Daily Inspiration Quote by Jonathan Demme

Demme’s provocation is politely phrased, but it’s a direct jab at the film world’s pieties: the idea that certain “great” movies are museum pieces, too holy to touch. By choosing the word “sacrilegious,” he frames cinephile gatekeeping as religion, complete with saints (the canon), relics (the original prints), and heresies (the remake). It’s slyly anti-romantic. Demme isn’t denying that masterpieces exist; he’s rejecting the moral panic that treats reinterpretation as vandalism rather than conversation.

The intent is practical as much as philosophical. A working director knows cinema has always been iterative: stories recur because technology changes, audiences shift, and cultural blind spots get exposed. “Including a good or even great movie” is the sharpest part of the line, because it targets the one category people insist must remain untouched. Demme’s point is that reverence can become laziness: calling something untouchable is an excuse not to engage with it, not to risk making a new argument in its shadow.

The subtext is also defensive in the best way. Remakes are routinely coded as cash grabs; Demme is carving out space for the remake as artistry, not merely commerce. A remake can be critique, translation, or update - a way to test whether a story’s values still hold. If the original is truly great, Demme implies, it won’t be diminished by competition. It will survive being answered.