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Issue 141: Jonathan Demme

July/August 2025

Closet Rebels: Undressing Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild

Travis Woods·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
Something Wild is an atomic undressing of genre clichés, lies, and costumes. As with the best of Demme’s work, it uses a genre getup solely as an excuse to explore the truth, the realer-than-real funkyjunky Americana (and its multiculti makeup) that so many of Demme’s characters can be at first oblivious to (or costumed appropriators of).
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Peter Fonda smiles in a screenshot image from the trailer of Fighting Mad (1976)

Give Peace a Chance: Jonathan Demme’s Fighting Mad and the Peaceful Exploitation Film

Justin LaLiberty·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme made an exploitation film about peace, and it’s one of his best, most exciting pieces of work.
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What We Did For Love

Frank Falisi·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
How is it, between the four lines that form a televisual frame, that Jonathan Demme’s Who Am I This Time? is among the most romantic gestures ever set to film?
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illustration by Gary Mills

“What’s Life About Anyway?”

Roxana Hadadi·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
In Jonathan Demme’s 2004 adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, the truth is a nightmare.
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Where to Look: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Veronica Fitzpatrick·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
Consider how The Silence of the Lambs revolves around vision. Not only perception, but empathy and hindsight, and the non-empirical prick of intuition, where vision exceeds the reach of training.
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Jonathan & Howard

Bryan Miller·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
Melvin and Howard would be a curiosity in Jonathan Demme’s filmography if not for the fact that his entire filmography is a collection of curiosities.
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Yesterday Is Gone and Tomorrow Is Not Here

Lindsey Romain·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
So much of Rachel Getting Married is about these needle-fine moments of grace and clemency. Many great directors find truth in skepticism, but Jonathan Demme often found it in the sparseness of in-betweens.
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One Must Imagine Talking Heads Happy 

Elizabeth Cantwell·
Issue 141: Jonathan Demme
The Talking Heads are strange truth-tellers, joyfully angry people, persistently interested in the power of art. And in Stop Making Sense, collaborating with Jonathan Demme elevates their music into something truly transcendent. 
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