The films of Jonathan Demme (b. 1944) reflect his ebullient personality and are often infused with his love for Caribbean culture, pop music, fashion, and characters who reveal offbeat tastes and depths. He emerged from the 1970s American Renaissance that produced Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, and others. His movies are funny, humane, and often unclassifiable by genre. With conversations from the 1970s to the present, focuses on Demme's artistry, on his filmmaking philosophy, and especially on his progressive social and political concerns and how these have influenced the subject matter he has chosen to film. Although best known for his Oscar-winning dramas and , Demme has also achieved acclaim for comedies ( ; ), documentaries ( ), and concert performance films ( ). In this volume, he discusses his troubles with studios, his need to balance documentaries with fiction films, his early work as a critic and publicist, and his apprenticeship with Roger Corman working on "B" movies.