Ted Demme

Mike DeLuca remembers Ted Demme

I first met Ted when he was directing a New Line film called ''Who's the Man?'' It was his first film, starring Dr. Dre and Ed Lover, and I was a baby executive at the studio. I met him at a test screening of the movie and he was getting notes, and at one point he asked me what I thought. I got nervous because he was a director, but we had a shorthand right away, and we made a promise to each other that we'd be friends.

Ted was like a one-man trip to Disneyland. He was constantly in good humor, larger than life. He always had killer dialogue, and in every conversation he had the perfect witty comment. I've never met anyone who was so comfortable with who he was in life -- he didn't seem to have any existential crises, and I always envied that. He'd put his arm around me and say, ''It's not so bad, Mikey.'' He and his wife Amanda were total soul mates, and he doted on his little girl, Jackson. She worshiped him.

As a director, Ted was exuberant, incredibly enthusiastic about films and filmmaking. We liked going anywhere the Rat Pack might have gone, so we would be at the Palm in Las Vegas or L.A., and we'd be shouting dialogue at each other the whole time -- we could go through whole movies. I think Ted was about to hit his stride. From ''Who's the Man?'' to ''Blow,'' each film was getting more personal [other Demme films included ''Beautiful Girls'' and ''The Ref'']. I think Ted was going to be telling stories about characters who triumph through adversity and, at the end, construct a family out of people they met along the way. I think he felt really blessed that he got his career going and lucky that he had met Amanda, and therefore had incredible sympathy for characters who had to struggle. He believed in the innate goodness of humanity, and it showed. (Demme died of heart failure in L.A.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mike DeLuca heads production at DreamWorks. He was formerly president of New Line Cinema.