Category Archives: Music

Are the hip hop pioneer and one-of-a-kind filmmaker Jonathan Demme planning to work together again?

It was cool enough that Jonathan Demme was at the “Something Wild” screening at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, N.Y., on Sunday night.

I got to meet him as he strode out of the theater for a chat with someone 15 minutes before the movie started.

But his companion was someone just as exciting: Fab 5 Freddy, the hip hop legend and visual artist.

Demme stopped to say hello and introduced Freddy to my friend and me. At that point, my friend said his day was made, even before the screening and the live performance by The Feelies.

I regret not getting a photo of the momentous occasion, but I just wasn’t prepared to see Demme at that moment, let alone Freddy — pioneering “Yo! MTV Raps” veejay and star of the classic hip hop movie, “Wild Style,” the 1983 release written and directed by Charlie Ahearn. (If you’ve never seen it, or haven’t seen it in a while, it’s worth checking out. It’s readily available on streaming Netflix)

Here’s a classic clip from the movie, with Grandmaster Flash spinning while Freddy’s character, Phade, looks on.

Why was Freddy meeting up with Demme? I didn’t ask. But the two have a history. Demme has cast Freddy as himself in his 2008 release “Rachel Getting Married” and as a political pundit in ‘The Manchurian Candidate” (2004).

Stay tuned.