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| Jonathan Demme |
The next picture Demme directed, Philadelphia, won a Best Actor Oscar for Tom Hanks. Remember Married to the Mob starring Michelle Pfeiffer? Directed by Jonathan Demme. How about Melvin and Howard, that funky movie about Howard Hughes leaving his fortune to a service station owner? Directed by Jonathan Demme. One of my favorite concert movies of all time, Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads was directed by Jonathan Demme.
Here's a clip of the energetic and prophetic Life During Wartime (This Ain't No Party... This Ain't No Disco... This Ain't No Foolin' Around):
(For those of you who subscribe by email, here's the link: https://youtu.be/obAtn6I5rbY)
The latest film Jonathan Demme directed was this year's Ricki and the Flash starring Meryl Streep. But my fondest Demme film is his first feature venture for Roger Corman, as co-writer and producer of Angels Hard as They Come -- a bizarre, silly, surreal biker film co-written and directed by Joe Viola, who was a pal of my ex-husband back in Los Angeles. Back then, those boys had some swashbuckling imagination.
For his impressive body of work, Jonathan Demme will receive the Persol Tribute to Visionary Talent Award on September 3rd on the Lido at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.
Alberto Barbera, Director of the Venice Film Festival, said: "Jonathan Demme is part of that generation of cinephile auteurs who revolutionized Hollywood in the Seventies. ...Colorful, exuberant, straightforward, passionate and intelligent, his cinema moves easily from studio productions to independent, fiction and documentary films, indulging his personal taste for the unexpected, for a shift in tone or genre within each individual film, which has become the original and recognizable hallmark of his style."
Jonathan Demme is totally cool.
The 2015 Venice International Film Festival runs from September 2 to 12, 2015. Click to go to La Biennale.
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog
Jonathan Demme won the Academy Award for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which also won Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jody Foster) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally).
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