Last week, our long-time professional acquaintance Jonathan Demme passed away. Not only was he one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation, he was a genuinely good person who seemed to be adored by everyone he came into contact with (a quality even rarer than filmmaking genius.)

In The New Yorker magazine, Terrence Rafferty wrote of him, "Of the major American directors, he's the least erratic, the most consistently good company, because he has interests rather than obsessions" - Demme joins a lineage of auteurs like Jean Renoir & Louis Malle defined not by their stylstic grip or devotion to a genre, but by their warm humanism; filmmakers whose deep compassion and boundless curosity on the subject of humanity were their essential characteristics.

All week long we'll be paying tribute to Demme by remembering some of our favorite scenes, characters and moments from his body of work.

{the DEMME TRIBUTE index}

~ by marcus pinn ~

I feel like the average movie-watcher (aunts, uncles, co-workers, non-cinephile friends, etc.) recognize the name Jonathan Demme through dramatic works like The Silence of The Lambs or Philadelphia - and both of those movies are great. But as time went on I personally felt like the strangely quirky comedic side of Demme didn't get the same recognition as his more serious dramatic side. Sure, the kinds of people who read this site would remember his unique body of work from the 80's but not the aforementioned casual movie-watchers who do make up the majority. Jonathan Demme is responsible for Married To The Mob, Swimming To Cambodia & Something Wild. All three movies certainly have some dark moments (especially Something Wild) but there's a unique brand of humor in those films that you really didn't see in his later work (to be clear – I don’t want to present his work from the 80’s as “obscure” in any sense of the word).

With one of his most famous films Stop Making Sense, that humor even bled over to a promotional feature where Talking Heads frontman David Byrne interviewed himself in various weird costumes about Jonathan Demme and his "haircuts." Stop Making Sense would not be the great concert film that it is without the Talking Heads music but it also wouldn't be great if it wasn't for Demme. In my opinion, Talking Heads & Jonathan Demme grew from and fed off of each other in a healthy way. Two Years after the concert film came out David Byrne made True Stories which owes quite a bit to Demme in terms of camera movement, wardrobe, characters, color palette, framing and all around quirkiness. And in turn, the first few Demme films that followed Stop Making Sense owe a little something to Talking Heads. Swimming To Cambodia (1987) was another somewhat experimental performance piece. The elaborate scene where Matthew Modine puts his clothes on in Married To The Mob feels like an idea someone would have pitched for Stop Making Sense (David Byrne would also provide music for Married To The Mob). And is it just me or do some of you feel like the supporting characters from True Stories would fit perfectly in to the world of Something Wild?

I know the moment I picked isn't exactly from a Jonathan Demme feature but it's still very much a cinematic Demme moment nonetheless.

Jonathan Demme's passing actually has me thinking about my Grandmother who passed away not to long ago. Mr. Demme & Ruth Hudson (my grandmother) are kind of linked together in a roundabout subconscious way. After attending a Jonathan Demme/Fab Five Freddy-curated screening of Nothing But A Man at The Jacob Burns film center I called my father to see if he had ever seen or even heard about this somewhat forgotten film from the 1960's (my father was always interested in Black films that were kind of off the beaten path). Not only had my father heard about the movie but he informed me that my grandmother used to date Nothing But A Man star Ivan Dixon. My mind was blown. My Grandmother worked alongside Adam Clayton Powell Jr. so she had her brushes with famous and/or prolific people. But the idea of my grandmother "dating" someone is foreign to me. I like to imagine that my grandfather was the only man romantically linked to her.

When I asked my Grandmother if all this was true she simply responded; "Oh. Yeah. That was a long time ago." So thanks to Jonathan Demme screening Nothing But A Man I have a fun memory of my late grandmother.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Jonathan Demme’s connection/blood relation to his late Nephew Ted Demme who not only co-founded YO! MTV Raps (which explains the relationship between Jonathan Demme & YO! MTV Raps host Fab Five Freddy), but Ted Demme also directed the underrated/misunderstood hip-hop comedy caper Who’s The Man?

May Jonathan & Ted both rest in piece and have their movies live on forever.