Copyright by Louis Black 2019
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
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 Texas 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 films within the context of Jonathan Demme’s authorship. This is not going to be an argument for Demme as an auteur 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 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. 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: Caged Heat (1974) .......................................................................................107 Chapter 5: Crazy Mama, Humanist Series, Fighting Mad (1975-1976) ........................128 Chapter 6: Citizen's Band, Last Embrace (1977-1979) .................................................155 Chapter 7: Melvin and Howard, Who Am I This Time? (1980-1982) ............................168 Chapter 8: Swing Shift, Stop Making Sense (1983-1984) ..............................................183 Chapter 9: Something Wild, Swimming to Cambodia (1985-1987) ................................214 Chapter 10: Married to the Mob (1988) ........................................................................226 Chapter 11: The Silence of the Lambs (1989-1991) .......................................................234 Chapter 12: Philadelphia (1992-1993) ..........................................................................263 Chapter 13: Beloved, The Truth About Charlie, The Manchurian Candidate (1994 - 2004) .........................................................................................................................273 Chapter 14: Rachel Getting Married, 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 Miami, Florida where the usual crew of my movie-obsessed buddies and I, beers in hand and under the stars, watched this western called The Left Handed Gun at our favorite venue. We were all bowled over by this western, way more intimately scaled than we ordinarily cared for; in black and white, 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 genre – 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 Paul Newman’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 exploitation film 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 seek 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 Bob Marley 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 South by Southwest (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 Frank Capra’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 New York 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,