Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch
James Roberto "Jim" Jarmuschis an American film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor, and composer. He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s, directing such films as Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train, Dead Man, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Coffee and Cigarettes, Broken Flowers, and Only Lovers Left Alive. Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002. As a musician, Jarmusch has composed music for his films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth22 January 1953
CountryUnited States of America
I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.
I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.
The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don’t, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won’t be seen as being original, somehow.
When I get depressed, or anything, I go 'think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!' So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?
I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.
Yeah, ... Maybe people like us will live there in the future, when they're all overgrown and rundown. And there's, like, coyotes walking through.
I didn't go to classes there, but ended up at the Cinematheque, and there it opened up even wider because there I saw a variety of films from all over the world.
obviously these characters come out of my head, but they have to embody them, so Jeffrey certainly lifted it above what I imagined but also came through with what the film really needed from that character.
So if too many people like my films, I might get scared and think I did something wrong. Honestly.
Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.
The intention was to shoot short films that can exist as shorts independently, but when I put them all together, there are things that echo through them like the dialogue repeats; the situation is always the same, the way they're shot is very simple and the same.
Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.
Hopefully, if not it's not working right. I'm like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.
I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.