USA TODAY International Edition
Oscar- winning director Jonathan Demme dead at 73
His seminal ‘ Silence of the Lambs’ left audiences aghast
Jonathan Demme, the versatile Oscar- winning filmmaker who worked with everyone from David Byrne and Justin Timberlake to Hannibal Lecter, has died at age 73.
He died Tuesday from complications from esophageal cancer, Demme’s publicist, Leslee Dart, confirmed to USA TODAY.
“Sadly, I can confirm that Jonathan passed away early this morning in his Manhattan apartment, surrounded by his wife, Joanne Howard, and three children” — Ramona, 29, Brooklyn, 26, and Jos, 2 — Dart said in a statement.
His death was first reported by IndieWire.
He won an Oscar for best director and scared audiences with best- picture winner The Silence of the Lambs, which unleashed Anthony Hopkins’ cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal on pop culture in 1991.
The Long Island, N. Y., native burst into Hollywood with 1970s B- movies including Caged Heat, Crazy Mama and Fighting Mad but found commercial success in the next decade with Swing Shift ( 1984) and Something Wild ( 1986).
During that time, he also filmed 1984’ s Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense, which began a long association with musicians that led to a trio of films with Neil Young and last year’s Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.
“I’ve come to believe, and I kind of felt this when we did Stop Making Sense, that shooting live music is kind of like the purest form of filmmaking,” Demme told the Associated Press. “There’s no script to worry about. It’s not a documentary, so you don’t have to wonder where this story is going. ... It’s just: Here come the musicians. Here come the dancers. ... We get to respond in the best way possible.”
Demme had his biggest hits in the early 1990s with the one- two punch of Lambs and 1993’ s Philadelphia, the first big- budget AIDS- related drama, which won Tom Hanks a best- actor Oscar. The director also had an arthouse darling with 2008’ s Rachel Getting Married, which garnered an Academy Award nomination for star Anne Hathaway.
“Jonathan taught us how big a heart a person can have, and how it will guide how we live and what we do for a living. He was the grandest of men,” Hanks said.
Demme got his start in showbiz writing press releases and screenplays for producer Roger Corman. “I was about 25 years old at the time and I said, I would love to try that. I had had no aspirations to be a filmmaker or a writer,” Demme told NPR in 2007. ”
Corman loved his screenplays and encouraged Demme to get behind the camera, where he began with satires such as 1977’ s Handle With Care and 1980’ s Melvin and Howard.
He worked with a legion of Hollywood greats. In 1998, he directed Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover in Beloved, and Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep in the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate.
“A big- hearted, big- tent, com- passionate man — in full embrace in his life of people in need and of the potential of art, music, poetry and film to fill that need. ( It’s) a big loss to the caring world,” Streep said in a statement.
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese recalled how Demme would be “filled with enthusiasm and excitement” about new projects.
“He took so much joy in moviemaking. His pictures have an inner lyricism that just lifts them off the ground,” Scorsese said in a statement. “I love the freshness of his style. ... To me, he was always young. My young friend. The idea that he’s gone seems impossible to me.”