Well, isn't that something...here we promised a 100th episode celebration on STOP MAKING SENSE, and we come out with an entirely different episode?? Well, we ended up having to cover this one FIRST - so the 100th episode is on hold for now, we're going George Lucas style and doing the episodes out of order. It's SWING SHIFT. A film that has not one, not two, but THREE different cuts that you can watch (linked below).

Produced at the exact same time as that Talking Heads one, it technically came out first and went through one hell of a production — Jonathan Demme gets shut out by Goldie Hawn and Warner Bros, Robert Towne comes in and starts messing with the script, editors quit, Elaine May tries to save it, a power couple blossoms. Join us this week for ALTMANIA as we talk about Jonathan Demme's loving ode to his grandmother, that got trampled on in post-production.

We're Walken into this episode, Saranded by our listeners to talk about a little TV movie from Jonathan Demme, adapted from a 1961 Kurt Vonnegut short story... it's WHO AM I THIS TIME? A little story about a little community, our identities, showing emotion through performance, lonely individuals joining the community through collaboration and sympathy. Led by the incredible duo of Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon. We talk Talking Heads, John Cale, Queen Latifah, American identity in the Carter era, Tarkovsky, the death of movies, a whole lot more on ALTMANIA

We've finally reached a milestone for the Demme series, this one is a huge one for him and we pulled no stops in talking all about it. Rolling into 1980, it's the great MELVIN AND HOWARD, a film we found to be funny, pensive, endlessly spontaneous, ever-moving, and just plain beautiful. We get into the real men Howard Hughes and Melvin Dummar, before getting into Jonathan Demme's life at the time, what led him to the picture, the freedom he had to make this, and how it ultimately became his most unrestrained work for the time. There's talk of music videos, new wave bands, eccentric rich guys, dreamers, believers, fakers, hustlers, you name it and it's here on ALTMANIA!

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.