Biography

Moved to New York City at the age of seventeen from Akron, Ohio. Graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in English, class of '75. Without any prior film experience, he was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts, New York.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: J. Pae

Stationary camera (deadpan). His films often involve travlers as well as life after midnight. Shows and views the American landscape from a non-commercial viewpoint (e.g. the tavern were everybody knows your name instead of franchised stripmalls)

Salt & pepper hair

Offscreen distant train whistle

Frequently casts Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, and John Lurie

Most of Jarmusch's films are set in decaying American Landscapes (Stranger Than Paradise in Cleveland, Mystery Train in Memphis, Only Lovers Left Alive in Detroit, Ghost Dog in New Jersey). Even when his movies move to more "scenic" places like the American West (Dead Man) or Florida (Stranger Than Paradise), Jarmusch finds bleak wastelands in these places instead of any conventionally photogenic spots.

Many of Jarmusch's films pay tribute to literature and writers. Dead Man (through a case of mistaken identity--Johnny Depp's character is named William Blake) incorporates the prophetic poetry of the great English Poet. Christopher Marlowe is a character in "Only Lovers Left Alive" (he is a vampire who has been alive for centuries) and the film credits him with writing most of the work attributed to William Shakespeare. Ghost Dog celebrates not only Hagakure (The Book of the Samurai) but also Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Paterson includes a poem by William Carlos Williams (whose book also entitled "Paterson" is seen in some scenes in the movie).

On Feb. 2, 1994, Jarmusch appeared for an interview before an audience on the first night of a retrospective of his films held by the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, MN.

Is the older brother of Ann and Tom Jarmusch.

Up until 2005, has never made a film under a studio's watch.

Once almost died from eating wild mushrooms, which resulted in an interest in the study of mushroom.

He owns the negatives to all his own films, except one, Year of the Horse (1997), which he made for Neil Young.

Although Broken Flowers (2005) came out after Lost in Translation (2003), Jarmusch wrote the script exclusively for Bill Murray before Sofia Coppola.

At college one of his professors was cult director Nicholas Ray. They formed a friendship and Jarmusch became his assistant for the making of a film.

Guest with Johnny Depp of Belgrade Film Festival FEST in 1992.

Likes seeing his films once, with a paying audience that doesn't know he is there, after that he doesn't want to see them ever again.

Often described as the archetypal auteur of American independent film.

Is a member of rock band SQÜRL with film associate Carter Logan and sound engineer Shane Stoneback.

Stated that his goal was "to approximate real time for the audience.".

He doesn't have a personal e-mail account.

I know. It's all so . . . independent. I'm so sick of that word. I reach for my revolver when I hear the word 'quirky.' Or 'edgy.' Those words are now becoming labels that are slapped on products to sell them. Anyone who makes a film that is the film they want to make, and it is not defined by marketing analysis or a commercial enterprise, is independent. My movies are kind of made by hand. They're not polished -- they're sort of built in the garage. It's more like being an artisan in some way.

I feel so lucky. During the late 70's in New York, anything seemed possible. You could make a movie or a record and work part time, and you could find an apartment for 160 bucks a month. And the conversations were about ideas. No one was talking about money. It was pretty amazing. But looking back is dangerous. I don't like nostalgia. But, still, damn, it was fun. I'm glad I was there.

I'm happiest when I'm shooting the movie. Filming is like sex. Writing the script is like seduction, then shooting is like sex because you're doing the movie with other people. Editing is like being pregnant, and then you give birth and they take your baby away. After this process is done, I will watch the movie one more time with a paying audience that doesn't know I'm there, and then I will never see it again. I'm so sick of it.

I never talk to actors as a group. Only one at a time. I talk to them about being their characters. Never, ever, about the meaning of the scene. I don't want the actors overladen with research, so they grow stale.

I am interested in the non-dramatic moments in life. I'm not at all attracted to making films that are about drama. A few years back, I saw a biopic about a famous American abstract expressionist artist. And you know what? It really horrified me. All they did was reduce his life to the big dramatic moments you could pick out of any biography. If that's supposed to be a portrait of somebody, I just don't get it. It's so reductive. It just seems all wrong to me.

The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events.

I have no desire to make films for any kind of specific audience. What I want to do is make films that... tell stories, but somehow in an new way, not in a predictable form, not in the usual manipulative way that films seem to on their audiences.

[on his approach to cinema] When you make these films they do walk on their own after a certain point. Often, when I'm writing dialogue in a script, whatever's on paper for me is a sketch until you film it. It's not like I'm making them say words. I feel like I'm just transcribing what they're saying.

Robby Müller, I learned so much from this man about filmmaking, about a lot of things, about life in general and about light and about recording things and about capturing things in-the-moment and about trusting instincts. Robby and I had a really wonderful way of working: No storyboard, a shot list only if really necessary for ourselves. I still don't like making a shot list each day when I'm working. Robby's idea is about instincts, trusting your instinct and your intuition and Robby would always say things like: 'Of course we can plan everything in advance and when we go to that location it's a different time of day, the light is different, the clouds are different, so why would we cling to the idea we had previously? We must always be on our feet. Think on your feet.' And we did a lot of interesting things while scouting for this film together which was: We find the most dramatic, incredibly beautiful landscape you could imagine and then we would turn our backs on it and film the other way. [audience laughs] That was something that Robby said: 'Look how magnificent this is, we've seen it in a fucking calender! Let's look over there, it's a small tree and a rock, very sad and emotional, you know?' [audience laughs] So we would film that instead. And this is just one example of the kind of way that Robby thinks. And I learned so much from him, thinking that way. Don't look for the obvious, always keep your eyes open , keep thinking on your feet. Shooting a film is a process and you can't control everything in the process, so be open. Another thing Robby taught me was: O.K., you're shooting a scene outside and suddenly it starts raining. And most crews would say: 'Well, the scene doesn't take place in the rain, so let's pack up and we'll have to stop for today'. And Robby would be: 'I wonder what it would be like, if the scene's in the rain. Maybe it's much better'. Or if we already shot some of it: 'O.K. think of some dialogue where they say it's about the rain, you know?' Like, keep thinking, keep thinking, don't be set in your script. It's something that came from Nicholas Ray, who said: 'If you just gonna shoot the script then why bother?' And that's something Robby also instilled in me. Robby Müller is a kind of brilliant man who's a very rebellious teenager in part of his spirit and yet an incredibly technically gifted person.[Lincoln Center, April 2014]

[on the the funniest criticism he's ever had] My favorite? I'll translate it from the French. It was from a right-wing newspaper in the South of France about my movie Down by Law, which said, "Jim Jarmusch is celebrated by the French intelligentsia in a way that's reminiscent of deaf and dumb parents applauding their retarded child. He is 33 years old. This is the age that Christ was crucified on the cross. We can only hope for the same for the future of his film career." Woah! I used to carry that one around in my wallet.

...the beauty of a movie is that you walk in, you don't know anything about it, you enter a world that's new to you, and that's the magic of being transported. If you make a film, that magic is not there, because you were there while shooting it. After writing a film and shooting it and being in the editing room every day, you can never see it clearly. I think other people's perception of your film is more valid than your own, because they have that ability to see it for the first time.

You see, I start with actors that I want to make a character for. Then I collect a whole lot of details and then I sit down with them and make a connect the dots drawing out of them; see what for of picture it is becoming. I don't know what the story is or where it's going, at all. I just sort of jump in and start. In fact, I think I do it backwards. Most people have a story idea and in the end they cast it, but I start with the actors first.