Biography for
Jonathan Demme

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Trade Mark

Frequently casts Charles Napier.

Frequently casts Chris Isaak.

Frequently casts Buzz Kilman in a cameo role.

Frequently uses Tak Fujimoto, as his director of photography.

Frequently casts character actors Tracey Walter and Paul Lazar.

Characters looking directly into the camera.

Frequently uses New Order songs in the score of his movies.

Heavy use of steadicam interspersed with shots of handheld shots.

Trivia

Awarded honorary degree by Wesleyan University (June 3, 1990).

He co-directed Bruce Springsteen's "Streets Of Philadelphia" music video.

Uncle of Ted Demme.

Has 3 children, with wife Joanne Howard.

Directed Bruce Springsteen's "Murder Incorporated" music video (1995).

Frequently uses Pablo Ferro for his Title Sequences and montages.

Was voted the 45th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 255-258. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Father of Josephine Demme.

He frequently casts the same actors in most of his films, including Paul Lazar, Ted Levine, Harry Northup, Charles Napier, Dean Stockwell, Robert W. Castle, Denzel Washington, Jude Ciccolella, and Tracey Walter. He also tends to use non-actor friends or musicians he likes, as long as they are "interesting".

Directed 7 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Mary Steenburgen, Jason Robards, Christine Lahti, Dean Stockwell, Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster and Tom Hanks. Steenburgen, Hopkins, Foster and Hanks won Oscars for their performances in one of Demme's movies.

He and Michael Mann have both directed a Hannibal Lecter film and have also both been involved in a film about Howard Hughes. Mann directed Manhunter (1986) and produced The Aviator (2004), which he was originally to have directed. One of Demme's earliest films was Melvin and Howard (1980), and he later went on to direct _Silence of the Lambs, The (1991)_.

Member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000

Personal Quotes

I don't think it's sacrilegious to remake any movie, including a good or even great movie. I think what's sacrilegious is to make a bad movie, whether it's a remake or an original. It's what I always tell my actor friends, anybody who's in this, this [business], you've gotta try to hold out and only do the scripts, do the material that offers you the opportunity to do your best work. Because if you do stuff that doesn't give you that opportunity? Your work's not gonna be good. And you're gonna suffer in the long run from that. So I don't care if it's a remake if it's a great script with parts in it that can attract fantastic actors, God, you know, to make the movie.

I was really hooked on movies at a very young age. The Manchurian Candidate, along with Seven Days in May, Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove were this quartet of anarchistic black-and-white American movies, each of which did things that you just didn't do in American movies, especially in the realm of irreverence toward politics and government institutions and the Army. I was what, 16, it was shocking, it was thrilling and interestingly it predated my exposure to the French New Wave, so in away, this was the American, a certain kind of new wave in American movies.

Salary

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