It's our last embrace with the dang Demme 1970s this week as we take a look at a Hitchcockian thriller starring Roy Scheider and Janet Margolin, based on the Murray Teigh Bloom novel THE 13TH MAN... it's LAST EMBRACE. This week's guest is a familiar friend, but a first time guest - Evan from the Left of the Projector podcast joins us as we get talk about this stage of Demme's career, meeting guys like Kenneth Utt, working with Christopher Walken, All That Jazz, Roy Scheider's leathery complexion, Tak Fujimoto's return, Charles Napier's head, Sandy Mcleod's haircut, and just how much we disagreed with the critics on this film. Don't believe us? Maybe this photo of Jonathan Demme's cameo in the film will change your mind...

We've mentioned his name many times already in our Demme series, but we finally got a chance to sit down with David M. Stewart to talk about his upcoming book THERE'S NO GOING BACK: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JONATHAN DEMME. We get into his relationship to Demme's work, what drove him to write this book, his researching process, Demme's signatures as a filmmaker, his political motivations, documentaries, and the overall communal environs to his films.

Oh, just one more thing... it's a new ALTMANIA coming down the chubes for you all, this week we're joined by our dear friend Chris Woodward to talk about Jonathan Demme's episode of COLUMBO. Made in a down period of his career, hot off the flop of CITIZEN'S BAND; a fortuitous phonecall comes in the form of Peter Falk, who happened to be part of the handful of people to see that movie. He hires Demme on to direct an episode centered around the restaurant biz and a murder involving rare fish! We get into all things Columbo, our love for the show - a new love for one host and a returning favorite for the other - all of the fun idiosyncracies Peter Falk brings to the character, his populist appeal, his devotion to the show and character, the writers banging their head on the wall trying to adhere to the show's quirky structure, how the show made a good vehicle for up-and-coming filmmakers, and a whole lot more on ALTMANIA...

Breaker breaker, calling all cars, it's a big 10-4 on a new Altmania. We're talkin about Jonathan Demme's third or fourth "first movie" at this point - but this time it's his first film outside of the Corman wing. We talk about CB Radio fever of the 70s, other frequent fevers of the nose in the 70s, the writer of Citizens Band getting kicked off set, Freddie Fields and Tony Curtis tinkering with the movie, a mysterious threat from Roman Polanski, and we go all over joking and laughing the whole dang way. We hope you enjoy the episode, we're gonna 10-7 on outta here!

Following the rushed production of Crazy Mama, Jonathan Demme was finally able to put together a passion project. After putting together the pieces of different revenge films of the era, combined with real life influence ripped from the headlines, and a little help from Roger Corman; he brings his first big production... FIGHTING MAD. We look at Demme's final project of the Corman Film School, read some old Peter Fonda tweets, how Crazy Mama's failure nearly doomed this movie, and talk about more Barbecue Sauce Cinema. All of that, and so much more... on ALTMANIA!

We're hitting the road with our good friend and three-timer guest Girl (@summeroffilm), to check out Jonathan Demme's 1975 film CRAZY MAMA. We see Demme find himself in a bit of an Alan Rudolph situation, wanting to get FIGHTING MAD made - but he has to do ol' Roger Corman a favor - direct a movie with a bad script that the cast hates, and he's gotta do it quickly. With the help of Cloris Leachman and crew, they fix the script and transform the film into a strange, '50s Americana, vibey hangout with undercurrents of colonialism, the cold war, and protestantism. All of that and so much more on.... CRAZY MAMA. Stay tuned after the show for a new song from RYAN, too...

We're finally here, Demme's big moment to direct his first film - and he comes out of the gate swinging. We're talking about 1974's CAGED HEAT! We discuss this film's place in exploitation cinema, within the genre of "women in prison" films, their history as a genre, and in the context of the American Prison Complex both in the 1970s and today. We touch on current issues in US prisons, how they seek not to rehabilitate but to punish anyone within the system, before we talk about this film's production. We really flex our Demme muscles here by seamlessly shifting from very serious subjects to having a good time, and we thought we did a good job on this one! So we hope you like it.

If you're thinking about my MAMA, it don't matter if she's black or white, ooh! In this case, we get the best of both worlds when Altmania returns to close out our final Demme / Viola screenplay collaboration, and one final another production from the Philippines. This time around, Jonathan Demme gets a story by credit, and his buddy Joe uses a pseudonym for the screenwriter. Originally called WOMEN IN CHAINS, we take a look at BLACK MAMA WHITE MAMA; a movie that is full of a lot of funny moments and is pretty tame by exploitation standards of the time. We get into Pam Grier's incredible stories of her life and acting career, that combined with exploitation genre stuff, women's empowerment, the radical attitudes of blaxploitation, Roger Corman buying up Ingmar Bergman films that get huge in the United States, Demme selling this script for $500, we gush over Sid Haig's great acting, and then we talk about this fun ass movie! Sound good???

A fresh, piping hot episode of Altmania straight out of the Hot Box. We're looking at another Jonathan Demme-penned, Joe Viola-directed film from New World Pictures -  1972's THE HOT BOX. We discuss Corman's core (no pun intended) mission for filmmaking: boobs and action. The ways he allowed filmmakers to imbue exploitation films with serious, real-life stuff while attempting to gel it with that entertainment factor. We chat about the New World crew heading out to the Philippines for a bunch of productions (another of which we'll talk about next week), throwing stones at rats, corrupt governments, guns on planes. Then we talk about this funny little film, its sometimes tonal imabalances; and ultimately how, more often than not, it tends to speak on the right side of history and about violence against imperial oppression - thanks in part to Jonathan Demme at the typewriter.

We're soooo back, folks - it's time to kick off the Demme deep-dive! We re-introduce ourselves and talk about one cool thing we've both been up to, before officially kicking off our new series on the life, times, and art of one JONATHAN DEMME. We talk about his early upbringing in Long Island, NY - his immediate love for cinema and writing, his father's work as a writer, his mother's encouragement to log his films in diaries, before the family moves down to Miami, FL and his whole life changes. Jumping between his passion as a veterinarian and film scholar, we slowly track his life leading up to working as a publicist for United Artists, before he meets the Big Kahuna himself, Roger Corman. We get into Corman's Hollywood success story, how he, Demme, and Joe Viola strike up a deal that leads us to ANGELS HARD AS THEY COME - his first written feature and production credit.

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