criterionforum.org

Posted: **Wed Jun 13, 2018 8:44 pm**

Jim Jarmusch (1953 - )

"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."

Filmography

Features
Permanent Vacation (1981)
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Down by Law (1986)
Mystery Train (1989)
Night on Earth (1991)
Dead Man (1995)
Year of the Horse [documentary] (1997)
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999)
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Broken Flowers (2005)
The Limits of Control (2009)
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Gimme Danger [documentary] (2016)
Paterson (2016)
The Dead Don’t Die (2019)

Shorts/Music Videos/TV
Talking Heads - "The Lady Don't Mind" (1986)
"Coffee and Cigarettes" (1986)
Big Audio Dynamite - "Sightsee M.C!" (1987)
"Coffee and Cigarettes II" (1989)
Tom Waits - "It's All Right With Me" (1990)
Tom Waits - "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" (1992)
Neil Young - "Dead Man Theme" (1995)
"Int. Trailer Night" [Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet segment]
The Raconteurs - "Steady as She Goes" (2006)

Books/Poetry
Jim Jarmusch by Rolf Aurich and Stefan Reinecke (2001)
Jim Jarmusch: Interviews by Ludvig Hertzberg (2001)
Jim Jarmusch by Juan Antonio Suarez (2007)
The Jarmusch Way: Spirituality and Imagination in Dead Man, Ghost Dog, and The Limits of Control by Julian Rice (2012)
Jim Jarmusch: Music, Words and Noise by Sara Piazza (2015)
"Verdict with Guitar" by Jim Jarmusch (2015)

Web Resources
1985 interview with Harlan Jacobson, Film Comment
1999 interview with The Guardian, including audio clips (Part 1)
1999 interview with The Guardian, including audio clips (Part 2)
1999 interview with The Guardian, including audio clips (Part 3)
1999 interview with The Guardian, including audio clips (Part 4)
2009 interview with Gavin Smith, Film Comment
2016 interview with Kevin EG Perry, The Guardian
2016 interview with Amy Taubin, Film Comment
2019 interview with Bilge Ebiri, Vulture

Forum Discussion
400-401 Stranger Than Paradise and Night on Earth
166 Down by Law
521 Mystery Train
919 Dead Man
Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)
Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch, 2019)

Posted: **Mon Apr 19, 2021 3:49 am**

Jarmusch is the latest auteur to make a Saint Laurent short, French Water, starring Julianna Moore, Chloë Sevigny, Indya Moore, and Charlotte Gainsbourg

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2022 4:55 pm**

How/why a few of Iggy's lines from Gimme Danger got sampled for the Crystal Method's new single.

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2022 8:12 pm**

Only lovers left alive always goes in my "very realistic (in details and world-building) portrayal of mythology, folkore and legends" mental list, it's not easy (for me) to a find a lot of movies like that. Abbasi's Border as well. Night on Earth has great dialogues. Tom Waits seems like a musical counter-part to Jarmusch's style and mindset, can't recall which of the two did I discover and like first. Sacred Bones Records and SQÜRL also come to mind. As for Down by Law, I once had an exam with printed screenshots of DbL, and I was supposed to write a dramatic situation and make sense of it in an hour or so. I had one million ideas after the exam, and not much during it, so DbL's not my favorite movie of Jarmusch's.

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2022 8:16 pm**

SQÜRL is Jarmusch's band, so that makes sense

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2022 8:27 pm**

I'm at least partially on-topic.

Posted: **Wed Apr 20, 2022 7:00 pm**

New video for Cat Power's cover of the Pogues' "A Pair of Brown Eyes," directed by Jim Jarmusch

Posted: **Sun Sep 07, 2025 12:22 am**

During the press conference for his Golden Lion win, Jarmusch again confirmed he has a script ready to go which he'll be shooting next year. So this will be the film he's making in France. Very cool news.

Posted: **Sun Sep 07, 2025 2:14 am**

I think he mentioned this in his interview with David Cronenberg earlier this year, but regardless, it's fabulous news we're getting another feature film so quickly. Six and half years between releases is way too long.

Posted: **Mon Sep 29, 2025 10:32 pm**

hearthesilence wrote: Thu Sep 25, 2025 8:28 pm
FrauBlucher wrote: Thu Dec 28, 2023 12:42 am The Paterson bluray is only listed on Amazon from sellers for used copies. I also didn't find it on Target, B&N nor Walmart. Is this an indication that it could be OOP? I know how Jim Jarmusch likes controlling his home video releases.
Almost two years late to this, but I'm surprised to see this. IIRC, Amazon was the distributor, and it's possible that means they control the home video rights for the time being. FWIW, Jarmusch owns his films, but when they're first put into theaters, he's usually got a licensing deal with a studio that probably gives them control of home video presentation during that term. From what I can tell, he doesn't really control how his films are presented until those deals lapse, at which time the rights go back to him and he licenses them to someone like Criterion. It's a whole different dynamic with an older movie because with a brand-new movie, you probably need to find someone who will not only pay for the film's cost but deal primarily with theatrical distribution and other things associated with a brand-new movie - once it becomes an old or "catalog" film, that's when a boutique like Criterion makes more sense. (tbf, Criterion is dealing more and more with theatrical releases of new films via Sideshow now, albeit usually just one at a time at a fairly modest scale, but maybe someday they'll distribute a new Jarmusch film?)

FWIW, he just gave an interview where licensing and ownership comes up:

Jim Jarmusch wrote:I have been very stubborn about owning my copyrights to my films. So once the rights revert back to me, which can be a period of anywhere from ten years in the old days to now more like 25, then I can relicense them. Usually, I go straight to Criterion because that’s my preferred streaming platform, kind of my drug of choice.

Posted: **Tue Sep 30, 2025 12:30 am**

Welp, I guess Paterson is years away from a physical release

Posted: **Tue Sep 30, 2025 12:36 am**

I’m curious about Year of the Horse. Didn’t Neil Young control the OCN and not Jarmusch? If so, I wonder if it burned up in the fire that claimed a chunk of his archives

Posted: **Tue Sep 30, 2025 12:40 am**

beamish14 wrote: Tue Sep 30, 2025 12:36 am I’m curious about Year of the Horse. Didn’t Neil Young control the OCN and not Jarmusch? If so, I wonder if it burned up in the fire that claimed a chunk of his archives

Yes, Jarmusch has mentioned this in past interviews, but Year of the Horse is indeed an exception - that was always going to be owned by Neil Young. I think the negative's fine though, otherwise Neil's people would've said something by now as they're going through his ongoing archival releases.

Posted: **Fri Jan 09, 2026 4:51 am**

I'm surprised Jarmusch has only amassed two pages here, but reading this, a question came to mind. Who do you see as more synonymous with New York, him or Scorsese?

Posted: **Fri Jan 09, 2026 4:57 am**

Jarmusch sets most of his films outside of NY, I don’t really associate him with the city/state much personally

Posted: **Fri Jan 09, 2026 5:14 am**

Scorsese is also a native of New York City, and his upbringing comes through in many ways (specific films like Mean Streets, his parents' visible role in his public life and work, etc.) Jarmusch is a big part of NYC, but I also associate him with the Midwest in a lot of ways - he grew up in Ohio, has strong connections with artists and musicians around the Midwest, etc. He's also much more known overseas so for much of the general American public, Scorsese probably comes to mind first. To give an example, no one in my family knows who he is, and I found this out years after I was already viewing his films around them. They're not well-versed in arthouse cinema either, and I think that's probably a big determining factor of whether anyone's familiar with him at all.

Posted: **Fri Jan 09, 2026 10:53 am**

Definitely Scorsese. As Someone who was born and raised in NYC (Brooklyn to be exact) I can always feel a vibe from others who went through those same experiences, especially from the older generation. I don’t feel that vibe with Jarmusch. I would say that Spike Lee and Woody Allen are more synonymous with being New Yorkers than Jarmusch. When I think of Jarmusch I do think of his bond with the NY art (music, film and art) scene.

Posted: **Fri Jan 09, 2026 11:25 am**

I’d also consider Scorsese being more synonymous with New York than Jarmusch, though it’s also worth noting Scorsese always felt like his specific part of New York, i.e. Little Italy was its own separate place within not just NYC, but America as a whole. While he was growing up, going beyond certain streets felt to him like venturing into a different country. I was reminded of this recently while watching the Apple TV doc. But pushing all that aside, the films on their own are certainly more representative of New York.

Something worth noting, having recently rewatched Ghost Dog for the first time since it originally opened in theaters, it’s interesting how Jarmusch didn’t appear to want the story tied to a specific city, hence the fake license plates and other details.

Posted: **Fri Jan 09, 2026 11:39 am**

Which is true. People didn’t really venture out of their neighborhoods like they do now. Basically your neighborhood had everything you would need. I grew in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn which had everything Little Italy had, from mobsters to feasts and churches and everything in between.

Posted: **Sat Jan 10, 2026 2:56 am**

Honestly, I've always considered him a Northeast Ohio filmmaker. Might sound crazy until you remember that The Cramps, The Pretenders, DEVO, Pere Ubu, The Dead Boys, and Screaming' Jay Hawkins are from there as well.

Posted: **Sat Jan 10, 2026 3:29 am**

Not to get too analytical, but if you have to define him by "region," you would have to take it all in, i.e. he's a Midwesterner who spent some time in Paris than landed in NYC. That's a better reflection of his films which often deal with outsiders and people reaching across cultural boundaries, and hell even his breakthrough feature has the word "strangers" in the title. That's a big part of his films, and come to think of it, that makes his new film a significant development in a long recurring theme - instead of a community or subculture, the world in each story is shrunken down to an immediate family, and yet even there you have people who can feel like outsiders to their own blood relatives.

Posted: **Sat Jan 10, 2026 7:19 am**

hearthesilence wrote: Sat Jan 10, 2026 3:29 am Not to get too analytical, but if you have to define him by "region," you would have to take it all in, i.e. he's a Midwesterner who spent some time in Paris than landed in NYC.

...and is now (along with George Clooney) also applying for French citizenship.

cantinflas wrote: Sun Sep 07, 2025 12:22 am During the press conference for his Golden Lion win, Jarmusch again confirmed he has a script ready to go which he'll be shooting next year. So this will be the film he's making in France. Very cool news.

...and it probably won't be the last.

Posted: **Tue Jan 20, 2026 11:38 pm**

Do you think he'll make them in French?

Posted: **Sat Jan 24, 2026 9:19 am**

There’s precedent; not only is part of Night on Earth in French, but that section also includes an essentially untranslatable pun (“Ivorien”/“Ils voient rien”).

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