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Jim Jarmusch: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)

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"I consider myself a minor poet who write fairly small poems. I'd rather make a movie about a guy walking his dog than about the emperor of China."- Jim Jarmusch

Over the last few years, University Press of Mississippi has released several book under their "Conversations with Filmakers Series." Past directors in the series have included Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jean-Luc Godard, and Quentin Tarantino. I've read just about all of them, and I have to say this one, about American independent film director Jim Jarmusch, is one of my favorites.

The book consists of seventeen interviews of Jarmusch ranging from 1981 to 2000. During that time, Jarmusch has released independent classics starting with Stranger In Paradise(1984), Down By Law(staring a young Robert Benigni-1986), Mystery Train(1989), Dead Man(1995), and Ghost Dog:Way of the Samurai(1999).
These series of interviews reveal some of the meaning and influences that helped shape those films.

For those who might not know, Jarmusch is not only a brillaint director but he is also a facinating conversationalist. In the interviews, he describes his backgroung starting in Akron, Ohio and his early college years studying abroad in Paris, France. As an "outsider" studying in a foreign country, Jarmusch was never able to forget that feeling, and you can tell that when you watch his movies.

What's fascinating about Jarmusch is his mixing of "high' and "low" cultures which permeates his films. In the interviews, he admits being obsessed with the Japanese director Ozu and, at the same time, being influenced by the TV show "The Honeymooners."

I've been waiting for years on a biography about Jarmusch. Although this not a biography(or autobiography or that matter),
it is an excellent introduction this director's life and work. I recommend it to not only Jarmusch nuts, but to anybody who interested in American Independent movies.

If you read the first chapter, you will know everything you need to know about the rest of the book. The interviews are all the same and so are the answers. I got bored with the monotony so I never finished the book.
One good thing about the book is that you get to know Jim Jarmusch ideas and concept behind his films, a good reason to get the book if you are an admirers of his films like myself.

I found two volumes of this "Conversations With Filmmakers Series" at a university library in Japan, and as soon as I could, I bought both for my personal library: Jim Jarmusch and Peter Greenaway. The reason: I think that, if you do a map of contemporary filmmaking, the North Pole and the South Pole would be these two gentlemen. Everything else is somewhere in between. I don't know if any of these two directors is actually so clear, so witty and so self aware, or if it is just good editing work, but very few times you'll find books of film criticism to be so insightful, so revealing and yet, so simple. I know this sounds vulgar, but I'd give up stuff like Film Semiotics if only the University Press of Mississippi had published more books of these series. I just ordered a third book: Akira Kurosawa.