I haven't thought about Jonathan Demme in days, maybe years. But all the same - he died today.
This unsettled me. The way someone whispered it: "The director of The Silence Of The Lambs has just died". Unnerving. Which is odd, because I haven't thought about Jonathan Demme in days, maybe years. I believe part of it is the childish idea that people we rarely think about are in some way immortal. They do not die.
Part of it is Jonathan Demme himself.
The man has always unsettled me, in a profound way. His films have, and The Silence Of The Lambs is in the bottom half of the list. More of the way David Byrne played "Psycho Killer" on the acoustic guitar in Demme's legendary Stop Making Sense.
Or the way Robyn Hitchcock appeared in Rachel Getting Married, completely out of nowhere, to perform "America" in that faux intimate setting of a dysfunctional wedding. The dishwasher scene. More of that whole film, really, with Anne Hathaway doing something mentally devastating, something you never thought she would be capable of.
To me, Jonathan Demme was all about naked wires. He took the pure essence of people and things, stripped them of their sheen and made them bleed onscreen. Beautifully. Like a true artist. One of the all-time best. The scenes must have stayed with me, for that's what I thought when somebody whispered the news.
And now that I think of it, Tom Petty's "American Girl" has never sounded the same again... RIP.
