Free Republic

Jonathan Demme, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who observed emphatically American characters with a discerning eye, a social conscience and a rock ’n’ roll heart, achieving especially wide acclaim with “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Philadelphia,” died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 73. His publicist, Leslee Dart, confirmed the death. Mr. Demme disclosed that he had cancer in 2015. Mob wives, CB radio buffs and AIDS victims; Hannibal Lecter, Howard Hughes and Jimmy Carter: Mr. Demme (pronounced DEM-ee) plucked his subjects and stories largely from the stew of contemporary American subcultures and iconography. He created a body...

President Jimmy Carter will be the subject of "He Comes in Peace," a documentary being directed by Jonathan Demme. Participant Prods., which was behind the hit documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," featuring former Vice President Al Gore, is producing. Demme and his crew will follow Carter across the U.S., through red states and blue, to bookstores and talk shows and Wal-Marts, as he undertakes a book tour for his new tome, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." At the same time, Carter, who has written more than 20 books, will speak about how to achieve peace in the Mideast and his lifelong philosophy...

The Manchurian Canard By Don Feder FrontPageMagazine.com | August 2, 2004 What’s the greatest danger to America – maniac Moslems longing to resurrect the Caliphate, Stalinist states with nuclear arsenals, terrorist sugar-daddies stockpiling doomsday weapons? Not according to Hollywood. Once again, the entertainment community has brilliantly discerned the real threat to our nation’s security in multinational corporations – military contractors doling out campaign cash and exercising shadowy influence over government. Or, as Denzel Washington’s character explains in Paramount’s anti-capitalist remake of The Manchurian Candidate – Michael Moore meets Ralph Nader – the clear and present danger is "rich people funding...

Well, here it is the second Black History Month, and I'll bet you haven't heard one thing about George S. Schuyler (1895-1977). What's that, you say, there's only ONE Black History Month? Where have you been?Nowadays, New Year's Day signals the beginning of Black History Month I (or is it Martin Luther King Month?), and last summer in New York, for several weeks, some Harlem institutions held celebrations that certainly made it sound like we were in BHM. About 12 years ago, pc director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) said that every month should be Black History Month, and...