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kottke.org posts about Jonathan Demme

Stop Making Sense

This is a clever little promo from A24 for the rerelease of Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, a concert film from 1984 featuring The Talking Heads โ€” it, the promo, features David Byrne dropping into his dry cleaners to pick up an old, big suit. As for the film, it’s getting a 4K restoration and will be out sometime later this year.

“Stop Making Sense” stars core band members David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison along with Bernie Worrell, Alex Weir, Steve Scales, Lynn Mabry and Edna Holt. The live performance was shot roughly 40 years ago over the course of three nights at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in December of 1983. It features Talking Heads’ most memorable songs, including “Burning Down the House,” “Once in a Lifetime” and “This Must Be the Place.”

“There was a band. There was a concert,” the Talking Heads said in a statement. “This must be the movie!”

The legendary New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael loved the film, calling it “close to perfection” in this contemporary review:

The director, Jonathan Demme, offers us a continuous rock experience that keeps building, becoming ever more intense and euphoric. This has not been a year when American movies overflowed with happiness; there was some in Splash, and there’s quite a lot in All of Me โ€” especially in its last, dancing minutes. Stop Making Sense is the only current movie that’s a dose of happiness from beginning to end. The lead singer, David Byrne, designed the stage lighting and the elegantly plain performance-art environments (three screens used for back-lit slide projections); there’s no glitter, no sleaze. The musicians aren’t trying to show us how hot they are; the women in the group aren’t there to show us some skin. Seeing the movie is like going to an austere orgy โ€” which turns out to be just what you wanted.


Quid Pro Quo: The Three-Act Structure of a Thrilling Scene from The Silence of the Lambs

Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs is one of the finest psychological thrillers ever made. In the episode of the always-illuminating Lessons from the Screenplay, the team analyzes a scene from the film with Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling that demonstrates how effective scenes follow the same three act structure as entire movies/books/stories do.

The Lessons team also did a podcast episode about the differences between the screenplay for the film and the book that inspired it.


The Zeitoun movie

The movie rights to Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun have been purchased by Jonathan Demme, who wants to make an animated movie out of it.