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Jonathan Demme: Director Jonathan Demme
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Jonathan Demme proved to be that rare maverick filmmaker who managed to find a place for his talents within the Hollywood system while still making movies his own way and on his own terms. A director who invested his characters with an unusual depth and humanity, Demme was unafraid to take on challenging and controversial subject matters in his films, but ... knew how to make his stories absorbing and entertaining, and the results have included both box-office blockbusters (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) and critical favorites (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild). Born in Baldwin, NY, on February 22, 1944, Demme's mother was an actress, and his father worked in public relations. When he was 15, his family moved to Miami, where his father had landed a job at the Fountainbleau Hotel. Demme's original career goal was to become a veterinarian, and, after working at animal clinics as a teenager, he enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville. College-level chemistry, however, proved to be his Achilles' heel, and, realizing animal medicine was not a practical goal, he began searching for a new path.
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Jonathan Demme (born February 22 1944, in Baldwin, New York) is an American film director, producer and writer. Demme won the Academy Award for Directing for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. One of his common directoral motifs is to allow characters to look directly into the camera. Jonathan formed his production company, Clinica Estetico, with producers Edward Saxon and Peter Saraf. They were based out of New York for fifteen years. Jonathan Demme was the uncle of the director Ted Demme, who died in 2002.
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Director/Producer Jonathan Demme won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, which received a total of five Oscars, including Best Picture. His most recent feature film as director, 1993's Philadelphia, earned Tom Hanks an Oscar for Best Actor. Demme ... directed the Robyn Hitchcock concert film Storefront Hitchcock.
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A new documentary from director Jonathan Demme captures an intense live performance by Neil Young. But equally intense were the circumstances surrounding the Nashville concert, which took place months after Young underwent life-threatening surgery.
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Jonathan Demme, the offbeat director of one of the best and most controversial films of the 1990s, was born Feb. 22, 1944, in Long Island, N.Y., and began as a cameraman and film critic. He "interned" at American International Pictures, working his way up into the director spot on the B movie Caged Heat (1974).
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Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme is known for making feature films that successfully reflect the national zeitgeist. From "Philadelphia" (AIDS) to "The Manchurian Candidate" (George W. Bush), his films certainly stand out, even if they don't always hit the mark. Demme has ... established quite a reputation as a documentary filmmaker, making legendary Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense" and most recently tackling the subject of an assassinated Haitian journalist/human rights activist in "The Agronomist."
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Director Jonathan Demme