Jonathan Demme

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dustybooks
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:52 am
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Re: Jonathan Demme (1944-2017)

#51 Post by dustybooks » Thu Jul 09, 2020 2:46 pm

I can't find it now but Demme was interviewed several years before his death by a German publication in which he talked more about the transphobia issue; apparently his daughter is trans, which undoubtedly caused him to rethink his approach to Gumb.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Jonathan Demme (1944-2017)

#52 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:18 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 2:17 pm
dustybooks wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 9:37 am
I feel like I'm a bit of a contrarian on Demme's follow-up Philadelphia, which feels sketched-in and incomplete in a way his best films don't, but maybe I'm wrong since most of you aren't bringing it up either. I think it's a socially admirable and well-meaning film, but I don't think it really transcends its time.
That's actually the usual take I've encountered as long as I can remember. It's well-meaning, but it always felt shallow. For starters, Hanks and Banderas were never a convincing couple. I don't recall anything close to physical intimacy except a brief bit of slow dancing (which looked more awkward than convincing, but I'd have to revisit it again).
Regarding Philadelphia, while not my favorite, I do think some of these issues are actually strengths. The fact that Hanks and Banderas are not a "convincing couple" works because we are often looking at events through Washington's eyes, who doesn't understand the 'secret' life of being a gay man, so the surprisingly strange chemistry is allowed to exist without us needing to understand, we just need to accept it.

I haven't seen the film in a while, but if I remember correctly there is never an explanation or theatrics around how Hanks contracted HIV. I always admired the film for not going the route of sparking (what would probably be more realistic) drama around if Hanks or Banderas cheated on one another, could have passed it to each other, etc. They're just there for each other, which demonstrates how Demme's empathy washes away all else. That absence of conflict always struck me as strange, and very welcome.

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zedz
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Re: Jonathan Demme (1944-2017)

#53 Post by zedz » Fri Jul 10, 2020 12:07 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:18 pm
Regarding Philadelphia, while not my favorite, I do think some of these issues are actually strengths. The fact that Hanks and Banderas are not a "convincing couple" works because we are often looking at events through Washington's eyes, who doesn't understand the 'secret' life of being a gay man, so the surprisingly strange chemistry is allowed to exist without us needing to understand, we just need to accept it.
For me, the most interesting thing about the film is how Demme uses the distraction of its hot topic to fashion a mainstream Hollywood film in which the focal character (and entry point for mainstream white audiences) is black. Just as in The Silence of the Lambs, he makes a serial killer movie in which the focal female character is not a potential victim (and gets himself in all kinds of trouble as a consequence). He's a filmmaker who was always trying to subtly subvert and challenge mainstream norms, even when he was making unabashedly populist Hollywood fare.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Jonathan Demme (1944-2017)

#54 Post by The Narrator Returns » Fri Jul 10, 2020 1:04 am

Similarly, his casting of Denzel as the fall guy to Liev Schreiber's rubber-stamped-to-the-top Raymond Shaw in Manchurian Candidate is pointed without ever being underlined as text. Bilge Ebiri said on a recent Blank Check episode that Demme's starting points for both Truth About Charlie and Manchurian were to remake canonical classics with black leads (though he only got halfway there with Charlie after Will Smith couldn't do it), another way for him to unobtrusively subvert expectations in favor of a more progressive worldview.

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whaleallright
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Re: Jonathan Demme (1944-2017)

#55 Post by whaleallright » Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:34 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:18 pm

I haven't seen the film in a while, but if I remember correctly there is never an explanation or theatrics around how Hanks contracted HIV.
IIRC there's a part of his testimony in one of the trial scenes that features a flashback (really, fragmented flashback images) of Hanks cruising at a gay bar, and it's implied this is how he may have contracted HIV.

Some of the many criticisms levelled at this film over the years seem valid to me, and it's hardly Demme's most inventive film, but I find it extremely moving. I can't watch it without crying.

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Altair
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#56 Post by Altair » Sat Jul 11, 2020 6:10 am

Philadelphia works because of the craft and the performances - and there's one terrific scene (listening to the opera) - but it's also a terribly mainstream Hollywood issues drama and I think there's a reason it's not held up as a paragon of LGBT cinema, not least due to the climactic histrionics over Hanks' character going to a gay cinema.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#57 Post by Aunt Peg » Sat Jul 11, 2020 10:33 am

I'm a Demme fan up to and including Silence of the Lambs. Philadelphia was made with the best intentions but never really rises above a good TV film. And coming after films like Parting Glances & Longtime Companion didn't help it one bit. Everything Demme did after that I would happily erase from my memory.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#58 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Jul 11, 2020 2:13 pm

Aunt Peg wrote:
Sat Jul 11, 2020 10:33 am
...coming after films like Parting Glances & Longtime Companion didn't help it one bit.
For me, it was Silverlake Life: The View from Here (released in the same year). I'm not sure if it got much distribution, but Siskel & Ebert actually promoted it on their show, which I'm sure gave it a much-welcome boost. To be clear, I don't think Philadelphia's a terrible film - as it's already been discussed, it has its merits, but the core of the film always felt very lacking and Silverlake Life seemed to accentuate this.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#59 Post by Aunt Peg » Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:15 am

hearthesilence wrote:
Sat Jul 11, 2020 2:13 pm
Aunt Peg wrote:
Sat Jul 11, 2020 10:33 am
...coming after films like Parting Glances & Longtime Companion didn't help it one bit.
For me, it was Silverlake Life: The View from Here (released in the same year). I'm not sure if it got much distribution, but Siskel & Ebert actually promoted it on their show, which I'm sure gave it a much-welcome boost. To be clear, I don't think Philadelphia's a terrible film - as it's already been discussed, it has its merits, but the core of the film always felt very lacking and Silverlake Life seemed to accentuate this.
Silverlake was such a hard watch. I actually avoided it on its original release but saw it years later on TV.

Common Threads was another film that took all the courage I could muster up to see it. I had an opportunity for see it at the Sydney Film Festival in 1990 but just couldn't do it. I knew so many people who had died of AIDs that I just didn't want to put myself through the film. When it was released in early 1991 a good friend of mine told me that it was though is was harrowing it was also life affirming and uplifting so I decided to give it ago and that is exactly what the experience of viewing Common Threads was like in 1990/91. It was a very rewarding experience but one of the toughest films I've ever sat through. I've never heard so many people crying during a film before or since - including myself.

I very rarely wear sunglasses though I owned a pair back then that I took with me for leaving the cinema with. I didn't want anybody to see my red eyes after viewing Common Threads.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#60 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Jul 12, 2020 4:21 pm

I don't think I knew anyone with HIV growing up. We were very well educated about it - which made the Reagan administration's neglect all the more shocking when I first learned about it - and though treatment was discovered early in my lifetime, I still remember how it was viewed as a death sentence. But it wasn't until I moved to NYC that the scale of that devastation really sank in, when I got to know survivors of that era who filled in even more details. One that stood out was from someone who told me he was tearing out large portions of his Rolodex throughout the year. It was so abstract yet overwhelming to process that.

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whaleallright
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#61 Post by whaleallright » Mon Jul 13, 2020 8:53 am

I happened upon Silverlake Life on PBS when I was about 15 and it hit me with such a wallop that I think it genuinely changed my life — it certainly altered my understanding of both homosexuality and HIV.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#62 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:19 pm

FWIW, it looks like Peter Friedman has made Silverlake Life available on YouTube, free of charge. (The upload is dated September 15, 2019.) Peter was one of their film students at the time, and he ended up finishing the film after both of them passed away or were too ill to continue work on the film.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#63 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Nov 30, 2020 1:20 am

I just heard that Demme originally had Neil Young's "Southern Man" as the temp music for the opening titles of Philadelphia (seen here as it was released with Springsteen's music).

He was hoping to get a similar anthem (musically, not lyrically) from Neil or Bruce to use instead - obviously that didn't happen, but I'm not sure how well that would've worked. Here's what he said in 2016 at TIFF:

(Before he made Philadelphia, Demme had never met or worked with Young.)
Jonathan Demme wrote:"We're cutting the movie together and I'm like, [snaps his fingers], I've got such a great idea. We're going to reach out to Neil Young to see if he would like to do a 'Southern Man'-type anthem to start this movie, 'cause that will send such a strong, reassuring message to testosterone-fuelled men, which is our target audience. It's like, 'Well if Neil's down with it,' you know?

"So we sent Neil a tape of the movie and his manager calls back right away and says Neil likes the film, he's wanted to make a statement — oh and by the way when I sent it to him, "Southern Man" was scoring the opening scene — so then, a week later, this audio cassette comes back and it's Neil's song for Philadelphia.

"I got in the car, which you always have to do to hear an important song in your life for the first time, so my wife and I popped it in and here's this heartbreaking 'Philadelphia' song by Neil, and yes, I'm crying by the end of it, but I'm also like, this will be great at the end, but we still need the up-front thing.

"I know Bruce Springsteen, I had worked with him on a video, so I got in touch with the Boss, I told him about the Neil Young thing and I was like, 'Would you consider maybe looking at the movie and seeing if you want to give us a rousing song to open the picture with?'

"His manager is like, 'Ya, send it over.' The film was still scored with 'Southern Man,' and we put the new Neil song at the end, which really transformed the end of that movie, it was unbelievable.… So then a new tape comes in, we get in the car, slap it in, and it's this amazing song, 'Streets of Philadelphia.' And I'm like, 'Wow, this is so beautiful, but honey, it's not the anthem.' She goes, 'You know, it seems like these people trust your film more than you do. Why don't you just shut up about 'Southern Man?' So that's what happened."
A year later at Tribeca, Bruce talked about it too, and amusingly he understood it wasn't what Demme wanted:
Bruce Springsteen wrote:"He had Neil Young working first, so Neil came up with 'Philadelphia,' which ended the film...He wanted a rock song for the beginning, so I said I'd give it a shot...I hooked up my little studio, and I tried for a day or so to come up with something, and I hadn't come up with anything."

After Demme sent a rough version of the scene, the logjam was broken but Springsteen remained uncertain.

"I had some lyrics. Eventually I just came up with that tiny little beat and a track, and I figured it wasn't what he wanted, but I sent it to him anyway...I sent it to him and said, 'What do you think?' and he said, 'Great,' and that was it. It took about two days.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Jonathan Demme (1944-2017)

#64 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 05, 2020 8:12 pm

The Narrator Returns wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:42 pm
Charlie rewrites Charade to be about people struggling to deal with the trauma of death (even down to Agnes Varda's cameo as a grieving widow, sandwiched between a shot of a Cherbourgian umbrella stand and Thandie Newton meeting a character named Lola so it's obvious who she's grieving) and trying to help each other through it
I finally got around to rewatching The Truth About Charlie for the first time since theatres, and it's no wonder 13-year-old me didn't 'get' this mature masterwork. I agree with your evaluation of the nouvelle vague methods, and at times the style teeters on resembling Mann superficially before the Demme intimacy of eye contact, closeness, and here actual POV inserts allow for something riveting that challenges the way we process information in cinema. Even that early "quitter" exchange, which could have been an eye-rolling 'line' in a traditional remake, is breathtaking in the use of camera eye-contact and POV shots, involving the audience in the time-stopping, heart-racing second-long instance of flirtation, making it wash over us for what feels like ages in a ripple effect. Simultaneously this breaks with the objective shooting of the scene before and after, so it shakes us uncomfortably from detached yet secure positioning into intimacy; a beautiful paradox that mimics that relatable gut-punch you get from a romantic pass, disrupting us from our routine movements into a deeper level of consciousness.

I don't know if I'm ready to say I love this more than Charade, because the Donen film retains the magic of pure adventurous enjoyment that threatens Hitchcock's classics at times, but Demme's film is far more thematically and technically rich. The focus on grieving you mention is spot on, and the film's ungrounded thriller-bordering-on-horror heights of dysregulation reflect this mental state throughout the narrative (like when Newton walks in on Wahlberg ripping up the room, which is profoundly startling solely because Demme imbues the film's tension with Newton's confusion-as-terror subjectivity, when her psyche is infiltrated by confrontations of unexpected stimuli). I also did a double-take at the Varda cameo, and reading your mention of her here adds extra significance to her placement I never considered in the moment, though it certainly affected me still!

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#65 Post by The Narrator Returns » Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:43 pm

Any Demme fans who may not know about the existence of "A Family Tree", the 30-minute short he did in 1987 as the pilot to a PBS anthology series, are hereby advised to watch it whenever they can (it's on YouTube in three parts), it's very funny in that 80s Demme way while doubling down on the anxiety of Something Wild's second half. Despite its placement between Something Wild and Married to the Mob in Demme's filmography, it's closer to a trial run for Rachel Getting Married, a queasy study of all the variables that can go wrong when trying to make yourself a part of someone's family (like Rachel it's shot on grimy video, which makes the Demme close-ups even more unsettling when they show up). Rosanna Arquette is the lead and it's one of the best performances in the entire Demme oeuvre, she's playing self-conscious friendliness rather than Anne Hathaway's biting sarcasm but she's Hathaway's equal at capturing the sinking feeling of watching all your attempts to ingratiate yourself to others go up in flames. It also has a hilarious performance from David Byrne as a pie-obsessed pseudo-intellectual asshole, I believe the only time he's given a performance not as himself besides True Stories.

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knives
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#66 Post by knives » Thu Dec 30, 2021 6:36 pm

Finally saw Philadelphia which hit me in a way I never expected it to. It’s such an intangible and personal response I can’t speak for why it works for me so well. I do want to address a point brought up in the thread though and that’s the relationship with Banderas. I agree it’s a bit artificial, but I’m okay with that on two accounts. First, it’s not the story of their relationship. Hanks could be single in the movie and that wouldn’t change a thing. So the question for me becomes why should the film have him in a more active or intimate role?

Secondly, as I was looking around I saw some things that suggest that Hanks and Banderas were originally going to be more intimate in their scenes, but that the studio execs placed an obstruction on that meaning Demme had to show their love without real intimacy which I do think he succeeds in by giving them time to be in frame which seems a major capability of Demme for eliciting empathy.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#67 Post by The Narrator Returns » Mon Mar 13, 2023 2:00 am

David Byrne says A24 will be theatrically rereleasing Stop Making Sense.

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Computer Raheem
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#68 Post by Computer Raheem » Mon Mar 13, 2023 2:06 am

The Narrator Returns wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 2:00 am
David Byrne says A24 will be theatrically rereleasing Stop Making Sense.
We're never getting that Criterion release, guys :(

beamish14
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#69 Post by beamish14 » Mon Mar 13, 2023 2:19 am

The Narrator Returns wrote:
Mon Mar 13, 2023 2:00 am
David Byrne says A24 will be theatrically rereleasing Stop Making Sense.

Pretty amazing for a film that’s not quite 40 years old to get 2 theatrical rereleases (the other was in 1999)

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Matt
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#70 Post by Matt » Sat Oct 07, 2023 3:21 am

Sunday October 8 marks the 25th anniversary of the US release of Beloved, which I think is a really underloved film not only on its own but among Demme’s oeuvre. It would have been nice to have a lavish Blu-ray edition contextualizing it as an adaptation of the now-classic novel and providing information about the development and making of the film.

From Wikipedia I know the writing credits are a touchy subject and that the commercial failure of the film was the darkest moment of Oprah’s career to that point, but 25 years is a long time for those wounds to heal, and the film deserves better than just to be another choice for rent on the streaming services.

It’s under Disney’s control (being a Touchstone Pictures release), but it seems like if anyone could pry open the dusty vaults of Touchstone it would be Oprah. Maybe she doesn’t care to revisit it, but it’s good and it’s worthy of reappraisal by a new generation.

beamish14
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#71 Post by beamish14 » Sat Oct 07, 2023 2:51 pm

It’s funny, but I remember the publicity cycle surrounding Beloved more than the film itself, as Winfrey and Demme both clearly hated each other by the end. I would definitely like to revisit it, having finally read Morrison’s novel, which is arguably the finest work of horror that I have ever encountered

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Matt
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Jonathan Demme

#72 Post by Matt » Thu Jan 18, 2024 2:44 am

The Narrator Returns wrote:David Byrne says A24 will be theatrically rereleasing Stop Making Sense.
According to Variety, this is coming back to theaters on January 27 and “preorder for a collector’s edition 4K and Blu-ray release of the film” will begin the same day.
Last edited by Matt on Thu Jan 18, 2024 2:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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swo17
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#73 Post by swo17 » Thu Jan 18, 2024 2:50 am

Jan 27

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#74 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Jan 28, 2024 12:59 pm

swo17 wrote:
Thu Jan 18, 2024 2:50 am
Jan 27
Special Collector's Edition digibook of Stop Making Sense available in Standard HD Blu-ray or 4K UHD with HDR from A24.

Featuring a 64-page interior booklet with never-before-seen photography, archival production documents, foreword by Jerry Harrison, and more.

Disc extras include:
○Bonus songs "Cities" & "Big Business / I Zimbra"
○ 25-minute making-of documentary
○ 2023 Dolby Atmos and 1984 Original Stereo mixes
○ and more

Image

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Jonathan Demme

#75 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jan 28, 2024 1:13 pm

Don’t all A24 site-exclusive products sell out eventually?

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