DAVID THOMPSON: After Melvin and Howard there was Swing Shift, and then your golden period, I suppose, with your company Clinica Estetico and the David Byrne collaborations, starting with Stop Making Sense.
JONATHAN DEMME: About six months before we actually made the movie, I went and saw the Talking Heads concert. I had been a fan of theirs for a number of years, but hadn't seen them perform in about five years. I was really staggered by the way they had grown, performance-wise. I'd been aware of how the music had been growing because I had listened to all their records, but I was astonished to see how the four statue-like performers who I once knew as the Talking Heads had turned into these great, free-spirited entertainers, and had involved all these other wonderful musicians. I thought it was a great show.
     I was living in London during the heyday of the great rock shows and, in my view, had seen it all, but the Talking Heads - many years later - suddenly blew all that away. I thought, 'This is a movie waiting to be filmed.' It looked to me as if David Byrne changed character, as opposed to just singing different songs; the lighting concept was endlessly opening up and fascinating; I loved the way the show illustrated the growth of the band: he comes out alone and, one by one, the other members come out. So I contacted Byrne through a mutual friend, suggested the idea to him. He went, 'OK,' and a couple of weeks later they came back with the money.

What about the decisions you made about the way the film was going to look?
I thought that if, indeed, the goal here is to make the movie-goer get as excited by the film as I got excited by the concert - and that was the goal - then this has got to be a completely no-frills experience and nothing should intrude on the cumulative growth of excitement that the show itself has. So the idea of doing any kind of interviews with the musicians or any glimpses of back-stage life would have been completely contrary to the goal of the piece.
     We shot a lot of audience reactions because, as with all good musical experiences, the audience's participation, the audience's response, is very much a part of the whole. And we had really good footage of the audience having all the appropriate reactions. But we found in the editing that every time we cut to the audience, it dissipated the build that we had working for us in the show itself. The process dictated that we should never cut to the audience until the very last minutes of the movie; we hoped that by cutting to the audience then we would, maybe, involve the movie audience. We also felt it was dangerous to cut away to an audience in a musical film because you're reminding the movie audience that the experience was not originally for them - it is for these yahoos who are jumping up and down and being really great on camera. So, preserving that sense of 'This is for you' reinforced our desire not to cut away to the concert audience.
     In the end, it was such a great thing to be able to go out there with David Byrne and those guys and, in a very free atmosphere, make Stop Making Sense, where nobody had any concerns other than making the best possible film. That was really invigorating, and brought me back in touch with a lot of the things that had come to be the joy of the work for me, which more than anything is collaboration, working with gifted people and seeing the exciting results you get. So that was really terrific, and when we went and did Something Wild we pumped it all up again and said, 'OK, let's start from scratch now!'

Something Wild seems to be part of a group of films that dealt with comedy and nightmare at the same time. Why do you think that was?
When Something Wild came out I noticed that it got linked up with a couple of other films - one was Blue Velvet. They were very different from each other in a number of ways. But I know this mixture of violence was born of some eruption of what lurks below the American Dream. It was just a coincidence in terms of there being a little group of movies that did that.

What especially excited you about doing the script?
When you're reading scripts, trying very hard to find something you want to make a movie of, you read bad script after bad script, with the occasional almost-slightly-promising script thrown in. It's impossible to describe how tough it is to find a good screenplay - something you can read and think, 'Yes, this can be a good movie. Here is a story well told, that can really come to life on the screen.' And that's what happened, for me, when I read E. Max Fry's screenplay of Something Wild. I didn't recognize these characters from any other movies I had seen. It kept surprising you at every twist and turn, and there was this theme of the flipside of putting on your neat suits and committing a certain kind of financial violence as a successful yuppie in a corporation. The dark side of that is a guy like Ray Liotta, who resorts to a more fundamental kind of violence to solve his problems and to get ahead. I liked this collision and I liked what the script said about violence - how once you start going down that path it's going to be where you wind up, and you're going to take many unfortunate people with you. I felt it had a powerful, as well as pertinent, thing to say in the midst of a great yarn. That's why I liked it.

The film also provided another opportunity to work with David Byrne. How important is music to you when you're putting a film together?
In editing when you start putting music on the picture, the one thing I can say for sure about it, on a personal level, is that it's one of the most enjoyable moments of film-making. It synthesizes, in a way, the potential of this multi-media medium, which has so many different kinds of creative activity going on: visually, sound-wise, acting-wise. As in life, whatever piece of music you put behind a scene you've shot, it's going to feel a different way. That's something we all know about. We come home and we're in the need for a certain kind of music, depending on what kind of day we've had. And, yes, it alters our mood. So, given this mood-altering potential of music, it becomes a great source of fun, as well as a chance to make a scene that works OK work a whole lot better - to bring out the point of a scene that you haven't really captured in the shooting of it, to excite the audience, to create the impression that something is happening when something isn't, and also to create little emotional touchstones which you can draw upon as the story changes - so that the music that seemed so innocent and sweet earlier, in new circumstances brings on a whole other set of feelings.
     Because so much of Something Wild took place in cars where everybody listens to their radio, the music became an especially lush opportunity. We used reggae a lot because part of the theme of Something Wild was how Jeff Daniels is, literally, waking up and seeing things for the first time in a long time because he's been such a shut-down, bone-headed yuppie. For me, showing America to an exotic kind of music - reggae - helped to sell the idea of this new look at things. As far as David Byrne is concerned, obviously, because I know him, I can't help but think: wouldn't it be great to have some David Byrne music in this movie because he's one of the great composers of our time. But a busy man. So I appealed to him on the level of: 'Why don't you write a song for you and Celia Cruz?' (Celia Cruz is one of his great idols). That pushed the right button and David came up with the opening song.
     When it came to Married to the Mob, I didn't dream of asking him to score it - he was working on a script for a new film, he was doing the score for a Robert Wilson play, he's doing this, he's doing that. But I did invite him to a screening. He took a look at it and asked what was I going to do about the music. 'Maybe I'll try a couple of things for you,' he said. It developed into an entire score which was, again, very much to the benefit of the movie.

What attracted you to Married to the Mob?
I am very concerned with themes and psychological subtext in movies, but the thing that attracted me to Married to the Mob was the complete absence of themes and subtext, on one level. I like the idea of trying to do a movie that was a complete escapist fantasy, which didn't pretend it had anything profound to say about anything. It was fun to do, and very cathartic, revivifying.

Do you really mean it when you say Married to the Mob has nothing profound to say?
Well, since you're asking the question, I should be honest. The subtle social message of Married to the Mob is that people of different races especially, and people in general, can benefit by reaching out to other people, and by being reached out to in turn.
     Let's face it, Married to the Mob is a blatant attempt at a full-tilt, crassly commercial entertainment - let's make no bones about that. Nevertheless, I did hope that if people liked the picture, part of their experience would be seeing this white person leave their comfortable, suburban, fully equipped home and become an absolute outsider - Angela moves into profoundly more difficult living circumstances, surrounded by people who, through their ethnic definition of what have you, are relegated to a certain outsider status. Without beating it on the head, the audience sees: well, what do you know, down there people are people. When someone gives her a chance at a job and sticks by her, because she's blessed with the absence of a racial distinction - she doesn't like poeple on the basis of what race they are - she's available to be reached out to. The fact that she's not a racialist proves to be an asset down there and helps her to get started on a new and positive path.
     OK, that's probably corny, and it's not very well executed, but I feel it's as important an arena of thinking as exists in the world today. I mean, it's killing our society in a zillion ways, and it's so hard not to get sucked into the awfulness and the violence of racism, whether as an observer or a participant. Even when doing escapist movies like Married to the Mob you desperately want to try to get something positive, informationally, in there. I hope I can attack that sort of theme in a less hidden way in the future.

In some ways Angela's discovery of other races seems a reflection of your own love of black music and culture - and, of course, Haiti.
I have an intense interest in Haiti. I took a trip there and was so taken with the people and their struggle to achieve a democracy that I went back and made a documentary shortly after for Channel Four. I formed a lot of friendships and interests that will last me the rest of my life. This may have something to do with the fact that America is a country with an incredible diversity of cultural input. In our schools and in our communities - and by 'our' I mean white guys like me - we're taught all about our European roots. We honour them and are fascinated by them, but this is also a country with profound African roots. In recent years I've been a lot more interested in that and I've gained a lot more insights and truths about people from the African roots than from the old European ones.
     Haiti was the first balck republic in 1804, when they kicked the last Europeans out, so there's something extraordinary going on down there and I can't help but be drawn to it.

What about the casting of Married to the Mob? Was Michelle Pfeiffer your first choice?
The casting of the Angela character was the easiest it's ever been for me because, after I read the script which Orion had sent to me, I called Mike Medavoy and said, 'This script is terrific, let's do it.' He said, 'Great! What do you think of Michelle Pfeiffer?' And I said, 'Good idea!' We sent her a script and she loved it and jumped in. I had come to know her on John Landis's film Into the Night, where I did an acting cameo. I got involved with the film because I was acquainted with John Landis, and it was one of his conceits in making the movie to hire twenty directors to do these cameos.
     It was a terrific opportunity for me to try to get the actor's perspective on things, not so much from a creative point of view, but just the sheer terror involved in getting into an outfit and suddenly having a camera looking at you.
     That's how I came to know what a very intelligent, nice person Michelle Pfeiffer is. And because I met her under those circumstances, I had her in mind as someone who would be good to work with one day.

What about Dean Stockwell?
Well, he stole the part from somebody else whom I had in mind and I was on my way out to California to meet with. When I got off the plane, I picked up the trade paper, Daily Variety, and saw this huge photo of Dean Stockwell that had been placed in the paper by a new agency he had signed up with. I was looking at it and thought, 'That guy looks like the new Mafia don. Who is it? My God, it's Dean Stockwell, who was so great in Blue Velvet and in so many other things.' So I did a right turn and met with Dean. He liked it and came on board.

In some ways Married to the Mob seems a throwback to the Corman period in the way it was made, and the speed of it.
I hope that Married to the Mob has a lot of the elements and feeling of a Corman movie, because that means our aggressive attempt to entertain is coming across.
     I feel that all films are exploitation films. To one degree or another, almost all films finally adhere to the Corman policy. So many of them do have an enormous amount of action; the sex is there; the laughs are there; and sometimes, to some degree, the social statement is there as well. The Godfather films are the most expensive Roger Corman films ever made. And I think that everyone's trying to exploit that formula, one way or another. But most people are less candid about it than Roger is.
     So, if Married to the Mob feels like a Corman movie, I'm delighted.

Married to the Mob is a gangster movie. Has that always been a popular genre for you?
I have loved gangster movies ever since I started going to the pictures. That meant films like The Big Heat, Phil Karlson movies like The Phenix City Story. Gangster movies are such wonderful role-models for kids seeking a masculine identity. I say that sarcastically, because of course they're terrible role-models, but you don't know that when you're eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve - you go, 'Yes, I wanna behave like that, I wanna talk tough and shove grapefruit in people's faces, and shoot them.' I just enjoyed those films, and that's where the distinction is for me in Married to the Mob - I like to think of it as a gangster picture, not as any kind of Mafia picture. If you're making a Mafia movie, it wouldn't be a comedy because it's a pretty despicable subject.

What about the final credit sequence?
Under the end credits there are a lot of shots that aren't in the movie. There's a couple of reasons for that. The main reason is, hopefully, it's fun to see stuff that wasn't in the movie when the movie's over. Another reason is that we had to take so many scenes out of the film. We had a three-hour cut, and for a movie that's supposed to be, at the most, an hour and fifty minutes, it wasn't playing very good. I mean, the scenes were good and the actors were good, but it took far too long to get from A to Z. We had to start pulling out not only the stuff that was shaky, but some really nice scenes, and in doing so some of the actors' parts were reduced to almost zero, especially my dear friend Chris Isaak, who will be a terrific actor if he does enough movies, and who was excited about playing this hit-man. Boom - his scenes came flying out, and for many, many other people as well. To put them in at the end of the film was a clumsy effort to reassure the Chris Isaaks of the film: 'I know we cut it out, we weren't ashamed of you, you're still there.'
     On another level, it was a conceit of Craig McKay's and mine that we could tell the story again in the scenes we took out. And, indeed, we did that. You actually see the story all through, although you hadn't seen any of the scenes. It also provided an opportunity to give really good acknowledgements to many of the gifted people who work in positions that are critically important: like the guy who actually frames the shots, the sound recordist, the guy who created what, hopefully, would be a really exciting soundtrack. By stretching the movie out, we were able to pop these names on and let them be there longer than usual so that we could pay homage to the fact that many people worked hard on the movie.