MONDAY
E-mail a friendJonathan Demme
airdate December 15, 2008
Jonathan Demme is among the first rank of filmmakers, with credits that include Philadelphia, Beloved and The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won an Oscar. He's directed 7 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Demme is also an activist, whose projects—such as Artists for Democracy in Haiti and the documentary, Right to Return, on post-Katrina residents of New Orleans—reflect his political concern. His most recent project is the critically-acclaimed feature drama, Rachel Getting Married.
The director discusses how some of his choices with regard to race in his latest film echo those made in his 1993 hit Philadelphia. (2:42)
Full interview. (13:20)
Jonathan Demme
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Jonathan Demme back to this program. The Oscar-winning filmmaker is responsible for so much fine work down through the years, including, of course, "The Silence of the Lambs -" ooh - "Philadelphia," "Beloved," and a project I was so proud to be a part of, his brilliant documentary about New Orleans called "Right to Return."
His latest project is the acclaimed film "Rachel Getting Married," which recently picked up six Independent Spirit award nominations - congratulations, Mr. Demme.
Jonathan Demme: Thank you.
Tavis: Here now, a scene from "Rachel Getting Married."
[Clip]
Tavis: I feel so sorry for you, Jonathan, having to just work with - just slave with people like Anne Hathaway.
Demme: Rosemarie DeWitt and Anisa George. It's not easy.
Tavis: To say nothing of your family and friends. The cast on this - we'll start with that. Tell me about the cast on this thing, starting with Anne Hathaway and run the list. But there are some interesting people who are in your world who you incorporated into this movie.
Demme: I think I know some of whom you're talking about. Yeah, the cast - it was interesting, because we were essentially a low-budget film and we had the cast in New York. We couldn't be flying people in. That was a great discipline for me - I love digging deep into the great, great, great acting community that we have in New York in the theater and television and what have you.
But I also - Tavis, we have been in New Orleans together on a couple of occasions, and I felt funny making a movie in this day and age without acknowledging New Orleans. Now that doesn't make any sense - it was a little wedding movie in Connecticut - but I just felt yes, it's a vacuum, as a wedding would be, but still, we're in America in 2008. So I thought the groom could be from New Orleans, and I pictured a family comprised of people that I've been working with and you've been working with sometimes, thank you so much, and the documentary, the ongoing documentary down there.
So I invited them to come up. I also felt I've been barging into their homes for the past three years, have a chance to have them come to us, and they were all so terrific. And we didn't talk about New Orleans, but New Orleans was there.
Tavis: It's a fascinating way, though, to marry those two things, as you said - a wedding in Connecticut and New Orleans, which has been so close to your heart. And it worked out - you made it work. You made it work.
Demme: Well, thank you very much. The other interesting thing for me was that Sidney, the groom's cousin, Cousin Joe, is a serviceman, as you know, and he's making a little movie about the whole weekend. We see him filming all the time. In fact, at a certain point, Bill Irwin tells him, "Cousin Joe, it's great having you, but put that camera down."
That's Gonzales Joseph, and he is a guy I met through the Internet on emails because he's a Haitian-American, he was serving in Iraq at the time - this is about three years ago - and he got in touch with me because he wants to be a filmmaker and he had seen a documentary I had done and he had written to the company that distributed it for more information, and they sent it to me and I wrote to him.
We became great friends over the Internet, and I thought, well, Gonzales is back. I also, even as we mustn't ever forget New Orleans until things are made right in New Orleans, we also can't forget that we're in this war and those people over there. So I invited Gonzales to come and be part of the fun.
And it was great because the actors who - the professional actors mixing with these wonderful people from - they'd come up to join us. A very special kind of chemistry happened, Tavis. I can't explain it, but it was really beautiful.
Tavis: The critics are loving this thing. It's being talked about everywhere. As I mentioned, you just got nominated for six Independent Spirit awards, so again, congrats on that. But for those who haven't seen it yet, this independent - this beautiful, brilliant independent film, given me the story line.
Demme: There's just barely a story, but my favorite way of saying it is a young woman who courageously leaves rehab on the occasion of her sister's wedding, and she's the bad sister, the one that's been so problematic, even in tragic ways, for the family. And she shows up just in time to probably ruin the good sister's wedding.
And that's what our expectations are going to be, but it goes in a very different direction because Jenny Lumet wrote an incredibly original screenplay. But what I love is that she enters two different communities - one is the family community, and there, everybody naturally is prejudging her on the basis of her past upheaval life and tragedy-causing life, and they're afraid to leave her alone for a minute, and there's all these sparks always flying and she can't be herself around them.
Meanwhile, as part of rehabilitation you have to be honest 24 hours a day, you have to be yourself wherever you go. She also joins the local 12-Step community, and there, in this community of strangers, she can be herself.
So what Anne did there was to, I thought, wonderfully etch these two different versions of the same character, and the challenge for her was to bring them together by the end of the picture.
Tavis: The bride is white; the bridegroom is an African American. You don't make that center - it's not a centerpiece of the story, which I thought was a brilliant way to do it, but you can't avoid or miss that, either. So I guess the obvious question is why did you choose not to make that a part of the storyline?
Demme: Let me say two things. One is when I was casting "Philadelphia -"
Tavis: Fifteen years ago.
Demme: Oh, (unintelligible).
Tavis: We'll come back; we'll talk about that in a second. This is the 15th anniversary of that. We'll come back to that, but go ahead, I'm sorry.
Demme: It is, and I just was down there in connection with something. The prejudice continues, the ostracization of people with AIDS continues, even in Philadelphia. I was shocked, because in my little community in Nyack, we've really got that together now.
When Denzel Washington expressed an interest in reading the script, he was trapped on a plane with Gary Goetzman, one of our producers, and Denzel read it and he liked this part of Joe Miller. Joe Miller was expressly written to be played by a big comedic actor like for example - a fine actor, but someone associated with humor, so it was going to be either, in my mind - we hadn't sent the script to them yet - but Robin Williams, Bill Murray - someone who the very name would make people think wow, that movie may - okay, it's going to be heavy because it's AIDS, but look who's in it.
So Denzel read the script and I found out that he liked it and would be willing to talk to me if I wanted to. So I called him up. He's on that short list of the actors that directors dream of working with someday. So I called him up and we chatted a little bit and I told him what I just told you, Tavis. I said this was written for someone associated with comedy. And he said, "Jonathan, I happen to be very, very funny." (Laughter)
Tavis: And I'm sure he said it just like that, too.
Demme: Oh yeah. So I said, "Okay, I believe that." And this was a very interesting moment. I said, "Well, let me ask you this, because I would adore to work with you and I'm not going to beat around the bush. If you're really as willing as you sound, I would love to do this movie with you. Do you think that, because it was written for a Bill Murray or a Robin Williams, do you think we have to make any adjustments in the character on the basis of race?"
And Denzel said, "Do you?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, me neither." "Good, now we can work together." And I had that same kind of feeling - that's how I feel about that stuff anymore. I really don't think in terms of race anyway, so it's hard for me to suddenly start thinking in terms of race when I'm casting a movie.
Tunde Adebimpe, who I adore in the part, was the second actor that I offered the part to. The first actor was Paul Thomas Anderson, who is very European. Paul had come to a reading while he was editing "Let There Be Blood," and he joined us at a table read and he was lovely as Sidney. And I offered him the part, and he didn't want to take it, he wanted to stick to directing - good choice.
And then I started meeting people in New York, and the casting directors brought in Tunde Adebimpe, and I fell in love with him. Here's a man who can endure this family and still be in love with Rachel.
Tavis: What are the lessons you want us to take away from this film, before I go back to "Philadelphia," if there are some lessons?
Demme: One lesson that I really had - that I learned big time on this was making this film really confronted me with the truth of how incredibly difficult it is for people who have been addicted to substance abuse or alcohol or whatever it might be, that number one, breaking from that is a heroic act. Endeavoring to break from it, even if you don't break from it, to me is a heroic act.
It never even occurred to me, though, this difficulty that recovering people have based on confronting the perceptions of people who knew them as an addict, and how there's going to be this tremendous suspicion, for a while, anyway. And I thought that just heroicized that struggle that much more.
My mom was an alcoholic. She quit drinking completely through the help of AA, and it's funny for me to make a movie where the serenity oath is mentioned, because we heard that around the house a lot. But I look back at my mom with - I always loved her, I always respected her, and knew that that was cool, that she stopped drinking.
And I had a memory of how it had been before and after, but never - I went, "My God, she - " Doty, my mom, was the same age as Anne Hathaway is now when she did that, when she made that break and stuck to it.
So I got in touch with my mom and I just revere the efforts of people and their families and their friends that go forward with this. I just have never really - Tavis, the other thing about that is that Pastor Mel, who you know - Pastor Melvin Jones in New Orleans - and he works with substance abuse men at his mission, and we have filmed there together. That started awakening me to the integrity of people wanting to leave addiction behind.
Tavis: So it was actually - it pretty much dumbfounded me when I was looking at my research and realized it has been 15 years since that movie came out. Every year we continue to commemorate World AIDS Day, and as you know now, the numbers are indicating that this thing is getting worse again.
Your movie put that issue so front and center on the American agenda, and now, 15 years later, we celebrate that film and the numbers indicate again that this thing has kicked up in an horrific way in this country and indeed around the world. What do you make of that film when you look back on it now, 15 years?
Demme: Well, I went down to Philadelphia to participate in an evening with the Pennsylvania Legal Action Group that were having an event and to also commemorate the fact, because they're based in Philadelphia and they built something around the 15th anniversary.
So I went down and I was really shocked to know that discrimination against people with AIDS is still a tremendous dynamic in our society, and it's still, believe it or not, borne of ignorance, it's borne of a belief that you can get AIDS, and also just the fact that just having AIDS, in the eyes of some, is still something to be looked down upon.
And man, I thought we'd put - again, I wasn't kidding. In my community, I feel we have - I don't think that some of the things I'm hearing about, because the Pennsylvania Legal Committee is just working around the clock on cases that shouldn't even be - they're historic. And it's amazing to me - I don't know how you keep rejuvenating awareness in a society.
I think that - I'm so proud of "Philadelphia" and I love that we did it and I think Ron Nyswaner wrote one of the greatest scripts that I've ever seen, and do we need - I guess we need more of that, and other things, too - reference points for people to really learn and grow out of their prejudice.
Tavis: Jonathan Demme was very kind, although honest, when he said earlier that every director in this town would love to work with Denzel Washington. He is absolutely right about that. I've said many times Denzel is the best actor of his generation. That said, there are a lot of folk who would love to work with this guy, Jonathan Demme.
There's so much in his corpus to celebrate, and I am sure that years from now, part of what they'll be talking about as a part of that celebratory corpus is "Rachel Getting Married," at a theater near you as we speak. Jonathan, good to see you, man.
Demme: Thank you so (unintelligible).
Tavis: Glad to have you on, man.
Demme: Thank you.
Tavis: Appreciate you.
Back to December 15, 2008