RIP, Jonathan Demme

Jonathan Demme, a sharp-eyed pop-culture film maven of the '80s and '90s, died today at age 73. While he'd been very much under the radar after his heyday, he continued to produce much-admired documentaries and one final strong feature in the new century.

Two things jump to mind when I think of Demme: the visual and aural joy throughout "Stop Making Sense," and the exchange between Ray Liotta and Jeff Daniels in a parking lot in Demme's breakthrough hit "Something Wild." Liotta, the menacing Ray, is hunting Charlie (Daniels), a yuppie dweeb who has taken up with the "wild" Audrey, aka Lulu (Melanie Griffith). While their dates pop in to a convenience store (where fresh-scrubbed '80s teens play Ms. Pacman), Charlie and Ray shoot the shit when Ray -- in that haunting way of Liotta's -- slips into vulgarity and inquires about Audrey's sexual prowess. It's quite the "when we wuz young" time capsule featuring the three actors):

   "C'mon Charlie, you gotta admit, she looks like she could fuck you right in half, I mean just fuck you to pieces."
   "Ray, there's no call for that kind of talk."
   "You're right. You're right. I understand." 

Demme emerged from the young directors in Roger Corman's pulp factory, most notably with "Caged Heat." Our favorites among his other feature films:

• "Rachel Getting Married" (2008)
• "Philadelphia" (1993)
• And his most celebrated moment, "Silence of the Lambs" (1991)

But he might have reached higher achievements with his documentaries. (He certainly made more docs than features.)

• "Stop Making Sense (1984)
• "Swimming to Cambodia" with Spalding Gray (1987)
• "The Agronomist" (2003)
• "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains" (2007)
• "Haiti Dreams of Democracy" (1988)

The New York Times eulogizes him this way:

Mob wives, CB radio buffs and AIDS victims; Hannibal Lecter, Howard Hughes and Jimmy Carter: Mr. Demme (pronounced DEM-ee) plucked his subjects and stories largely from the stew of contemporary American subcultures and iconography. He created a body of work — including fiction films and documentaries, dramas and comedies, original scripts, adaptations and remakes — that resists easy characterization.

Let's hope he doesn't fade into history known only for his last Hollywood effort, "Ricki and the Flash."

BONUS TRACK

Demme directed a lot of  music videos, including this one for New Order's epic "Perfect Kiss" in 1989: