Jonathan Demme (1944 - )
Related: American cinema - director
Title: Something Wild (1986)
Intro
Jonathan Demme started his career with Roger Corman.Biography
Jonathan Demme (born February 22, 1944) is an American film director, producer and writer. He was born in Baldwin, New York.
Demme won the Academy Award for Directing for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Demme [Dec 2004]
Films
- Something Wild (1986) - Jonathan Demme [Amazon.com]
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Jonathan Demme's sexy 1986 road comedy, a story about the liberation of a stuffed-shirt businessman (Jeff Daniels) by a free-spirited punkette (Melanie Griffith), looks better and better as the years go by. By dressing Griffith in a bowl-cut black wig and giving her character the resonant nickname Lulu, Demme establishes a clear link with G.W. Pabst's 1928 Louise Brooks melodrama Pandora's Box--except that in this case the influence of a sexual free spirit is not seen as malign or corrupting. The turning point comes when the girl's hard-edged manner is discarded along with the wig and the nickname: Lulu turns into Audrey, a touchingly vulnerable, fluffy blonde. Ray Liotta, making his first big splash as Audrey's ex-con ex-husband, a hot-wired collection of homicidal tics, personifies the menacing aspects of the "wild side" of life. The intensity of the final showdown between Daniels and Liotta startles some viewers, but it provides a needed catharsis. The film's glorious soundtrack album featuring David Byrne's peppy title track became a hit in its own right, and is still readily available. --David Chute for amazon.com - Caged Heat (1974) - Jonathan Demme [Amazon.com]
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The greatest women-in-prison film ever made, Caged Heat takes the traditional sex-and-violence formula of gorgeous babes behind bars, gratuitous nudity, and degradation at the hands of beastly guards and a corrupt system, and transforms it into rebel burst of grrrl power. Jonathan Demme's directorial debut, made for Roger Corman's New World Pictures in the glory days of 1970s drive-in moviemaking, wedges his message of empowerment in between the showers and the shock treatments. Russ Meyer alumnus Erica Gavin stars with tough cookie Juanita Brown as they lead the brassy set of cellblock babes through prison breaks and bank robberies, all pulled off with smarts and sass. These women are in control and manage to keep their dignity (if not their clothes) in this fast-paced, hard-edged picture, but it's Barbara Steele who practically steals the film as the repressed warden whose dreams look like a road show version of Cabaret. --Sean Axmaker for Amazon.comCaged Heat (alternate title: Renegade Girls) is a 1974 exploitation film in the women in prison genre. It was written and directed by Jonathan Demme for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. The film stars Erica Gavin, Roberta Collins, Juanita Brown, Rainbeaux Smith and Barbara Steele. John Cale wrote and performed the film's soundtrack.
The film centers on Gavin's character, Jacqueline Wilson, who is sentenced to a women's prison on drug-related charges. She bonds with a group of her fellow prisoners and fights the repressive tactics of the warden, played by Steele.
Caged Heat is Demme's directoral debut. Although he includes the fast action and gratuitous nudity common Corman required in his exploitation films, Demme also incorporates elements of liberal politics, feminism, and social consciousness. Because of this, and because of its place in Demme's filmography, some critics feel that Caged Heat is more interesting than run-of-the-mill women in prison movies.
Caged Heat was filmed for $180,000.
Two "sequels" -- Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom (1994) and Caged Heat 3000 (1995) -- borrow the Caged Heat name and women-in-prison setting, but are otherwise unrelated movies. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caged_Heat [Nov 2005]
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