Robert Jonathan Demme (February 22, 1944 – April 26, 2017) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known as the director of The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director. He also directed such acclaimed films as Something Wild (1986), Married to the Mob (1988), Philadelphia (1993), and Rachel Getting Married (2008), as well as the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (1984), which is widely considered one of the greatest concert films of all time.