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Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme dies at the age of 73
The Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, best known for films including The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, has died of cancer at the age of 73.
According to Indiewire, he had been suffering from esophageal cancer and heart disease, which he had been treated for in 2010 and 2015. A family source told the site that his condition had deteriorated in recent weeks.
Throughout his long career, Demme was difficult to pin down as a specific kind of storyteller, in the way we can quickly identify a film by a Scorsese or an Eastwood. Instead Demme's interests were vast, spanning the breadth of psychological thrillers to inspirational weepies, from cult concert films to intimate drama.
Demme started out as a disciple of the Fifties trash king Roger Corman, invited to script a movie that quickly turned into a Rashomon-on-motorcycles classic titled Angels Hard as They Come. He would go on to direct two films for Corman, the women-in-prison exploitation movie Caged Heat, the kitsch comedy Crazy Mama and the revenge tale Fighting Mad.
After surviving the disastrous Swing Shift (which saw him walk off the set following disagreements with stars Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell), he would inject some of the ballsy, free-wheeling spirit of Corman's ouevre into mainstream cinema, courtesy of the gangster comedy Married to the Mob with Michelle Pfeiffer, and the gonzo love story Something Wild with Melanie Griffith.
His work then took a decidedly classier turn, directing the psychological masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the sole Best Director Oscar given to a horror film, and the landmark Aids drama Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.
A long-standing love of music also lead Demme to direct music videos and concert films, most memorably the cult Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense in 1984, which saw frontman David Byrne demanding an audience to get on their feet, whether in the cinema or sat at home, all while dressed in an oversized white suit. Last year saw Demme direct the Justin Timberlake concert movie Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids, which debuted on Netflix, and subsequently became his final film.
Like many of his auteurist compatriots, he has recently found work in television, directing episodes of acclaimed series including Enlightened, The Killing and the police violence mini-series Shots Fired. Coincidentally, an episode of Shots Fired directed by Demme airs tonight in the US.
Demme's work is also renowned for its focus on complex female characters, from Jodie Foster's rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, to the stars of his later works, including a bitter, damaged Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married (which lead her to an Oscar nomination) and Meryl Streep as a bruised rock musician in 2015's Ricki and the Flash.
He also cast Streep in one of her most terrifying performances in his underrated remake of The Manchurian Candidate in 2004, and directed a commanding Thandie Newton in the polarising Oprah Winfrey vanity project Beloved back in 1998.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1994, Demme said: "As someone who's been force-fed things European and male, I long for more variety – in my own life and in what I see onscreen. I'm not interested in boy movies, and I'm not interested in white-people movies. I want to see movies that reflect the country I live in."
"I think he's like our Samuel Pepys," Meryl Streep said at an event celebrating his career in 2014. "I think people in the future are going to look at Jonathan's films and his documentaries to find out what it looked and sounded and felt like to be alive at the turn of the 21st century. [He has] the heart of an optimist, the eye of a realist, the soul of a father and [he's] a great husband, at least that's what I hear."
Entertainment figures have begun to post tributes to Demme across social media, including many who have worked with him.
Demme is survived by his wife Joanne Howard, an artist, and his three children.