There's No Going Back: the life and times of Jonathan Demme by David M. Stewart
'There's No Going Back: the life and times of Jonathan Demme' by David M. Stewart
Some know Jonathan Demme from Stop Making Sense, the most remarkably staged concert documentary ever made. Others connect the director with the gruesome psychodrama of The Silence of the Lambs or his sympathetic depiction of an AIDS victim in Philadelphia. But even if you also saw Demme’s quirky crime comedy Something Wild or Neil Young: Heart of God, you might have missed his documentary on Haiti, his Spalding Gray film, his Manchurian Candidate remake, his work under Roger Corman … and what’s that about a Justin Timberlake movie?
In There’s No Going Back, David M. Stewart ties Demme’s unusually diverse filmography together in an entertaining account focused on the films without losing sight of the man who made them. According to Stewart, Demme began analyzing films as a child, keeping detailed notebooks of his moviegoing by age 10. He was a film critic in college and after graduation, worked in PR for United Artists. Sojourning in London, he did production work involving the music of Ginger Baker and Van der Graaf Generator. Music would be one of the throughlines in Demme’s long resume. He cared about the scores for his films and worked when possible with favorite bands.
The Talking Heads became fans after seeing Melvin and Howard, one of Demme’s eccentric early efforts, a 1980 reality-based story of the Utah milkman who claimed to be Howard Hughes’ heir. When approached for Stop Making Sense, Demme was still editing Swing Shift, a movie messed with by all hands until it bore scant resemblance to Demme’s conception. Stewart gives a measure of credit for Stop Making Sense to Demme’s creative and romantic partner, Sandy McLeod, who went on the road with the band and designed the shots.
Demme nursed dreams of filling multiplexes, but for most of his career, he operated more comfortably outside the corporate control of big budgets and egomaniacal stars. He was usually eager to collaborate and incorporate ideas from coworkers and family. Demme died in 2017, leaving behind an ample legacy of work. Stewart’s biography is compelling testimony for Demme’s role as an insider-outsider in an industry that, in the last years of his life, was increasingly inhospitable to creativity.
There’s No Going Back: The Life and Work of Jonathan Demme, is published by University Press of Kentucky.
