Jim Jarmusch
James Robert Jarmusch (/ˈdʒɑːrməʃ/ JAR-məsh;[1] born January 22, 1953) is an American film director and screenwriter. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Paterson (2016). Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002.[2] As a musician, he has composed music for his films and released three albums with Jozef van Wissem.
Jim Jarmusch
Career[edit]
1980s[edit]
Jarmusch's final year university project was completed in 1980 as Permanent Vacation, his first feature film. It had its premiere at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg (formerly known as Filmweek Mannheim) and won the Josef von Sternberg Award.[13] It was made on a shoestring budget of around $12,000 in misdirected scholarship funds and shot by cinematographer Tom DiCillo on 16 mm film.[20] The quasi-autobiographical feature follows an adolescent drifter (Chris Parker) as he wanders around downtown Manhattan.[21][22]
The film was not released theatrically and did not attract the sort of adulation from critics that greeted his later work. The Washington Post staff writer Hal Hinson would disparagingly comment in an aside during a review of Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989) that in the director's debut, "the only talent he demonstrated was for collecting egregiously untalented actors".[23] The bleak and unrefined Permanent Vacation is nevertheless one of the director's most personal films, and established many of the hallmarks he would exhibit in his later work, including derelict urban settings, chance encounters, and a wry sensibility.[22][24]
Jarmusch's first major film, Stranger Than Paradise, was produced on a budget of approximately $125,000 and released in 1984 to much critical acclaim.[25][26] A deadpan comedy recounting a strange journey of three disillusioned youths from New York through Cleveland to Florida, the film broke many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking.[27] It was awarded the Camera d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival as well as the 1985 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film,[28][29] and became a landmark work in modern independent film.[30]
In 1986, Jarmusch wrote and directed Down by Law, starring musicians John Lurie and Tom Waits, and Italian comic actor Roberto Benigni (his introduction to American audiences) as three convicts who escape from a New Orleans jailhouse.[31] Shot like the director's previous efforts in black and white, this constructivist neo-noir was Jarmusch's first collaboration with Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller, who had been known for his work with Wenders.[32]
His next two films each experimented with parallel narratives: Mystery Train (1989) told three successive stories set on the same night in and around a small Memphis hotel, and Night on Earth (1991)[33] involved five cab drivers and their passengers on rides in five different world cities, beginning at sundown in Los Angeles and ending at sunrise in Helsinki.[17] Less bleak and somber than Jarmusch's earlier work, Mystery Train nevertheless retained the director's askance conception of America.[34] He wrote Night on Earth in about a week, out of frustration at the collapse of the production of another film he had written and the desire to visit and collaborate with friends such as Benigni, Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, and Isaach de Bankolé.[35]
As a result of his early work, Jarmusch became an influential representative of the trend of the American road movie.[36] Not intended to appeal to mainstream filmgoers, these early Jarmusch films were embraced by art house audiences,[37] gaining a small but dedicated American following and cult status in Europe and Japan.[38] Each of the four films had its premiere at the New York Film Festival, while Mystery Train was in competition at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.[28] Jarmusch's distinctive aesthetic and auteur status fomented a critical backlash at the close of this early period, however; though reviewers praised the charm and adroitness of Mystery Train and Night On Earth, the director was increasingly charged with repetitiveness and risk-aversion.[13][28]
A film appearance in 1989 as a used car dealer in the cult comedy Leningrad Cowboys Go America further solidified his interest and participation in the road movie genre. In 1991 Jarmusch appeared as himself in Episode One of John Lurie's cult television series Fishing With John.
Music[edit]
In the early 1980s, Jarmusch was part of a revolving lineup of musicians in Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day project,[66] and later became the keyboardist and one of two vocalists for The Del-Byzanteens,[6] a No Wave band who released the LP Lies to Live By in 1982.[67]
Jarmusch is also featured on the album Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture (2005) in two interludes described by Sean Fennessy in a Pitchfork review of the album as both "bizarrely pretentious" and "reason alone to give it a listen".[68] Jarmusch and Michel Gondry each contributed a remix to a limited edition release of the track "Blue Orchid" by The White Stripes in 2005.[69]
He released three collaborative albums with lutist Jozef van Wissem: Concerning the Entrance into Eternity (Important Records); The Mystery of Heaven (Sacred Bones Records) in 2012, and; the 2019 release An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil (Sacred Bones Records).[70][71][72]
Jarmusch is a member of the avant-garde rock band Sqürl with film associate Carter Logan and sound engineer Shane Stoneback.[73][74][75][76] The band formed to create additional soundtrack for Jarmusch's film The Limits of Control, which they released together with two other songs on an EP called "Film Music from The Limits of Control" under the name Bad Rabbit.[77][78][79][80] Sqürl's version of Wanda Jackson's 1961 song "Funnel of Love", featuring Madeline Follin of Cults on vocals, opens Jarmusch's 2014 film Only Lovers Left Alive.[81] On March 8, 2023, Sqürl announced its debut album Silver Haze and released lead single "Berlin '87". The album was released on May 5 by Sacred Bones Records.[82]
Dutch lute composer Jozef van Wissem also collaborated with Jarmusch on the soundtrack of Only Lovers Left Alive, and the pair also plays in a duo. Jarmusch first met van Wissem on a street in New York City's SoHo neighborhood in 2007, at which time the lute player handed the director a CD. Several months later, Jarmusch asked van Wissem to send his catalog of recordings and the two started playing together as part of their developing friendship. Van Wissem explained in early April 2014: "I know the way [Jarmusch] makes his films is kind of like a musician. He has music in his head when he's writing a script so it's more informed by a tonal thing than it is by anything else."[81]
Live albums
Other sources