{"id":522878,"date":"2026-04-10T06:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522878\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:51:08","slug":"im-not-a-commercial-director-im-not-even-a-professional-film-maker-jim-jarmusch-on-the-seven-year-journey-to-make-his-new-film-jim-jarmusch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522878\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m not a commercial director \u2013 I\u2019m not even a professional film-maker\u2019: Jim Jarmusch on the seven-year journey to make his new film | Jim Jarmusch"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1991, Jim Jarmusch<\/a> was casting for his anthology film Night on Earth. The premise was simple: five taxi drivers in five cities pick up passengers, set to a soundtrack by Tom Waits. The writer-director wanted Gena Rowlands to play a passenger, but she took some persuading. \u201cNight on Earth was the first film she\u2019d made since losing John [the director John Cassavetes, her husband] and she wasn\u2019t sure. Eventually she said: \u2018OK, I\u2019ll be in this film for you.\u2019\u201d Jarmusch does a perfect impression of Rowlands, as he does with everyone he quotes \u2013 it\u2019s quite a talent.<\/p>\n

In the first vignette, Winona Ryder picks up Rowlands, who plays a casting director. Ryder, chewing gum, baseball cap on backwards, lights a cigarette; Rowlands, all old-school Hollywood elegance, sits in the back, asking Ryder about her hopes and dreams. Ryder turns down Rowlands\u2019 offer of potential stardom, declaring that her dream is not to act, but to be a mechanic.<\/p>\n

Watching it again now, knowing how she was grieving, Rowlands seems infused with melancholy and quiet humanity \u2013 but then, that was her great gift to cinema. As for Jarmusch\u2019s gift, it\u2019s surely the empathic, idiosyncratic indie films in which he elicits low-key performances from big stars. He always puts his characters at the centre of his films \u2013 as he once said<\/a>, he has no interest in writing scripts about \u201csex, revenge, making a lot of money\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u2018I cast first then write fast\u2019 \u2026 watch a trailer for Father Mother Sister Brother.<\/p>\n

Jarmusch, 73, is talking by video call from a book-lined room in New York to promote his new film, Father Mother Sister Brother, which won the Golden Lion<\/a> at the Venice film festival last year. He cuts a familiar figure with the sculptural white hair, the tinted glasses, the black clothes, the unintentional pout. Before we get to the film, Jarmusch wants to talk more about working with Rowlands, who died in 2024 at 94<\/a>. He looks momentarily bereft. \u201cGena Rowlands. What can I say? What a remarkable, apparently effortless person. Nothing was forced or faked. Coming from the Cassavetes procedure, she knew that the beauty of cinema was to find this real thing and let it come out of you. Man, what an incredibly beautiful experience. One of the most beautiful gifts of my working life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says that while he was shooting the scenes with Rowlands and Ryder, Peter Falk \u2013 who starred with Rowlands in the 1974 Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence \u2013 would ring and say: \u201cJarmusch, Falk here. What\u2019s going on with Gena? Do you need anything?\u201d Jarmusch laughs (having nailed Falk\u2019s gruff voice). \u201cShe was a lioness; she didn\u2019t really need protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years after Night on Earth, Rowlands sent Jarmusch a Cassavetes script called Unless That Someone Is You. It was \u201ca beautiful, nonjudgmental love story about a woman and a younger person on the spectrum\u201d that Cassavetes had written for Rowlands before he died. Rowlands hoped Jarmusch might direct; if not, the film would remain unmade. In turn, Jarmusch said he would do it only if Rowlands took the lead role, but she declined. Two years passed, then Rowlands changed her mind; her Alzheimer\u2019s was progressing and, she told Jarmusch, time was running out.<\/p>\n

Jarmusch, however, was preparing Dead Man, the 1995 film starring Johnny Depp that the director later described as a \u201cpsychedelic western\u201d, and he had to turn Rowlands down. \u201cDead Man was a nightmare to prepare and I was like: \u2018Oh fuck, I can\u2019t do it right now.\u2019 That was the only time I had any interest in directing someone else\u2019s script.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018What a remarkable, apparently effortless person\u2019 \u2026 Gena Rowlands in Night on Earth. Photograph: Channel Four Films\/Allstar<\/p>\n

It was a missed opportunity, I say, but what a compliment to have Rowlands ask him to direct a Cassavetes script. \u201cI know,\u201d he says. \u201cI work with [the cinematographer] Fred Elmes, who worked with both Cassavetes and [David] Lynch, and I feel beautifully connected to both directors through Fred. I\u2019m not a surrealist like David, nor am I quite as visceral as Cassavetes, but I\u2019m a humanist romantic, as John was.\u201d<\/p>\n

He leans into the screen. \u201cTo be clear, I\u2019m not imitating them. They are beyond me. I\u2019m just in the middle of a fulcrum of those two American film-makers who mean so much to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one would accuse Jarmusch of imitating anyone. In a career stretching back to his student effort Permanent Vacation and 1984\u2019s Stranger Than Paradise, he has been preoccupied with offbeat Americana, often eschewing traditional narrative pacing in favour of vignettes that explore the quotidian mundanity of life, always finding a way to use his wonderfully deadpan humour. He tells me that he \u201cmakes films out of the things other people would leave out. Most directors would cut cab rides out of the plot, but I made a whole film about them. In Coffee and Cigarettes, I was exploring the moments in which you take a break from the real things you\u2019re supposed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise, then, that Father Mother Sister Brother is more of the same. If anything, it\u2019s more Yasujir\u014d Ozu than ever \u2013 Jarmusch is a huge fan of the director whose work was defined by his observations of everyday life in Japan. Father Mother Sister Brother is another anthology, this time a three-part drama set in New Jersey, Dublin and Paris. While there is no overlap in characters, there are recurring motifs, including a pack of skateboarders weaving in and out of traffic and \u2013 oddly enough \u2013 the resolutely British idiom \u201cBob\u2019s your uncle\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018I make films out of the things other people would leave out\u2019 \u2026 Charlotte Rampling as Mother in Father Mother Sister Brother. Photograph: Vague Notion\/PA<\/p>\n

In Father, Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) drive to see their widowed father (Waits) in his isolated countryside home. Tension rises as the manipulative father insists he is financially insecure and shamelessly asks his well-paid kids for cash.<\/p>\n

The chat doesn\u2019t exactly flow \u2013 the siblings aren\u2019t close \u2013 but they are a garrulous trio compared with the Dublin family in Mother. Here, in a grand house on a wide avenue, we meet a mother (Charlotte Rampling), a bestselling author, and her daughters Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps) for their annual visit. You would be hard pressed to identify Tim and Lilith as siblings. The former is stiff and self-contained, the latter a punky hippy who lies about her success and checks her phone as tea is being poured, yet they bond over the froideur of their progenitor. The mother, meanwhile, is the type to have plastic-covered furniture, if only it were stylish.<\/p>\n

In the final triptych, New-York-born fraternal twins Billy (Luka Sabbat) and Skye (Indya Moore) meet in Paris after the death of their parents in a plane crash and return to an empty family apartment full of warm memories.<\/p>\n

Jarmusch says that he usually collects ideas for \u201cquite a long time\u201d and then writes a script \u201cvery fast\u201d. He often starts with the actors he would like to collaborate with or wants to create characters for. \u201cI was just thinking how interesting it would be if Tom Waits played Adam Driver\u2019s father. Like: wow! And then I thought of Mayim Bialik as Adam\u2019s sister because she was my favourite host on Jeopardy!. I wrote it in, I don\u2019t know, 10 days. Maybe two weeks.\u201d That is super-fast, I say. \u201cI don\u2019t labour over scripts; I cast first then write fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Jim looks at and listens to the world in a very particular way\u2019 \u2026 Adam Driver in Paterson. Photograph: Amazon Studios\/Allstar<\/p>\n

It helps that he works with actors time and again: Waits, whom he met at a party hosted by Jean-Michel Basquiat, in films such as Down By Law, Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes, and Driver in Paterson and The Dead Don\u2019t Die. Blanchett, too, on Coffee and Cigarettes. Over email, Blanchett says: \u201cJim gives his actors and the crew every last drop of himself. He looks at and listens to the world in a very particular way; he notices elements most of us would miss. He prizes and underscores the oddball parts of people that would normally be discarded or overlooked. Father Mother Brother Sister has, like the man himself, a mysterious deep pulse, with no extraneous elements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jarmusch is resolutely cool, although I don\u2019t think he would dream of using the word to describe himself. Steve Coogan, who was also in Coffee and Cigarettes, points out that the film is \u201coften referred to by auteur film-makers as a touchstone. In terms of kudos, it was the most remunerative two days of my life. I miss him.\u201d (Jarmusch says that he and Coogan \u201cdid some crazy shit together in LA and New York; I really miss him, too\u201d.)<\/p>\n

When Cannes turned down Father Mother Sister Brother, Jarmusch took it to Venice and surprised everyone by winning the top prize \u2013 critics thought it would go to The Voice of Hind Rajab<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t expect to win,\u201d says Jarmusch. \u201cIt was very appreciated, but I\u2019m not interested in the competition of artistic expression. It\u2019s nonsense to me, in a way.\u201d He was, however, pleased that when he took the winged lion sculpture through security at Venice airport, all the workers started shouting: \u201cBravo! Fantastico! Auguri!\u201d He grins. \u201cIt was just so Italian. I was very moved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Psychedelic western \u2026 Johnny Depp in Dead Man. Photograph: Miramax\/Sportsphoto\/Allstar<\/p>\n

In May, Jarmusch starts shooting his next film in Paris, which he won\u2019t talk about as he is \u201cdeeply superstitious\u201d. In 1990, he said that \u201cambition can be very evil\u201d; he still doesn\u2019t find the money part of film-making easy, saying now that if a potential backer asks him to compromise, he walks away. He dislikes the idea of \u201csomeone who used to run an underwear factory telling me how to make a goddam film\u201d. The process is \u201cdelicate and difficult\u201d, especially since doing things his own way means he has smaller budgets and less time. It\u2019s part of the reason Father Mother Brother Sister is his first film since The Dead Don\u2019t Die, a zombie horror-comedy, in 2019: \u201cIt\u2019s harder every time to get a film made. I\u2019m not a commercial director. I\u2019m not even a professional film-maker.\u201d<\/p>\n

We talk briefly about death, since grieving parents living and dead is a central theme of Father Mother Brother Sister. Jarmusch says that he is \u201cnot a death-obsessive person at all. In fact, I try to think of it in an almost Buddhist or eastern way. Things are cyclical. I believe that energy isn\u2019t created or destroyed [when we die] \u2026 Life is a beautiful gift, but I don\u2019t mourn the idea that I will lose it someday. I\u2019m in very good shape. I swim, I do tai chi, I meditate a bit. I try really hard to live in the present for at least a fraction of a moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a moment, he looks sombre: \u201cThe planet is being destroyed and everything is so fragile that I somehow want to appreciate my life.\u201d Does he have plans for the near future, other than to start shooting in Paris? \u201cI have no plans; I follow the Neil Young plan. He said to me years ago: \u2018Jim, the best plan, man, is no plan.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, he will simply carry on being Jim Jarmusch. \u201cI\u2019m still a cinephile. I\u2019m blown away by watching films of all kinds. I love silent movies, too. They\u2019re like dreams to me. I try to watch a film every day \u2013 and I can\u2019t imagine a more beautiful thing to get to do. And then I fight to get to make my own films. I\u2019m lucky, but I\u2019m stubborn as hell as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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