Oscar-winning director of ‘Silence of the Lambs’
Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme died Wednesday of cancer complications, his publicist told Variety. He was 73 years old.
Demme is best known for directing “The Silence of the Lambs,” the 1991 horror-thriller that was a box-office smash and a critical triumph, and introduced moviegoers to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter, a charismatic serial killer with a yen for Chianti, fava beans and cannibalism. The story of a novice FBI analyst (Jodie Foster) on the trail of a murderer became only the third film in history to win Academy Awards in all the top five categories (picture, actor, actress, director and adapted screenplay), joining the ranks of “It Happened One Night” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Though he had his greatest success terrifying audiences, most of Demme’s work was looser and quirkier. In particular, he showed a great humanism and an empathy for outsiders in the likes of “Melvin and Howard,” the story of a service station owner who claimed to have been a beneficiary of Howard Hughes, and “Something Wild,” a screwball comedy about a banker whose life is turned upside down by a kooky woman. He also scored with “Married to the Mob” and oversaw “Stop Making Sense,” a documentary about the Talking Heads that is considered to be a seminal concert film.
Following “The Silence of the Lambs,” Demme used his clout to make “Philadelphia,” one of the first major studio films to tackle the AIDS crisis, which won Tom Hanks his first Oscar, for playing a gay lawyer.
The director most recently worked on an episode of the Fox police drama “Shots Fired,” which was scheduled to air Wednesday, the same day Demme’s death was announced.
Demme’s commercial prowess waned in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “Beloved,” a 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison’s award-winning book, received some critical support but bombed and failed to attract much Oscar attention. He also failed to convince critics that his 2004 big-budget remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” starring Denzel Washington, needed to be made.
In addition to “Stop Making Sense,” Demme did documentaries on the Pretenders, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, and he also directed quite a number of music videos, drawing a Grammy nomination in 1987 for best long-form music video for “Sun City: Artists United Against Apartheid.”
Demme’s nonfiction work also dipped into politics and social issues, profiling the likes of Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela. He made two documentaries about Haiti, 1988’s “Haiti Dreams of Democracy” and 2003’s critically acclaimed “The Agronomist.”
His 1986 indie comedy “Something Wild” drew an erotically anarchical performance from Melanie Griffith as a brunette on the run.
The 2008 film “Rachel Getting Married” was a return to form for Demme and served as an excellent vehicle for Anne Hathaway. She received her first Oscar nomination.
In 2015, in addition to “Ricki and the Flash,” he directed the docu-series “The New Yorker Presents,” bringing to life the iconic magazine.
Robert Jonathan Demme was born in Baldwin, Long Island, N.Y., and attended the University of Florida. He began his directing career in Roger Corman’s stable. In 2006 Demme was presented with the National Board of Review’s Billy Wilder Award. Demme’s nephew, director Ted Demme, died in 2002 at age 38.
Demme was married to director-producer Evelyn Purcell. He is survived by second wife Joanne Howard and their three children.