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Film auteurs are probably driven batty by the uncharted, and unchartable, career of Jonathan Demme. "I follow my enthusiasm wherever it goes," the director shrugs.

Mostly, it goes zig-zaggy — from big-budget studio releases ("Beloved" and "Married to the Mob") to rock-driven documentaries ("Neil Young: Heart of Gold" and its upcoming son-of, "Neil Young: Trunk Show") to ill-advised remakes ("The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Truth About Charlie," a remake of "Charade").

Along the way, he has helmed four Oscar-winning performances (Mary Steenburgen in "Melvin and Howard," Tom Hanks in "Philadelphia" and Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in "The Silence of the Lambs") and even won one for himself (for the latter).

Now, at this better-late-than-never date, the 66-year-old Demme has decided to make his theatrical debut by reviving (or, more accurately, resuscitating) a failed, decade-old Beth Henley play, Family Week, at the Lucille Lortel for MCC Theater.

It might be just his enthusiasm talking, but he has gone about this task with commendable confidence. "To me," he says, "the story we're telling and the actors who bring it to life — that's what it's all about in both theatre and film. I'm focusing on exactly the same stuff. Even though crafting the visual side of filmmaking is thrilling, it's great to not be concerned with that dynamic. Instead, the perspective is out there in the seats — how it looks from one place — and that's very, very exciting."

He and Henley are quirky kindred spirits, drawn like magnets to the unexpected or the off-center, so their collaboration was rather inescapable. They first crossed paths as director and writer in the '80s, on a PBS piece called "Trying Times," and vowed to do it again. It almost happened for the movie version of her Pulitzer Prize–winning Crimes of the Heart. To re-team, she (lightly) took up acting and did a Bible pusher bit in his "Swing Shift"; now, he has totally switched mediums to do Family Week Off-Broadway, hoping there's a movie in it down the road.

"I've had the privilege of reading, as a friend, all of Beth's plays," says Demme. "I read Family Week when she first wrote it and thought it was a real gem. It had a ridiculously short run in New York, but because I loved that play so much, it stuck in my mind."

It popped back into his head last year when he attended a reading of Henley's latest, The Jacksonian. "Just sitting there, I thought, 'God, I love the theatre! This is exciting! I'd like to do this. Maybe I could do Family Week.' So I spoke with Bernie Telsey, who was the casting director on 'Rachel Getting Married' — we had a terrific time together — and asked him to put together a reading while Beth was in town. We did that, and it was magical to feel the emotion and laughter in that room."

Afterward, he asked Telsey if it was revivable, and Telsey, being a founding father of Manhattan Class Company, was the guy to ask. He instantly found a slot on MCC's schedule — "and now I'm sitting here with Harry Haun talking for a Playbill piece. Those things happen. I didn't decide to do theatah — there was no moment like that."  Continued...