A protégé of exploitation master Roger Corman, Jonathan Demme has directed classics from Melvin And Howard and Something Wild to The Silence Of The Lambs - which earned him an Oscar for Best Director in 1991. Later films including Beloved and The Truth About Charlie were not as well received, but Demme looks to be back on form with a slick remake of political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep.

What are the pitfalls you have to watch out for when remaking a film that's already considered a classic?

In this instance, I think the greatest pitfall that I wanted to avoid was falling into the velvet trap of simply recreating some of the many, many, many, countless great moments that exist in the original. I chose instead to broom out any sequences that were the high water marks of the first film and I tried very hard with Dan Pine, the screenwriter, to replace those moments with fresh, original and hopefully classic high water moments.

Angela Lansbury, who starred in the original, was reported as saying the remake was "a lousy idea". Did that opposition hinder or embolden you?

This was reported in a gossip column, I guess a month or so before the picture was scheduled to come out and we all sort of [draws back in horror] because we were so excited about the picture and were hoping that many would share our enthusiasm. We decided that the only thing to do was have Paramount officially contact Angela Lansbury and ask her if she would like to see the movie. The story didn't ring true, but it was this huge controversy in the magazines. Anyway when Paramount called up, she was horrified and said she would never say anything like that. The last I heard she was going to see the picture but I lost track of it with so much else going on.

Is it safe to say that your personal politics are reflected in this film?

I think it's very safe to say that my personal feelings about today's world and about American society and about the way politics are run in the country are reflected in the film, yeah.

So are you quite cynical about the [pre-election] status quo?

At the moment I'm feeling encouraged by the growing, evident opposition to the Bush-Cheney agenda. In terms of the election, whether or not Bush and Cheney manage somehow - either by apparently winning more votes or by some other means - to stay in office for another four years, I'm very confident that this vibrant opposition will not go away and that it will be much harder than before for Bush and Cheney to pursue their current agenda.

The original film was pulled after the JFK assassination because censors said Lee Harvey Oswald had seen the movie and been influenced. Do you think a film can ever have the power to affect someone so profoundly?

You can't go empowering fictional movies with the ability to have some catastrophic effect in real life. But the important theme of [novelist] Richard Condon's story is really wanting people to come out of his lurid, pot-boiler of a story to question your leaders and not be brainwashed by them, and know what's going on and draw the line - express yourself. I think that feeling hovers on the edges of our movie and I think that's responsible; it's a "go and vote!" kind of message.

So was it by design that the film was completed just in time for the presidential election?

Actually my first impulse on taking this on was "Phew! Thank God - by the time we make this properly the election will be over!" That was because I had a vague concern of, "Is there anything irresponsible here?" because it is a very bold piece, so it was a relief to me that it would come out after the election. Then I started hearing that Paramount felt that it was imperative that the film should be released just before the election and that meant finishing the film (doing the editing and sound work) twice as fast as I've ever done before. It was really an exciting and exhausting experience. Once Paramount had their mind set on capitalising on election mania that was it.

But you're happy about the timing in retrospect?

Yes, I think that we've had a good reception in America and we've made it into the opinion pages. Different journalists have used our movie as a window into the whole question of Halliburton and the whole question of whether it's ethical for this bellicose Vice President Dick Cheney to be making profits from war. So that is very gratifying when it happens.