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017): Book by Skloot; produced and starring by Oprah Winfrey; A TV movie directed by George C. Wolfe.

Insomnia: Planned by and Demme in 1997; a remake of Norwegian film written by Nikolaj Frobenius, Erik Sjolndbjaerg; directed by Erik Sjolndbjaerg; Remade in 2002; Screenplay by Hillary Seitz; Directed by Christopher Nolan; with , Robin Williams, .

King of Cannibal Islands: Adaptation of Melville’s Typee; to be directed by Demme. Developed in 1988.

K-PAX (2001): Novel by Gene Brewer; screenplay by Charles Leavitt; Developed by Will Smith, Demme worked with him before dropping out; Directed by Iain Softley; with , , Mary McCormack.

Love Hurts (1990): Written by Ron Nyswaner; Directed by Bud Yorkin; with Jeff

345 Daniels, Cynthia Nikes, .

Maxwell’s Demon: Title Ed Saxon told me they were developing but can find nothing on it.

Old Fires: Written by Heather McGowan (Tadpole); an indie family dramedy follows a famous architect who, with the help of his snarky therapist, goes about rebuilding his damaged relationships with his wife and children after waking from a coma.

Parting the Waters: Based on book by Taylor Branch; Written by Anna Hamilton; Co- produced by Harry Belafonte; About the civil-rights movement in . Demme described it as, “a Cross between Nashville and The Battle Of Algiers. To star Harry Belafonte.

Paul Thomas Anderson Project: Demme said that PTA was going to be writing a script set in the world of magic, against a carnival backdrop, and (magician-actor) Ricky Jay is working on it as well. Developed 1998.

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986): Written by Jerry Leichtling, Arlene Warner; Directed by Francis Ford Coppola; with , Nicolas Cage, Barry Miller. Originally going to star Debra Winger and Demme. They had creative differences. He left. Then she did.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016): Based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 parody novel of ’s classic (she is listed as co-author); Scripted and directed by Steers; with Lily James, Sam Riley, Bella Heathcote. David O. Russell was set to direct, when he dropped out Demme was interested.

Red Harvest: Novel by Dashiell Hammett; developed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1982 with a script by Bertolucci, his wife Clare Peploe, Jonathan Demme and Marilyn Goldin.

Reid Fleming World’s Toughest Milkman: Graphic Novel David Boswell; Demme talked to me about developing it as a film but instead worked on documentary short I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!! (2015), which he narrated.

346

Rules of the Bone: Russell Banks novel that Paul Thomas Anderson attempted to adapt in the late 1990s for Demme. Didn’t work out.

Seren: A film about a survivor to be directed by Agnieszka Holland for Universal that got lost in the 2000 break up of Clinica Estetico.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago: David Mamet’s play see About Last Night….

SS Indianapolis: Book Fatal Voyage by Dan Kurzman; optioned by Orion; John Sayles hired to write script. Demme to direct. (1991) About WW II Japanese sinking USS Indianapolis. Orion’s financial problems killed project.

Stealing Home (1988): Written byand Directed by by Steven Kampmann and William Porter (as Will Aldis); with Mark Harmon, Jodie Foster, .

Walk Two Moons: Novel by Sharon Creech sold to Jonathan Demme Productions

Wardance: based on Richard Brooks novel previously filmed as Crossfire (directed by )

Zeitoun: Novel by Dave Eggers; From Demme: “we're in cahoots now with a great outfit up here in ny called curious pictures -- thanks for the thought tho louis, and if you cross path with dave pls give him my love. i am so nuts about this guy, and things are progressing nicely with zeitoun the movie.”

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ARTICLES

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356

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Dieckmann, Katherine. “Jonathan Demme’s Musical Moments Make Sense.” The Record, Music News from NPR, April 27, 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/04/27/525857534/jonathan- demmes-musical-moments-made-sense

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VanDerWerff, Todd Aja Romano, and Genevieve Kossi. “Jonathan Demme Dies” Vox, April 26 2017. https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/26/15437874/jonathan-demme-dies- obituary-silence-of-the-lambs

Vineberg, Steve. “Swing Shift: The Unmaking of a Masterpiece?” Sight and Sound, May 9, 2017.

Walton, Fletcher. “O.S.S. Remembers Jonathan Demme” One Sensational Shot, May 4, 2017. http://onesensationalshot.com/o-s-s-remembers-jonathan-demme/

Weingarten, Christopher R. and Rolling Stone Staff. “20 Most Essential Jonathan Demme Movies.” Rolling Stone, April 26, 2017. https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-lists/20-most-essential-jonathan-

364 demme-movies-118800/the-silence-of-the-lambs-1991-118914/

West, Naomi, “Anne Hathaway: Oscar Contender Who is the Real Deal” The Telegraph, January 9, 2009. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/4125213/Anne- Hathaway-Oscar-contender-who-is-the-real-deal.html

Whitty, Stephen. “Demme Back in the Director’s Chair,” The Star-Ledger, October 4, 2008.

Williams, Phillip. “The Truth About Jonathan Demme: The Director Reflects on His Recent Films, Lessons From Roger Corman and More.” Moviemaker, October 12, 2002.

Wloszcyna, Susan. “How Demme and His Women Worked Their Magic.” USA TODAY, September 9, 2008. http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-09-30-demme-side_N.htm

Wootton, Adrian. “Interview with Jonathan Demme.” Guardian Unlimited, October 10, 1998.

Zelinski, Mark. “The Philadelphia Phenomenon” G&LR, September 1, 2015. https://glreview.org/article/the-philadelphia-phenomenon/

Zimmermann, Paul. “My Dinners with Demme” Film Threat, May 9, 2017. http://filmthreat.com/features/my-dinners-with-demme/

CINEMATEXAS PROGRAM NOTES

Baumgarten, Marjorie. Caged Heat: Second Thoughts. Vol. 14, No. 3, p. 107, April 3, 1978

Black, Louis. Caged Heat, Jonathan Demme Vol. 14, No. 3, p. 37, April 3, 1978.

365 SCRIPTS (Authors Collection)

Cody, Diablo. Ricki and the Flash. Production Draft, Full Yellow, 10/03/14 (Starts shooting October 7, 2014)

Demme, Jonathan. The Vampires of Harlem. Rosenberg-Gelfman Productions. c/o Artists Entertainment Complex, 641 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY

Frye, E. Max. Something Wild. Second draft 10/31/85. Screenliner Productions. Raleigh Studios. 650 N. Bonson #122, Hollywood, CA 90004 (Starts shooting March 18, 1986)

Goldman, Bo. Melvin and Howard. First Draft, Shooting Screenplay Nov. 29, 1978, including pages revised: December 12, 1978, January 5, 1979, February 1, 1979 February 21, 1979 (Starts shooting February 12, 1979)

Lumet, Jenny. Dancing With Shiva. September 8, 2006 (Rachel Getting Married, shooting starts on September 24, 2007)

Pyne, Daniel. Manchurian Candidate. Based on the novel by Richard Condon and the screenplay by George Axelrod. Draft: October 26, 2002 Draft: April 30, 2003, draft with pages added Draft: August 1 2003 draft (Starts filming September 22, 2003)

Strugat, Barry & Mark R Burns. Married To The Mob. Shooting script September 4, 1987 (with revised pages dated 9/14 and 9/15 and a note from Producer Ed Saxon dated 9/25) (Starts shooting October 5, 1987)

INTERVIEWS (Demme)

Interview – 1980 Phone Interview – 1981 Phone Interview – 1985 Interview – 1988 Phone Interview – 1991

366 Interview – Upper Nyack, NY 2004 Interview – Demme’s apartment NYC, NY August 28, 2015 Interview – Upper Nyack, June 22 2016

INTERVIEWS (Other)

Corman, Julie Meyer, Russ Sayles, John

CONVERSATIONS (Other)

Anderson, Paul Thomas Bartel, Paul Barker, Michael Goodwin, Michael Guay, Rich Linklater, Richard Renzi, Maggie Roberts, Eliott, Savoca, Nancy Saxon, Ed Wiseman, Frederick Young, Neil

MISC.

Press Kits (Containing Production Notes)

Crazy Mama Citizen’s Band The Last Embrace Melvin and Howard Swing Shift Stop Making Sense Something Wild Married to the Mob Miami Blues The Silence of The Lambs Cousin Bobby Philadelphia

367 Beloved The Agronomist The Manchurian candidate Neil Young - Heart of Gold Rachel Getting Married Packet of Truth about Charlie Reviews sent by Demme’s office, Press Book: Black Mama, White Mama Press material: Caged Heat Publicity Manual Bloody Mama

SET VISITS

March 1985 Something Wild, Tallahassee Florida

November 2003 Manchurian Candidate, New York City 2003

August 2005 Neil Young Heart of Gold, Ryman Auditorium, Nashville Tennessee August 16: Rehearsal August 18 & 19: Filming, Nashville Tenn. 2005

October 2014 Ricki and the Flash October 6: Westchester County, NY October 8 & 9: Brooklyn

Other Production Visits:

January 1988 Visited Sound editing Married to the Mob, Brill building

February 2002 Visited editing The Agronomist, Clinica Estecio, Nyack New York

November 2003 Screening Manchurian Candidate dailies New York City, New York

February 2007 Editing Man From Plains Clinica Estecio, Nyack, New York

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Presented by author in Austin

March, 1998 (SXSW): Storefront Hitchcock

October 9, 2002: The Truth About Charlie

March 2004 (SXSW): The Agronomist

March 2006 (SXSW): Neil Young Heart of Gold

March 2009 (SXSW): Neil Young Trunk Show

DIRECTED BY DEMME

D - Documentary N - Narrative Film MP - Music Performance P Performance TV - Television

DVD 1974: Caged Heat (N) DVD 1975: Crazy Mama (N) DVD 1976: Fighting Mad (N) VHS 1977: Citizens Band AKA Handle with Care (N) VHS 1978: Columbo: Murder Under Glass (TV) VHS 1979: Last Embrace (N) DVD 1980: Melvin and Howard (N) DVD 1982 Who Am I This Time? (TV) DVD 1984: Swing Shift (N) DVD 1984: Stop Making Sense (MP) DVD 1986: Something Wild (N) DVD 1987: Swimming to Cambodia (P) DVD 1988: Married to the Mob (N) DVD 1991: The Silence of Lambs (N) VHS 1992: Cousin Bobby (D) DVD 1993: Philadelphia (N) VHS 1997: Subway Stories. (TV) DVD 1998: Storefront Hitchcock (MP) DVD 1998: Beloved (N)

369 DVD 2002: The Truth About Charlie (N) DVD 2004: The Agronomist (D) DVD 2004: Manchurian Candidate (N) DVD 2005: Neil Young: Heart of Gold (MP) DVD 2007: Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (D) DVD 2008: Rachel Getting Married (N) DVD 2011: Neil Young Journeys DVD 2012: Enzo Avitabile Music Life DVD 2013: A Master Builder (N) DVD 2015: Ricki and the Flash (N) DVD 2016: Justin Timberlake & The Tennessee Kids

PRODUCER (Did Not Direct)

DVD 1971: Angels Hard As They Come. writer VHS 1972: The Hot Box. write DVD 1973: Fly Me. Second unit directror DVD 1990: Miami Blues. DVD 1991: Women & Men 2. DVD1993: Amos and Andrew. DVD 1995: Devil In A Blue Dress DVD1996: That Thing You Do! VHS 1996: Mandela D: Angus Gibson, Jo Menial DVD2002: Adaptation D: Spike DVD2015: The Center. Directed by Charlie Griak

MUSIC VIDEOS

DVD 1984: Tom Tom Club, “Genius of Love” SMS DVD 1984: Talking Heads: “Once in a Lifetime” (Live) DVD 1984: Talking Heads, “Slippery People” (Live) DVD 1985: Talking heads “Girlfriend is Better” (live) DVD 1985: UB 40, Chrissie Hynde: “I Got You Babe” at Jones Beach VHS 1985: New Order “The Perfect Kiss” DVD 1987: Suzanne Vega: “Solitude Standing”

370 DVD 1993: Bruce Springsteen: “Streets of Philadelphia” (with Ted Demme) DVD 1995: Bruce Springsteen: “Murder Incorporated” DVD 2000: Bruce Springsteen: “If I Should Fall Behind DVD 2001: Bruce Springsteen: “American Skin (41 Shots)

OTHER DVD 1970: Eyewitness DVD 1972: Black Mama, White Mama. (Story) DVD 1972: Fly Me. DVD 1973: Secrets Of A Door To Door Salesman (directed opening sequence) VHS 1977: Incredible Melting Man. (D - Matt). DVD 1981: URGH! A Music War. (G) DVD 1982: Smithereens. D: Susan Siedlman, DVD 1982: Ladies and Gentleman…The Fabulous Stains DVD 1985: Into the Night. D: by John Landis actor VHS 1986: Eat The Peach (Irish). (I) DVD 1986: True Stories. Directed by David Byrne (H) DVD 1989: True Love. Directed by Nancy Savoca. (H) DVD 2000: Oz, episode 4.5, Gray Matter, August 9 200. DVD 2000: Blood Brothers: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. V. Himself. DVD 2002: Novocaine. (H) DVD 2012: Pablo interviewed DVD 2016: Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny (D, H)

AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

Fighting Mad, 1976 (VHS Tape from Demme)

Ginger Baker’s Airforce, bootleg, 20 min (Demme produced)

“The Perfect Kiss,” New Order video (VHS, long and short version, from Demme)

Stay with the Rhythm (DVD Demme’s never released Bob Marley doc)

Swing Shift (Demme’s Cut, VHS)

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