Jonathan Demme Quotations

I think music is just a wonderful ingredient that helps us understand a scene better. And certainly you can overuse music, and you can use the wrong music. I probably have been guilty of these things over time. But if you use music correctly as a friend of the theme, a friend of the narrative, ou can lend some terrific connective tissue to a film.

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!

I remember the Neil Young brand hitting me very hard immediately. He wasn't an acquired taste. I loved him immediately.

It's a funny thing with documentary films - you want them to feel as entertaining and as gripping as a fictional film. With a fictional film you want it to feel as realistic as a documentary film.

I didn't go to film school so my learning was done out in public and showed up on the screen.

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

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.

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

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

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.