Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. JIM JARMUSCH: GHOST STORY
By
Alex Simon
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the March 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.
Jim Jarmusch's hip, urban, comic jags arose from the same East Village-New York University explosion that nurtured the relentlessly contemporary films of Susan Seidelman and Spike Lee. Jarmusch offers lowlife reflections of post-modernist communication and mis-communication between characters sealed off from one another, their only connection the many-tentacled pop trash culture of America.
Jarmusch was born January 22, 1953 in Akron, Ohio. In 1971, Jarmusch enrolled at Columbia University in the English literature program. A few months before graduation, on a visit to Paris, Jarmusch discovered the rich treasures of the Cinémathèque Française and wound up staying in France for a year. Upon returning to New York City, he enrolled in the graduate film program at New York University, where he became a teaching assistant to director Nicholas Ray, then teaching at NYU. Through Ray's efforts, Jarmusch became a production assistant on Wim Wenders' tribute to Ray, Lightning Over Water (1980). Jarmusch completed his NYU film project, Permanent Vacation (1980), and began work on a short film, shot over one weekend, that eventually became Stranger Than Paradise two years later.
Stranger Than Paradise startled audiences with its gritty cool and fresh comic tone, winning the Camera d'Or at Cannes and the best film award from the National Society of Film Critics. Jarmusch has referred to his first three feature films as a trilogy. Stranger Than Paradise, along with Down By Law (1986) and Mystery Train (1989), take place in a blighted American cultural landscape—from the bleak, wintry moonscape of Ohio and the cracked seaminess of an over-ripe Florida in Stranger Than Paradise to the diffuse, cinema-reflected New Orleans in Down By Law and the tawdry, clapboard decay of Memphis' Mystery Train. In this world characters make connections by sharing TV dinners, chanting ice cream jingles and revering Elvis Presley. A Jarmusch film begins with characters who live a robot-like existence, unable to relate or communicate; a typical Jarmusch shot features a character staring offscreen until the screen fades to black or there is a cut to darkness. Into this stultifying atmosphere, a character with a different viewpoint and perspective enters, exposing the shallowness of the enmeshed character's existence.
Jarmusch followed Mystery Train with the ensemble piece Night on Earth (1991), an exhilarating five-part story, each taking place inside a taxi cab in disparate cities around the world: New York, L.A., Paris, Rome and Helsinki. Dead Man (1996) was Jarmusch's western/William Blake homage, starring Johnny Depp as a tenderfoot who heads west, and is mistaken for a notorious gunslinger. The film is also notable for being Robert Mitchum's final screen appearance. Jarmusch entered the documentary ring a year later with Year of the Horse, chronicling legendary rocker Neil Young's concert tour.
Jarmusch's latest is his most quirky, inventive work to date. Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai tells the tale of a solitary hit man called Ghost Dog (Forrest Whittaker) who lives according to the ancient Japanese code of the samurai. When he hits a "made" mafioso, Ghost Dog suddenly finds his beliefs, his beloved pigeons, and his life on the line. Co-starring wonderful character actors like Cliff Gorman and Henry Silva, Ghost Dog is one of the first great films of the 21st century, combining humor, nail-biting action, and genuine insight to the human condition.
I loved Ghost Dog. Tell us about how this story was born.
Jim Jarmusch: Boy, that's always the toughest question. I collect a lot of disparate ideas over time, then eventually sit down and make a script out of them. I guess it started with the fact that I wanted to make a character who was contradictory, like a likable killer. Then I thought, what actor could I picture playing this? That actor was Forrest Whittaker. So I started out with that sort of vague idea in my head, and started weaving a lot of details I'd collected together. I wanted to make him a samurai because western warriors are usually trained just to be killing machines, whereas eastern warriors are trained spiritually and philosophically, so that was interesting to me. It's a hard question to answer, because so many elements in the film seem to be linked together cross-culturally in our culture: the whole hip-hop interest in eastern culture is interesting to me, and the cross-reference between hip-hop and the mafia is interesting to me.
One film I kept thinking of while watching Ghost Dog was Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967). Was that an influence?
Definitely. I even tried to quote certain things from the film directly, but in my own way. For example, Ghost Dog in the end has no bullets in his gun and no one's really aware of that, like in the end of Le Samourai when Alain Delon has no bullets in his gun when he's supposed to hit the girl who saved him.
I've always felt that you and Melville could have been filmmaking cousins.
He's certainly been an inspiration. I love his films, and have for a long time. He was somewhat cross-cultural in his storytelling, as well. Although his films are very, very French, his gangsters always dressed in an American style, drove big American cars in Paris. In his films, he had a running joke with his editor, where his killers would wear white cloth editor's gloves. I used that in Ghost Dog. I don't know if that was a joke on Melville's part that his editor was a butcher or a killer (laughs).
Tell us about working with great character actors like Henry Silva and Cliff Gorman.
Henry Silva's like a cult figure for me. I've always loved his presence, and any film with him that I've seen in the past, probably since I first saw Johnny Cool (1963) on TV in the early 70's...when I wrote this, I wasn't quite sure who should play Ray Vargo, then I suddenly thought of him...it was great working with him. He'd come to hang out on the set during a half day when he wasn't even working. He's really interested in the process, really interesting to rehearse and collaborate with. Cliff Gorman came in and read for Valerio, read this side once, put it down on the table and said "You know, that's about the best I can do. I dunno." And he walked out! I said 'That guy is Sonny Valerio!' (laughs) 'I wanna work with him!' He really brought a lot to the film. He's a great actor.
Tell us about your background.
I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio and left when I was about 17. I was kind of an introverted kid, read a lot. When I was a teenager and discovered music, first through the radio, then a friend of mine's older brother had books by William Burroughs and records by the Mothers of Invention, opened me up to all the strange things out in the world, beyond the borders of Akron. It was very much of a car culture, growing up there, with rock and roll on the radio and the only way to escape was when you were old enough to get your hands on a car and drive around.
What did your dad do? Was culture something that your parents valued?
Initially my dad worked for B.F. Goodrich, like everyone's father worked for a rubber company. My mother was actually the movie critic for the Akron Beacon-Journal before she was married, when she was very young. My grandmother on my mother's side was very interested in Native American culture and Oriental art. Even though she didn't have any money, she used to have prints of paintings that she liked, so as a kid I knew who Rembrandt and Vermeer were. When I was 15, she gave me the translation of Proust. My father is a little less interested in those things. So a lot culture was opened up to me on one side of the family, but in sort of a middle class, midwestern kind of way, you know?
Then you went off to college.
Yeah, I went to Northwestern for a year, as a journalism major, until I was asked by the Dean to leave the school. (laughs)
Why?
I wasn't completing the required courses. I was taking creative writing and history courses instead, not showing up for my journalism courses. So I transferred to Columbia and studied English and French literature.
Was it during this period that you discovered film?
Yeah, just being in New York and having access to a lot of different kinds of films in the mid-70's was amazing. Then one year I went abroad and studied in Paris, ended up staying for 10 months instead of the four I was supposed to stay, and came back with a lot of "incompletes" because I spent all my time at the cinematheque there. That really opened me up to films from all over the world...Then I came back to New York and was a musician for a while, was in a band. Then one day having no money and not knowing what to do with myself, I applied to the graduate film school at NYU. It was really a whim. For some reason I got in and got financial assistance.
Was there one film you saw during this time that really grabbed you, where you knew "this is it for me."
That's a tough one...maybe seeing Breathless (1959) for the first time in Paris. It really moved me. The whole nouvelle vague was important to me. It's interesting because all those guys wrote about Hollywood filmmakers like Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray and Robert Aldrich, and it was sort of like reading about those directors through the French directors, I came back towards Hollywood with a new appreciation of it.
At NYU you got to work with Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, In a Lonely Place). What was he like?
Well, I went back to NYU for my third year to tell Laszlo Benedict, the head of the school, that I wouldn't be returning to school, because I had no money and I was going to try to make a film on my own. He said "That's really too bad, because I have a fellowship that I was going to give to you so you could pay your tuition, and I wanted you to meet someone I'm bringing here this year that I know you're a big fan of, Nick Ray." I was like, whoah! Laszlo said "He also needs an assistant and I recommended you. He's in the next room. Go talk to him." (laughs) So I go in and talk to Nick Ray. He says to me "Can you define the meaning of the word "dialectic"?" I said "Yes"...and he said "Good. You can be my assistant." So I was. Nick was pretty sick at the time, and he insisted on holding classes at his house. I learned so much from Nick about books, movies, his experiences, about baseball, painting, the design of things. A lot of it probably didn't register at the time, but now many of those things I'm still trying to apply. One thing he said to me was "Anyone who tells you that there's one way for all directors to direct all actors is an idiot. There's only one way for each director to direct each actor, and you have to find that way yourself and how you're going to collaborate. He told me that he and James Dean drove cross-country together before shooting Rebel, not to talk about the film, but to get to know each other so they could work well together. There's so many other things I learned from him: that the dialogue is often less important than the look in someone's eye. I could go on and on about Nick Ray.
Tell us about Permanent Vacation.
It was my thesis film for NYU, a 70 minute film. Then when I turned it in they told me it was a piece of shit, and that they weren't going to give me my degree. I didn't graduate until years later when they were using my name in ads saying "Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch...all NYU film graduates." I mentioned that in an interview, not in a bitter way, that it was kind of ironic since I never got a degree. I guess they saw the interview, because I got a degree in the mail not long after that. (laughs) Funny how that works...
You and Spike Lee were at NYU around the same time, right?
Yeah, Spike used to work in the equipment room, which was really frustrating because it was almost like a scene out of a Spike Lee movie: "Spike, I need to check out the Nagara." "You want the Nagra?" "Yes, I need to check it out." "When do you need it?" "Tomorrow." "How many days you need it for?" "Just tomorrow." "You only need it for tomorrow?" "Spike, I just need the Nagra for tomorrow." "You sure it works?" (laughs) And it just went on and on like that. Spike has a lot of Mars Blackman in him. I love Spike and I really liked his last film a lot, Summer of Sam (1999).
Your first film that got you noticed was Stranger Than Paradise. How did you get the financing for that first effort?
Initially I did it as a short film, because Wim Wenders had some unexposed film stock leftover from a film called The State of Things. I had met Wim through Nick Ray and liked him a lot. I showed Wim Permanent Vacation, and he really liked it. So I knew I had enough film to make a 30 minute movie. John Lurie and I had a vague idea that we turned into a little script, and we shot the film using one camera set-up for each scene in order to make the story work with the limited amount of film that we had. Then while editing that short version, I wrote a longer version to make it a feature, which took over a year to get financed. By 1984, we'd completed the whole film.
Down by Law introduced America to Roberto Benigni. Tell us about working with him.
I had met Roberto when I was in Italy through mutual friends, and didn't know his work or anything, but just fell in love with his spirit, and with him. I had started a sketch for the next film with Tom Waits and John Lurie in my head, but hadn't gotten very far. Then after spending a week with Roberto speaking broken French, since neither of us could speak the other's language we'd babble at each other in French. We became really good friends and I stayed in Rome and wrote the treatment in a few days for Down by Law, and he agreed to do it. I hadn't seen any of his other work until after we'd made Down by Law. Roberto's one of the most intelligent, amazing people I've ever met. He's memorized the entire Dante's Inferno, Orlando Furioso by Ariosto, he plays about six instruments which he's taught himself...He's great to work with. We have plans to work together again.
Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who left us recently, has played an important role in several of your films.
His death hit me really hard. Growing up in Akron, there were two AM radio stations I listened to, and one of them played I Put a Spell On You almost every night. And I remember thinking 'This is my theme song. It's like a waltz tempo in an R & B song with a guy screaming and snarling and beautiful lyrics. So over the years I collected everything I could find that was recorded by him. When I was writing Stranger I wanted the song to be in it, so I tracked him down and found him living in a trailer in New Jersey with no phone. I sent him a letter and he came into the city and we had dinner. The man was so proud, so smart, so his own person. He didn't care what the rest of the world thought. He had an incredibly beautiful voice. His plan was originally to be a classical singer. He loved Paul Robeson. He loved Caruso. But for some reason he got sidetracked on the R & B circuit, luckily for us. So we stayed in touch, and I cast him in Mystery Train. There was one point during the shoot where his acting was very big and I was trying to tone him down. And he said "Jim I don't understand. You ordered a nuclear device and now you're requesting it not to explode!" (laughs) So then I put it into musical terms: 'Now in this overdub...' and he was really responsive to that. He was just a wonderful, wonderful guy. I really miss him.
With Dead Man, you worked with Robert Mitchum on his last film.
I went up to Santa Barbara and had a two hour lunch with him where he told me so many stories about his life, I hardly said anything. He had a very old school approach, like you couldn't change any of his dialogue. I went into his trailer to talk with him about a very minor adjustment in the dialogue, and he said "You're not going to change his dialogue, are you? Good luck to you!" So he opens the door and Mitchum is sitting there, and he says "So I guess you're going to change my dialogue, huh?" I said 'It's just a minor thing. I'm sorry.' "You're sorry. That's what they said to Gary Gilmore." (laughs) But then he consented to do it. He had this facade of being really gruff. He'd arrive on the set and someone would say "How are you today, Mr. Mitchum?" "Terrible." Someone else would walk by: "How are you today, Mr. Mitchum?" "Worse." He was really funny, an amazing wit.
Tell us about The Sons of Lee Marvin.
The Sons of Lee Marvin is a secret organization. I can't tell you much about it other than we have cards, and if you get a card from one of the founding members, you are an honorary member. Some of our founding members are myself, Tom Waits, John Lurie. We inducted at one point (musician) Nick Cave, because if you look like you could be a son of Lee Marvin, then you are instantly thought of by the Sons of Lee Marvin to be a Son of Lee Marvin. I lived in Berlin for almost a year in '87. Nick Cave lived there too and we used to hang out. People would always mistake us as brothers. It all started years ago with an idea I had for a movie where Lee Marvin was a father with three sons who all hated each other, and he was an alcoholic guy and lived in a barn somewhere. It was one of those ideas that gradually became more interesting to me, then Lee Marvin crossed over to the other side.
You know you could still make that movie, but with James Coburn instead of Lee Marvin.
(laughs)Yeah, that's true. I was always surprised they never played brothers in a film. They would've been so great together.
Who are some of your other influences filmmaking-wise?
From the Japanese classic filmmakers like Ozu and Mitsugushi, to Carl Dryer and Bresson, to the nouvelle vague, then there's the Sam Fullers, the Nick Rays, Fassbinder...an endless wealth of incredible people.
You got to know Sam Fuller quite well.
Yeah. Sam was, like Screamin' Jay in a way, someone who just followed his own path. People could never figure him out. The leftists would say he was reactionary and right wing. The right wing would say he was a leftist socialist. His movies often did concern the big lie of American culture, so there's a lot of politics in his films. But what a particular human being. His brain was always on fire with ideas, with enthusiasm. He loved movies, knew so much about them and was very innovative in moving a camera by hand, or the way things were designed. He was considered by many to be a 'B' movie director, but in a way that allowed him the freedom to make a very odd body of work.
Any advice for first-time directors?
I'm not a teacher and I'm not really good at advice, but I guess my only advice would be to stay really true to your own vision, no matter what other people around you or people financing the film might say. What we really need is new blood and people who have their own vision that stays intact. If it's unconventional, then I'll be the first in line to see it. Make the film you want to make, not the film that you think could be marketed. Other than that, the mistakes you make are always the most valuable things. The things you do right, that worked, you don't learn as much from. Something you did that you imagined would come out differently, you really get a gift out of. So don't be afraid of mistakes, because they're valuable. Also, rehearse with your actors and collaborate with them. Rehearsal is like a sandbox. There is no money running through the camera and no mistakes can be made in a rehearsal. As there are to make films, theoretically there are that many ways to make a film, so find your own way.
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