Jonathan Demme quotes

Jonathan Demme was an acclaimed American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His diverse body of work includes classics like "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia," earning him critical and commercial success. He is remembered for his innovative storytelling and compassionate approach to filmmaking. Here are 25 of his quotes:

I like finding a great shot and then just staying with it for a long time, not trying to pump things up with some kind of artificial energy by cutting.

Jonathan Demme

When Silence of the Lambs did well commercially it was more than anything. My partner Ed Saxon and I were just so relieved that finally we had made a movie that had made some money!

Jonathan Demme

I had very strong feelings, so the chance to make a film that deals in an imaginative way with stuff you care tremendously about is a real high. It's a really amazing thing to be able to do.

Jonathan Demme

If you're doing a music film, you've got to be singing about something.

Jonathan Demme

Nothing beats a live performance. Nothing.

Jonathan Demme

I only work with actors who take full responsibility for their characters.

Jonathan Demme

Extraordinary people are the Green Berets and the Navy Seals and the Olympic athletes - these are the ones who can face these extraordinary physical challenges and be triumphant.

Jonathan Demme

I don't think it's sacrilegious to remake any movie, including a good or even great movie.

Jonathan Demme

Documentaries - my God, there is so much going on in our country and in the world today that every time you open the newspaper or turn on the radio or watch the news on TV there is another documentary subject. We're getting the headlines for a second, shaped by corporate delivery most of the time, but what's really the story there?

Jonathan Demme

A trilogy is a pretty abstract notion. You can apply it to almost any three things.

Jonathan Demme

I felt from time to time that shooting live music is the most purely cinematic thing you can do. Ideally, the cinema is becoming one with the music. There is little artifice involved. There's no acting. I love it.

Jonathan Demme

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

Jonathan Demme

As a kid, a little kid, I loved going to the movies, and now I love making movies.

Jonathan Demme

Everything I've made - it doesn't mean they've all been good - but everything I've made so far, big or little, fiction or documentary, has been something that I've been really enthusiastic about.

Jonathan Demme

Every film deserves its own unique look.

Jonathan Demme

I also feel that the only thing more gratifying than working with someone who you've worked well with is working with someone new and coming up with something great.

Jonathan Demme

I don't think of Storefront Hitchcock or Stop Making Sense as documentaries, I think of them more as performance films.

Jonathan Demme

I was a sort of rock journalist - whatever that is - in London in the late '60s.

Jonathan Demme

I love doing fiction. I love doing performance films and I love doing documentaries that don't have music. I love to shoot and I love to shoot things I'm enthusiastic about.

Jonathan Demme

It's such a rich experience when you enter into a subject from a documentary point of view. It's hard for fiction to compete with that.

Jonathan Demme

I'm of Neil Young's generation. Neil Young's songs have spoken to what it's like to be at least a white male of his generation over the years. Endlessly, he's sung about the stuff that I really care about. He's put into words the feelings that hit you at different transitional moments in life.

Jonathan Demme

As much as I love acoustic Neil Young - and I do deeply - I may be more passionate about the electric. Luckily it's not a contest, and we never have to make that choice. But Neil Young on an electric guitar - I feel like I've never seen or heard anything like it.

Jonathan Demme