Melvin and Howard (1980)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
The story of hard-luck Melvin Dummar, who claimed to have received a will naming him an heir to the fortune of Howard Hughes. Inspired by real events.
5 connections found
View:
5 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Melvin and Howard to
"Rachel Getting Married," his newest feature, is a return to the low-budget, low-stress roots of "Citizens Band" and "Melvin and Howard."
And at his best (Melvin and Howard, Crazy Mama, Citizen’s Band), Demme instinctively grasps the runaway anarchy of human relations, in this case the way hurt and loss ricochet around a troubled family like poisoned arrows for years.
Of course, this film is not by Robert Altman, but by Jonathan Demme, one of America’s great filmmakers, of a generation that came up behind the Altmans and others of the early 70s, who made his first high profile film, Melvin and Howard, one decade after Altman’s M*A*S*H*.
Although the handheld shaky-cam used to give the film an unnerving, voyeuristic, home-movie vibe would not have been an option early in Demme's career, "Rachel Getting Married" revels in the emotional chaos found in such 1980s films as "Melvin and Howard," "Something Wild" and "Married to the Mob," made before the Oscar/box-office double whammy of "The Silence of the Lambs" established Demme as a "prestige" director.
But the movie Russell has made is closer to Melvin and Howard or The Social Network in its lyrical, panoramic sense of class and self-reinvention in America, of outsiders yearning to become insiders, or at least to feel comfortable inside their own skin.
An extended episode of "Secret Millionaire", Seven Pounds transforms a Melvin and Howard conceit into the story of an undercover Samaritan intent on changing the lives of seven worthy strangers.
The screenplay is by Bo Goldman (" Melvin and Howard "), who is more interested in the people than the plot.
Oscar-winning scriptwriter Bo Goldman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Melvin and Howard) overwrote this story, relying heavily on awkwardly poetic speeches and episodic structuring.
Advertisement
You might even wonder why the maker of "Melvin and Howard" and "Something Wild" would be drawn to such nightmarish stuff, but only if you've forgotten his B-movie roots ("Caged Heat") or his 1979 Hitchcockian excursion, "Last Embrace."
The director, Jonathan Demme, had some solid critical successes behind him for a run of pawky comedies, and a demonstrated rapport with performers - he'd pushed several of them to Oscar and Golden Globe nominations and Mary Steenburgen to a win, for Melvin and Howard - though it seems clear enough that what recommended him to the producers was his time in the trenches under Roger Corman.
Demme is perhaps the director who most uses colors, costumes, and mise-en-scene to emphasize that his movies are statements about American values and sensibilities, e.g., in his The Silence of the Lambs (1991), a serial killer was called Buffalo Bill, and American flags, and red, white, and blue dominated.