Jonathan Demme (1944-2017) Tribute List

Oscar-winning film director Jonathan Demme died on April 26, 2017 at the age of 73 from esophageal cancer. Demme was a filmmaker who was not tied down by genre, and over the course of his career he made dramas, comedies, remakes, documentaries and concert films. Demme won the Best Director Oscar for directing The Silence of the Lambs, a modern classic filled with suspense and tension. Here are ten vocabulary words from quotes drawn from Jonathan Demme's movies and interviews with the director.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. garish
    tastelessly showy
    Anthea Burton: Apparently Mr. Wheeler felt that they were too..."Ethnic" is the word she used. And she told me that he said that he would like it if I wore something a little less garish, a little smaller, and more "American."
    Joe Miller: What'd you say?
    Anthea Burton: I said my earrings are American. They're African-American.
    - Philadelphia
  2. harbinger
    something indicating the approach of something or someone
    Kym: I am Shiva the destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening.
    - Rachel Getting Married
  3. covet
    wish, long, or crave for
    Hannibal Lecter: No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.
    Clarice Starling: No. We just...
    Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?
    - The Silence of the Lambs
  4. sacrilegious
    grossly irreverent toward what is considered holy
    I don't think it's sacrilegious to remake any movie, including a good or even great movie.
  5. artifice
    the use of deception or trickery
    I felt from time to time that shooting live music is the most purely cinematic thing you can do. Ideally, the cinema is becoming one with the music. There is little artifice involved. There's no acting. I love it.
  6. cataclysm
    an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
    Eleanor Shaw: All right, then. You know... you know we are on the brink of another cataclysm, probably nuclear, on our own soil.
    - The Manchurian Candidate
  7. mendicant
    a pauper who lives by begging
    Spalding Gray: Look! I had a vision of myself right now, as a kind of wandering bachelor mendicant poet, wandering all the way down the beaches of Malaysia...until I reached Bali and evaporated in a state of ecstasy in the sunset
    - Swimming to Cambodia
  8. atonement
    the act of making amends for sin or wrongdoing
    Kym: All of you people living in this little world of judgment and paranoia and mistrust. I can feel it all the time. It's like... At the slightest sign of ingratitude or absence of atonement, it's like the...Salem witch trials around here.
    - Rachel Getting Married
  9. rube
    a person who is not intelligent or interested in culture
    Hannibal Lecter: You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed: pure West Virginia. What is your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp?
    - The Silence of the Lambs
  10. acumen
    shrewdness shown by keen insight
    Hannibal Lecter: Enthrall me with your acumen.
    Clarice Starling: It excites him. Most serial killers keep some sort of trophies from their victims.
    Hannibal Lecter: I didn't.
    Clarice Starling: No. No, you ate yours.
    - The Silence of the Lambs
Created on Wed Apr 26 12:09:45 EDT 2017 (updated Wed Apr 26 16:55:12 EDT 2017)

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