The Truth About Jonathan Demme: The Director Reflects on His Recent Films, Lessons From Roger Corman and More

MM: Does living in New York provide anything to you as a moviemaker that is unique? How might you describe what’s going on with production in the city at the moment?

JD: The New York filmmaking community is small, but it is a community. Most everybody knows each other. It’s so great. When we were mixing The Truth About Charlie, I’d go into the building and in that same building are Sidney Lumet’s offices. Sidney Lumet is working there! So I feel like there will always be a film community in New York. And from what I understand, it’s tough all over. People who work on movies—whatever the department—we get to do something special when we gather together to make pictures. We all feel that way. Everybody works their asses off. It’s a real drag that it’s so hard to find the gigs and that you don’t get to stay home enough.

MM: What’s up next for you?

JD: I’m involved with three movies at the moment: one is The Truth About Charlie, which comes out in October. On the home front, I’ve been working on a documentary for a couple of years about a friend of mine named Jean Dominique who was a Haitian radio journalist. He was assassinated outside his radio station two years ago in Haiti. He was a great man, who always wanted to be an agronomist, but wound up being a brilliant journalist. We showed it at the Maine International Film Festival as a work in progress and it was very well received. And I’m one of the producers of the new Spike Jonze picture, Adaptation, which is a script that we developed at [my company] Clinica Estetico. It’s based on Susan Orlean’s book, The Orchid Thief.

MM: And Charlie Kaufman wrote the script?

JD: Oh, yeah. The hero, by the way, is Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter who is trying to write a screenplay based on The Orchid Thief. [laughing] It’s amazing—a great film. I have learned so much about filmmaking watching the dailies and watching Spike put this movie together. It’s been such a blast for me.

And Richard Price (The Color of Money; Sea of Love) has a fantastic idea for a movie, which is an opportunity to team up with Jodie [Foster] again. It’s an urban thriller with supernatural overtones. He’s great; he’s also a very prolific novelist. Another reason that living in New York is great! MM

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