Watch With Jen - S7: E15 - Early Jonathan Demme with Mike Miley

This week, film scholar and author Mike Miley returns to the podcast to discuss one of his favorite directors, Jonathan Demme. Intriguingly, Mike opted to focus on Demme's earliest movies before his most successful era of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and PHILADELPHIA. Although we touch on the unsung filmmaker's entire career, in this fast-paced, well-researched conversation, Mike and I cover Demme's background, recurring themes, collaborators (especially David Byrne), contemporaries, and those he influenced (most notably Paul Thomas Anderson), plus the films STOP MAKING SENSE, SOMETHING WILD, and MARRIED TO THE MOB. One of my favorite episodes of the season so far and perfect for the Fourth of July weekend given what Demme chooses to celebrate onscreen in America; it's also a must for cinephiles with access to the Criterion Channel, given that this month there's a spotlight on the filmmaker's work.

Mike's Bio: Mike Miley is the author of David Lynch's American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema and Truth and Consequences: Game Shows in Fiction and Film. His writing on film has appeared in The Atlantic, Bright Lights Film Journal, Reactor, The Smart Set, and elsewhere. His next book, A Guide to Reading (and Finishing) David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, will be published next year. He's currently working on an oral history about an 80s cult classic.

Originally Posted on Patreon (7/1/26) here: https://www.patreon.com/FilmIntuition/posts/162635425

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Theme Music: Solo Acoustic Guitar by Jason Shaw, Free Music Archive