Kindly director of macabre film hit
Robert Jonathan Demme, film director: b New York, February 22, 1944; m Evelyn Purcell (diss), Joanne Howard, 2d, 1s; d New York, April 26, 2017, aged 73.
Director Jonathan Demme, widely regarded as one of the nicest, most thoroughly decent men in Hollywood, was best known for one of the most bracingly unpleasant films to triumph at the Oscars.
On paper, at least, the movie adaptation of Thomas Harris’ serial killer thriller The Silence Of The Lambs seemed like a jarringly unlikely fit for a director whose career up until that point had concentrated largely on a combination of warm, sometimes comic, always empathetic character pieces and innovative music documentaries.
With its lip-smacking relish over the macabre details of the killer’s niche proclivities, the screenplay for The Silence Of The Lambs had a grisly intensity that scared off several of Demme’s original casting choices. Sean Connery was his pick for the role of the liver-snacking murderer Hannibal Lecter, which eventually went to Anthony Hopkins. And Michelle Pfeiffer, the star of his previous film Married To The Mob, was his first choice for Clarice Starling, the part that Jodie Foster made her own.
Demme later admitted that he was firmly against the casting of Foster. Several meetings with the actress only served to solidify his resistance. But when he witnessed her leaving her latest unsuccessful pitch for the role, unbowed and striding purposefully down a corridor, he realised that she was, in fact, the perfect fit for the character.
This readiness to admit to his mistake was typical from the man who was generous, almost to a fault, with his praise for colleagues and profligate in his selfdeprecation. He once claimed: ‘‘I need to know that everyone I’m involved with on a project is smarter and more imaginative than me in their given area.’’
This generosity of spirit is perhaps one of the key reasons why The Silence of the Lambs remains the only horror film to win the Oscar for best picture and one of only three films to win the five big Academy awards: best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and best screenplay.
Demme was determined to find something sympathetic in every character, even the serial killer Jame Gumb, whom he described as ‘‘a bad guy who is in fact a terribly damaged guy whose life has been a disaster’’.
Demme’s heroic capacity for empathy was matched by a subtly revolutionary approach to filmmaking. Particularly notable in Silence was his use of ‘‘subjective camera’’, a technique that he pioneered in earlier films and which allowed the audience to view the action through the eyes of the character with whom they are meant to be identifying.
Born in Baldwin, Long Island, Demme moved with his family to Miami when he was a child. His father, Robert Demme, was a public relations executive for an opulent Miami hotel. Demme cited his mother, Dorothy, as an influence on his affinity for strong, complex female characters. ‘‘Maybe some of that comes from the fact that I’ve always been so proud of my mother. She was an alcoholic who quit drinking when I was very young. And she went on to really help people through Alcoholics Anonymous.’’
His key film-making break came in the late 1960s, when he met the prolific B-movie powerhouse Roger Corman, who needed screenplays and invited the garrulous young American to submit one. With his friend Joe Viola, Demme took the premise of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon and revved it up with motorbikes, sex and violence. The result was his screenwriting debut, Angels Hard as They Come (1971). After two more screenplays for Corman productions, Demme graduated to directing. His first film was a campy exploitation flick called Caged Heat (1974), about women in prison. Demme brought his own spin, musically – the Velvet Underground’s John Cale provided the score – and ideologically, with an admittedly subtle feminist slant on the material.
Demme later praised the value of his grounding in the Corman school of film-making (which also helped to launch the careers of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard and James Cameron). ‘‘It was understood that if you didn’t complete the day’s work on any given day that you would be replaced. That instilled in me a very strong discipline.’’
He acknowledged his debt to Corman throughout his career with cameo roles in many of his films. Despite Corman’s tough love, Demme found his early forays into studio film-making hard going. Citizens Band (1977) was traumatic. He was sacked by the producer, then reinstated after Roman Polanski pleaded on his behalf. This was followed by a more positive experience with Melvin And Howard (1980), a critically adored tale of a luckless nobody who claims to be named in the will of Howard Hughes.
But perhaps the worst early career knock back was Swing Shift (1984), starring Goldie Hawn. Demme found himself wrangling with a studio and a producer who changed their minds about the film they wanted, inconveniently after the whole thing had been shot. By day he battled Warner Brothers; by night he filmed live footage of the band Talking Heads, which became the now legendary Stop Making Sense (1984), lauded by many as the greatest concert film to date.
Demme later recalled that bruising period of his career as a moment of clarity. ‘‘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 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 rule, since 1984.’’
The success of the comedies Something Wild (1986) and Married To The Mob (1988) further boosted Demme’s profile. However, it was at this time that Demme, whose first marriage to the director and producer Evelyn Purcell ended in divorce, married his second wife, the artist Joanne Howard.
He embraced family life, saying: ‘‘I suddenly didn’t want to make a movie every year. I wanted to enjoy my life more.’’
The couple had three children: Ramona, who works in publishing; Brooklyn, who followed his father into film-making – the pair recently collaborated on a documentary about the protests at Standing Rock; and Jos, who is an artist.
Domesticity notwithstanding, the phenomenal success of The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) marked a new stage in Demme’s career. It was not, however, without controversy. Demme faced accusations of homophobia in the film’s depiction of its crossdressing killer. It was a difficult moment, and one that he described as a wake up call.
‘‘I came to realise that there was a tremendous absence of gay characters in movies.’’ It was no coincidence that his next film was Philadelphia (1993), the first Hollywood movie to tackle the Aids crisis.
A fondness for issue-led material informed subsequent choices: the Oprah Winfreystarring slavery drama Beloved (1998), and a remake of The Manchurian Candidate (2004) set against the backdrop of the Gulf War. – The Times
"I need to know that everyone I’m involved with on a project is smarter and more imaginative than me." Jonathan Demme