SUBWAYStories: Tales from the Underground

Robert Jonathan Demme (born February 22, 1944) is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter.

Demme was born in Baldwin, New York, the son of Dorothy Demme and a public relations executive father. Demme has three children: Ramona, Brooklyn, Josephine. He is a graduate of the University of Florida. He also was the uncle of director Ted Demme, who died in 2002.

Demme broke into feature film working for exploitation film producer Roger Corman from 1971 to 1976, co-writing and producing Angels Hard as They Come and The Hot Box, then directing three films (Caged Heat, Crazy Mama, Fighting Mad) for Corman’s studio New World Pictures. After Fighting Mad, Demme moved on to direct the comedy film Handle with Care for Paramount Pictures in 1977. The film was well-received by critics, but received little promotion, and performed poorly at the box office.

Demme’s 1980 film Melvin and Howard did not have a wide release, but received widespread critical acclaim, and led to the signing of Demme to direct the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell star vehicle Swing Shift. A big-budget production intended to be a major prestige picture for Warner Bros. as well as a commercial breakthrough for Demme, Swing Shift was compromised by creative differences, with Demme renouncing the film. The film was released in May 1984, and was generally panned by critics and neglected by moviegoers.

After Swing Shift, Demme started making documentary films, making a notable series of concert films with Stop Making Sense and Swimming to Cambodia.

In 1991, Demme won the Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs—one of the few films to win all the major categories (best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best actress). Demme directed an Oscar-winning turn from Tom Hanks in his next feature, Philadelphia.

Since then, Demme’s films have included remakes of two popular films: The Truth About Charlie, a remake of Charade that starred Mark Wahlberg in the Cary Grant role; and The Manchurian Candidate, with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.

In 2007, Demme’s film Man from Plains, a documentary about former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s book tour in promotion of his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, premiered at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals.

In 2008, Rachel Getting Married was released, which many critics compared to Demme’s films of the late 1970s and 1980s. It was inlcuded in many 2008 “best of” lists, and received numerous awards and nominations, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress by lead Anne Hathaway.

One of his common directorial motifs is to allow characters to look directly into the camera. Demme formed his production company, Clinica Estetico, with producers Edward Saxon and Peter Saraf. They were based out of New York for fifteen years. —Wikipedia

Though he was related to Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, director Ted Demme eschewed any hint of nepotism to gain success in Hollywood through years of hard work. Starting as a production assistant, Demme worked his way up to producer before creating the seminal show “Yo! MTV Raps” (MTV, 1988-1995), which helped introduce hip-hop to the mainstream masses. From there, he made his debut as a feature director with old friend Denis Leary in the lead for the hailed, but underappreciated comedy “The Ref” (1994). Demme earned more critical praise for the otherwise ignored “Beautiful Girls” (1996) before taking turn toward more dramatic fare with the impressive “Monument Ave.” (1998). He next won an Emmy Award as one of the producers on “A Lesson Before Dying” (HBO, 1999) while taking the directing reigns for the rather misguided comedy “Life” (1999), starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. Demme received some criticism for “Blow” (2001), his sympathetic take on real-life cocaine smuggler George Jung (Johnny Depp) that ultimately proved to be his last feature film. Regardless of the untimely end to his life, Demme had proven himself to be a talented filmmaker whose best work might have been ahead of him.

Born on Oct. 26, 1963 in New York City, Demme was raised in nearby Rockville Centre, Long Island, where he grew up under the shadow of his director uncle, Jonathan Demme. But his ambitions were skewed toward sports, having grown up harboring dreams of becoming a football player as well as a coach and physical education teacher until a 285-pound guy destroyed his knee halfway during his freshman year at the State University of New York, Cortland. To make up for the devastating blow, Demme began doing play-by-play and color commentary for games on the college station WSUC-FM, which soon led to local television and making short films, with his dream of being a football coach quickly fading from mind. Beginning as a production assistant at MTV in 1986, Demme advanced to senior producer and became creator-producer of “Yo! MTV Raps” (1988-1995), a show that almost singlehandedly popularized hip-hop music. Demme also directed rock videos for such varied artists as Salt-N-Pepa, House of Pain, Henry Rollins and Bruce Springsteen, as well as co-directing “MTV’s 10th Anniversary Special” (1991) and “Rock the Vote” (Fox, 1992).

Also at the time, Demme directed a series of famed black-and-white interstitials with a chain-smoking Denis Leary rhapsodizing on topics like racism, politics and plugging the “MTV Music Awards.” Meanwhile, he made first venture into filmmaking with “The Bet” (1992), a short-form drama about two brothers running a New York deli that won awards at film festivals in Aspen and Houston. Shifting to features, Demme made his debut with “Who’s the Man?” (1993), a broad comedy starring MTV co-hosts Doctor Dre and Ed Lover that was loaded with cameos from the world of hip-hop and played like a road show version of “Yo! MTV Raps.” After helming the acerbic one-man show “Denis Leary: No Cure for Cancer” (Showtime, 1993) and an episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street” (NBC, 1993-2000), Demme directed his first high-profile feature, “The Ref” (1994), a caustic comedy about a burglar (Leary) who takes an extremely argumentative and distant couple (Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey) hostage during their Christmas party. The film earned favorable reviews despite some lapse in logic born in the editing room, though its incongruous spring release for a holiday movie ultimately hurt its box office chances.

Demme moved on to his next outing, “Beautiful Girls” (1996), a sharply observed slice-of-life buddy comedy about the continuity of small-town, working-class existence. The ensemble piece boasted an impressive cast that included Matt Dillon, Lauren Holly, Rosie O’Donnell, Timothy Hutton, Uma Thurman and a St. Bernard billed as “Elle Macpherson,” while a young Natalie Portman copped the best buzz for her scene-stealing turn as Hutton’s precocious 13-year-old neighbor. But once again, Demme’s efforts were largely ignored by the movie-going public despite positive reviews. Moving back to television, he was one of several established directors to helm an episode of the anthology series, “Gun” (ABC, 1997), which related the stories of various people who come into possession of a high-caliber handgun. Demme also directed the “Manhattan Miracle” segment of “Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground” (HBO, 1997), which teamed him with uncle and executive producer Jonathan Demme, before reuniting with his old friend for “Denis Leary: Lock ‘n’ Load” (HBO). Along with former MTV co-worker and production company partner Joel Stillerman, Demme attained his first feature producing credit on John Dahl’s “Rounders” (1998), which followed an ex-gambler (Matt Damon) who re-enters the underground poker scene to help a friend (Edward Norton) pay off a loan shark.

Turning away from comedy to more dramatic fare, Demme executive produced and directed “Monument Ave” (1998), a powerful and ultimately sorrowful meditation on misplaced loyalties and Robin Hood sensibilities. The film starred Denis Leary as a quick-tempered car thief who tries staying loyal to his Irish cousin (Jason Barry) while contending with a violent local boss (Colm Meaney). “Monument Avenue” featured one of Leary’s best performances onscreen while representing another excellent, character-driven ensemble piece for the director. Demme picked up his first Emmy as one of the executive producers of “A Lesson Before Dying” (HBO, 1999), which focused on a young black man (Mekhi Phifer) learning a life lesson from a dedicated teacher (Don Cheadle) before being put to death for a crime he did not commit. After executive producing Gavin O’Connor’s gemlike coming-of-age drama “Tumbleweeds” (1999), Demme had a commercial and critical misfire with the Eddie Murphy-Martin Lawrence period prison comedy “Life” (1999).

Demme next served as a creative consultant and executive producer on the short-lived series “Action” (Fox, 1999) before helming what would ultimately prove to be his last feature, “Blow” (2001) which profiled real-life cocaine dealer George Jung (Johnny Depp). The film was criticized in some circles for its sympathetic depiction of a drug smuggler. But such criticisms were couched on Jan. 13, 2002, when Demme collapsed and died from a heart attack while playing basketball in a charity tournament. He was just 38 years old. An autopsy revealed later that a small amount of cocaine was found in his system which doctors concluded may have contributed to the heart failure. At the time, Demme was working on the documentary “A Decade Under the Influence” (2003), which explored the Second Golden Age of Hollywood during the 1970s, which gave rise to the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Paul Schrader and Francis Ford Coppola. Writer Richard LaGravenese earned co-director credit after taking the reigns following Demme’s untimely demise. —TCM

Independent New York filmmaker Abel Ferrara became best-known for his low-budget, shockingly violent films that explore the roughest parts of the Big Apple and the darkest reaches of the human soul, with films such as China Girl (1987), his unique version of Romeo and Juliet, generating a devoted following. Ferrara was born in the Bronx, but spent most of his childhood in Peekskill, NY, where he met the two young men who would eventually become his primary screenwriter (Nicholas St. John) and occasional consultant (John McIntyre). As boys, they would play around with 8 mm cameras. In the mid-‘70s, the three reunited and founded Navaron Films, where they produced an adult film. In 1979, they released their most notorious film, Driller Killer, for which Ferrara starred, edited, and wrote the songs under the pseudonym Jimmie Laine. In this movie, a young man goes berserk and begins killing vagrants with a portable power drill. Ferrara continued making low-budget shockers until the late ’80s. In addition to such brutally violent fare, the “Me Decade” also found Ferrara also helming such television shows as Miami Vice and Crime Story. Switching to more mainstream (although hardly more subtle) films, including The King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992), and Body Snatchers (1994) in the 1990s, the director successfully retained his stylistic edge while gaining a somewhat wider audience. Not surprisingly, this trio of films proved Ferrara’s most successful run to date and the director became something of a hot property among indie stars. In 1995, his metaphorical exploration of vampirism, The Addiction, won an award at the Berlin Film Festival. Always controversial, Ferrara’s 1996 crime drama The Funeral seemingly split his longtime fanbase down the middle with half heralding the film as a gritty masterpiece and others dismissing it as a pale attemot to recapture the success of King of New York. Despite a somewhat impressive cast which included Beatrice Dalle, Matthew Modine and Dennis Hopper, the director’s 1996 effort The Blackout did little to win over detractors of The Funeral. In 1998 Ferrara made the unusual choice of adapting a novel by cyberpunk legend William Gibson for the screen, as New Rose Hotel, and though the results were mixed few would argue that it was any worse than previous attempts to bring his writings to the screen (see 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic). When Ferrara’s muddled 2001 effort ‘R X Mas failed to live up to the hype as his big comeback film, audience were widely left to wonder whether courting the mainstream had forever tainted Ferrara’s formerly potent vision.

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:89631~T1)

Alison Maclean is a Canadian film director of music videos, short films, television (episodes of Sex & the City, The Tudors, Homicide: Life On the Street), commercials and feature films. Her works include the music video Torn (Natalie Imbruglia, 1998), the short film Kitchen Sink (1989) and the feature films Jesus’ Son (1999) starring Billy Crudup and Crush (1992) starring Marcia Gay Harden.

Alison Maclean was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1958, to New Zealand-born parents.

Her first short film, Kitchen Sink, a surreal suburban nightmare, debuted in Cannes in 1989 and won eight international awards. Maclean moved to New York in 1992. Her film Crush was entered into the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. After several years developing projects she got her second feature, Jesus’ Son (1999), starring Billy Crudup and Samantha Morton (with Holly Hunter, Dennis Hopper, Denis Leary and Jack Black in supporting roles). The film is based on the short stories by cult US writer Denis Johnson.

She is represented by Park Pictures in New York. —Wikipedia