36 Facts About Jim Jarmusch

1.

James Robert Jarmusch is an American film director and screenwriter.

2.

Jim Jarmusch was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the middle of three children of middle-class suburbanites.

3.

Jim Jarmusch introduced Jarmusch to cinema by leaving him at a local cinema to watch matinee double features such as Attack of the Crab Monsters and Creature From the Black Lagoon while she ran errands.

4.

The key, I think, to Jim Jarmusch, is that he went gray when he was 15.

5.

Jim Jarmusch was an avid reader in his youth and acquired an enthusiasm for film.

6.

Jim Jarmusch had an even greater interest in literature which was encouraged by his grandmother.

7.

Jim Jarmusch worked as a delivery driver for an art gallery and spent most of his time at the Cinematheque Francaise.

8.

Jim Jarmusch graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975.

9.

Jim Jarmusch was broke and working as a musician in New York City after returning from Paris in 1976.

10.

Jim Jarmusch applied on a whim to the graduate film school of New York University's School of the Arts.

11.

Jim Jarmusch studied there for four years; he met fellow students and future collaborators Sara Driver, Tom DiCillo, Howard Brookner, and Spike Lee in the process.

12.

In 1986, Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed Down by Law, starring musicians John Lurie and Tom Waits, and Italian comic actor Roberto Benigni as three convicts who escape from a New Orleans jailhouse.

13.

Jim Jarmusch 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 Bankole.

14.

Not intended to appeal to mainstream filmgoers, these early Jim Jarmusch films were embraced by art house audiences, gaining a small but dedicated American following and cult status in Europe and Japan.

15.

In 1991 Jim Jarmusch appeared as himself in Episode One of John Lurie's cult television series Fishing With John.

16.

In 1995, Jim Jarmusch released Dead Man, a period film set in the 19th century American West starring Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer.

17.

The film was shot in black and white by Robby Muller, and features a score composed and performed by Neil Young, for whom Jim Jarmusch subsequently filmed the tour documentary Year of the Horse, released to tepid reviews in 1997.

18.

Jim Jarmusch followed Coffee and Cigarettes in 2005 with Broken Flowers, which starred Bill Murray as an early retiree who goes in search of the mother of his unknown son in attempt to overcome a midlife crisis.

19.

In October 2009, Jim Jarmusch appeared as himself in an episode of the HBO series Bored to Death, and the following September, Jim Jarmusch helped to curate the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in Monticello, New York.

20.

Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed his first horror film, the zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die featuring an ensemble cast which included performances from Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, Carol Kane, and Selena Gomez.

21.

Jim Jarmusch is featured on the album Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture 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".

22.

The author of a series of essays on influential bands, Jim Jarmusch has had at least two poems published.

23.

Jim Jarmusch is a founding member of The Sons of Lee Marvin, a humorous "semi-secret society" of artists resembling the iconic actor, which issues communiques and meets on occasion for the ostensible purpose of watching Marvin's films.

24.

Jim Jarmusch released three collaborative albums with lutist Jozef van Wissem, Concerning the Entrance into Eternity, The Mystery of Heaven, in 2012 and the 2019 release An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil.

25.

Jim Jarmusch is a member of the avant-garde rock band Squrl with film associate Carter Logan and sound engineer Shane Stoneback.

26.

Jim 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.

27.

Several months later, Jim Jarmusch asked van Wissem to send his catalog of recordings and the two started playing together as part of their developing friendship.

28.

Jim Jarmusch 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.

29.

Jim Jarmusch has been characterized as a minimalist filmmaker whose idiosyncratic films are unhurried.

30.

Jim Jarmusch has experimented with a vignette format in three films that were either released, or begun around, the early 1990s: Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes.

31.

Jim Jarmusch has revealed that his instinct is a greater influence during the filmmaking process than any cognitive processes.

32.

Jim Jarmusch's films have often included foreign actors and characters, and non-English dialogue.

33.

Jim Jarmusch is credited with having instigated the American independent film movement with Stranger Than Paradise.

34.

New York critic and festival director Kent Jones undermined the "urban cool" association that Jim Jarmusch has garnered and was quoted in a February 2014 media article, following the release of his eleventh feature film:.

35.

The moving image collection of Jim Jarmusch is held at the Academy Film Archive.

36.

Jim Jarmusch stopped drinking coffee in 1986, the year of the first installment of Coffee and Cigarettes, although he continues to smoke cigarettes.