Director Jonathan Demme’s 1998 film adaptation of the novel by Toni Morrison, starring Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, and Thandie Newton (now of HBO’s Westworld).

Jonathan Demme, who died on April 26th of this year at the age of 73, is, of course, the Academy Award winning director of The Silence of the Lambs (1991): one of only three films ever to win all the major categories—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress—as well as such acclaimed features as Melvin and Howard, Swing Shift, Something Wild, Swimming to Cambodia, Philadelphia, and the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate. He also directed such documentaries as Stop Making Sense and Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison's appearance at Kleinhans Music Hall on Thursday, November 9th highlights the current season (2017-2018) of Just Buffalo Literary Center's Babel series.

About the film:

"Director Jonathan Demme has commented, 'Beloved only played in theaters for four weeks. It made $22 million dollars—I think that's a lot of money. And the only reason it left theaters after a month was because the Disney corporation that released the picture wanted all the Beloved theaters—where we were doing very well, in a number of situations—for Adam Sandler's Waterboy. We were told that they were gonna bring us back at the end of the year, and they didn't. But the picture did very respectfully. It was in the top ten its whole life.'

"In 2013, Winfrey reflected on the film, saying: 'To this day I ask myself, was it a mistake? Was it a mistake to not try and make a more commercial film? To take some things out and tell the story differently so that it would be more palatable to an audience? Well, if you wanted to make a film that everybody would see, then that would be a mistake. But at the time, I was pleased with the film that we did because it represented to me the essence of the Beloved book.'

"Oprah also claimed that Beloved's failure at the box office was the worst moment in her career and brought her into a major depression. 'It was the only time in my life that I was ever depressed, and I recognized that I (was) depressed because I've done enough shows (on the topic). "Oh, this is what people must feel like who are depressed."'"