Oscar-Winning Director Jonathan Demme Dies

Ken Schwartz

Oscar-winning U.S. film director Jonathan Demme, who terrified audiences and also made them laugh, died Wednesday in New York at 73.

His family said Demme suffered from cancer of the esophagus.

Demme may be considered one of the most eclectic directors in Hollywood history — directing rousing comedies, horror, concert films and emotional dramas.

His 1991 thriller Silence of the Lambs featured Anthony Hopkins as a cannibalistic murderer with a terrifying mask who is restrained in a cage.

The film and Demme's close-ups of the criminal haunted audiences and won five Oscars, including one for Demme.

He followed it in 1993 with Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks as a lawyer dying from AIDS. The film is considered to be a landmark in the way gays are portrayed and the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic.

Critics called Demme's 1984 concert film starring the Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense, one of the greatest rock films ever made, using techniques that have set the standard for rock documentaries.

Demme also was heavily involved in the Florida-based charity Americans for Immigrant Justice, and his family has requested that fans honor Demme by making contributions to the fund.

(Photo: Demme at the 2015 Montclair Film Festival. Courtesy of Dan D'Errico / Montclair Film Festival.)

American Indian Activist Russell Means Dies

American Indian activist and actor Russell Means died Monday after a battle with cancer. He was 72.

Means, a onetime leader of the American Indian Movement, called national attention to the plight of impoverished Native Americans in the 1970s.

He helped organize the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee – a 71-day confrontation in which hundreds of Indian activists occupied the town on the site of an 1890 Indian massacre. The protest, aimed at gaining federal adherence to treaties with Indians, ended with the deaths of two activists and a federal agent seriously wounded.

After leaving the movement in the 1980s, Means, who was known for his good looks and long dark braids, went on to act in several films including “Last of the Mohicans,” “Natural Born Killers,” and Disney's animated film “Pocahontas.”

He also ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988 but lost the Libertarian nomination to Ron Paul.

(Photo by Carol Moore)

Provocative British-Born Author Christopher Hitchens Dead at 62

Provocative British-born American writer and intellectual Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62 following a long battle with cancer.

Vanity Fair magazine, where Hitchens worked as a columnist, said the sharp-witted commentator died late Thursday of pneumonia, a complication of the esophageal cancer he was diagnosed with in 2010.

Though Hitchens developed a high-profile in 2007 with his controversial international bestseller, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” he spent the majority of his career as a war-time journalist, literary critic and prominent political commentator.

Hitchens did not fit into any easily definable political mold. After spending years as a correspondent for the left-leaning magazine The Nation, he went on to become a strong supporter of former Republican President George W. Bush and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Hitchens was born to a nominally Christian family, but discovered later in life that his mother had deliberately hidden her Jewish heritage.

His combative disdain for organized religion and love for debates made him one of the world's most well-respected and most reviled religious skeptics.

A heavy smoker with a love for Scotch whisky, Hitchens was forced to postpone a national book tour after being diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in June 2010.

Upon his death, Vanity Fair described him as an “incomparable critic masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant.”

Photo: Christopher Hitchens, 2007 by José Ramírez a.k.a. ensceptico.