What Goes Around Comes Around: The Films of Jonathan Demme

by Michael Bliss, Christina Banks

This first book on the director of The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia is comprehensive, analyzing each of Jonathan Demme’s thirteen films.

Demme received the 1980 New York Film Critics Award as Best Director for Melvin and Howard. Subsequent Demme films such as Something Wild and the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, which won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Documentary, made Demme a cult favorite in the league of Roger Corman.

With 199l’s The Silence of the Lambs, Demme moved into a different league. The top-grossing film of the year, Silence won five Academy Awards, becoming the first film to sweep the Best Director, Actor, Actress, and Picture categories since 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Philadelphia also has been a top-grossing film, with Tom Hanks winning 1994’s Best Actor Oscar.

Michael Bliss and Christina Banks include a wealth of biographical and critical data; an exclusive interview with Demme; the only on-set report on the filming of The Silence of the Lambs; an interview with Craig McKay, Demme’s Emmy-winning film editor; a bibliography; and a Demme filmography. Many of the book’s movie still illustrations have never been published.

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

About the author

Michael Bliss is Senior Instructor of English at Virginia Tech.


Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Matthew W · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather lame and out-of-date analysis of white liberal maverick filmmaker Jonathan Demme's overrated oeuvre by fellow bourgeois white liberal types. Among other things, the writers complain that THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is 'homophobic' and 'anti-prole.' Needless to say, they are fond of Demme's phony agitprop piece PHILADELPHIA, which is the final film that the book covers. If you're actually looking to learn about Demme's influences or demand a certain cinema literacy, this book is an abject failure. Undoubtedly, the authors do make one important contribution in terms of demonstrating that, true to his Corman roots, Demme always remained a gimmicky exploitation filmmaker of sorts.

[Quin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good analyses, but I didn't find the entire thing worthwhile.