Jim Jar­musch: ​‘The spir­it of punk is even more valu­able now than ever’

Jim Jar­musch, one of the lead­ers of the New York City DIY scene of the ​’80s and one of the biggest names in inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing since then, has always placed moments of artis­tic appre­ci­a­tion in his films. Even his more genre-ori­ent­ed movies, Ghost Dog or Dead Man, sub­vert expec­ta­tions by allow­ing their pro­tag­o­nists to pick up more books than weapons.

Jarmusch’s cul­tur­al vorac­i­ty hits its peak with both of his new movies this year. Gimme Dan­ger – a doc about The Stooges that Jar­musch made as a gift to his friend Iggy Pop – is a deep dive into the band’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry and influ­ence, while Pater­son uses the casu­al genius of William Car­los Williams as a frame to cel­e­brate the cre­ativ­i­ty of a con­tent bus dri­ver (Adam Dri­ver) and his wife (Gol­shifteh Fara­hani). Pater­son depicts artis­tic engage­ment as a road to a ful­fill­ing life, so we dis­cussed Jarmusch’s cre­ative process and how he feels about the cul­tur­al land­scape now.

LWLies: Was it dif­fi­cult to receive fund­ing, or maybe just a home, for a low stakes film like Paterson?

Jar­musch: Well, it’s always get­ting hard­er and hard­er. And yet, I was very lucky to get K5 in Ger­many. That became world sales, and then we got Ama­zon. I got a lit­tle bit more from Le Pacte, whom I’ve worked with for years. So, it worked out. The busi­ness side is not so good for me, but we had the abil­i­ty to do what­ev­er we want­ed to do. They had faith in us as film­mak­ers. They didn’t inter­fere with us in any way. It was good.

You’re men­tion­ing all these stu­dios. Are you notic­ing any changes in the indus­try from when you were start­ing out mak­ing inde­pen­dent films?

Oh yeah, it’s com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. The whole the­atri­cal thing is very dif­fer­ent. Now the major­i­ty of the mar­ket is stream­ing. It used to be that films were just the­atri­cal and sec­on­dar­i­ly video tapes and DVDs. It’s sort of flipped now as far as what’s the biggest share. There­fore, how peo­ple per­ceive what you make has changed. It’s com­plete­ly different.

Do you think these changes are per­haps for the best?

I don’t want to trou­ble myself with think­ing they’re bad, because they are. To pre­serve my san­i­ty and abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue is to accept what is and do my best to make some­thing that we’re hap­py to get out there. So, I can’t wor­ry too much about it. But I’ve been lucky. Ama­zon and K5 have been great. They’ve been nice, respect­ful, and very pleasant.

This is your first elec­tron­ic score. Was it excit­ing to step into that realm? I assume it’s a very com­plex and deep world.

When I was even writ­ing the film, I knew that I want­ed an elec­tron­ic score. I love the his­to­ry of elec­tron­ic music, as I do many types of music. My first incli­na­tion was I’m going to get dif­fer­ent peo­ple that I like. I’m going to get some­thing from Boards of Cana­da, maybe I get some­thing from Bri­an Eno, and then I put togeth­er a score from all these things. I start­ed doing that in the edit­ing room, and I found out it wasn’t real­ly ide­al, because it wasn’t quite fit­ting. The piece might be too fore­bod­ing, it might be too dark, it might be too light, it might be too sweet.

Carter Logan – who was a pro­duc­er on the film and has worked with me for years – and I are in a band togeth­er called SQÜRL. Along with our stage shows, we have been doing live scores to Man Ray’s sur­re­al­ist films from the ​’20s. We’re going to do more next year. We love doing that, and when we do that Carter plays drums, he has a way to trig­ger sam­ples, and he has a synth. I have an elec­tric gui­tar, an effects ped­al and a synth. Fonzy (Affon­so Gonçalves, the edi­tor) said, ​‘Look man, you and Carter have synths, why don’t you sketch a few things and just try.’ I was like, ​‘In all my free time, Fonzy?’ He said ​‘Well, just try some­thing over the weekend’.

So we did, and it was work­ing real­ly well. So, over three week­ends, using Garage­band and a box of stuff, we cre­at­ed this. Now we’re going to put it on an album. I’m going to go away and expand and make the longer pieces work. Our only rule was no sequenc­ing. I’m not against sequenc­ing, but we didn’t want to let the synths play them­selves; we’ll play them ana­logue. That was our only thing. Carter might have added in a lit­tle elec­tric bass, and I’d put in an acoustic gui­tar and use wine glass­es as glass vio­lins. I mixed them way back because they real­ly pierced through. But we just used those things.

It’s good to hear there’s some sort of con­nec­tion between Man Ray and Paterson.

In a round­about way. The coolest thing was when we per­formed a cou­ple of nights to over a thou­sand peo­ple in New York at the Man Ray thing. After the sec­ond night a ston­er guy came up to us and said, ​‘Dude, it is so cool that Man Ray made videos for your music before you were born!’ We were like ​‘Thank you. That’s our best com­pli­ment.’ We loved it. Pater­son has this great affin­i­ty for cre­ativ­i­ty in peo­ple in tra­di­tion­al­ly non-cre­ative careers.

Do you think there’s a big dif­fer­ence between the type of per­son who would do that and the type of per­son who would actu­al­ly make a career out of that cre­ative thing?

There are no poets that were ever in it for the mon­ey. Nobody makes mon­ey being a poet. You scrounge, you have anoth­er job. Wal­lace Stevens was an insur­ance exec­u­tive. Frank O’Hara was the cura­tor for the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in New York. There’s a kind of puri­ty of intent if you’re a poet. You’re not doing it for the mon­ey or the fame, you’re doing it because the form is strong and your hand is strong. I believe artists should make things that they would like. As soon as you start think­ing about, ​‘How will the world receive it?’ and ​‘will I be famous?’, then you’re doing some­thing else. That’s okay to do that, but I can’t do that. When we make films, we make some­thing we would like to see. When Carter and I make music, we’re mak­ing some­thing we would like to hear. If oth­er peo­ple find it, then that’s great. If they don’t, we’re not going to change it so that they might. It’s not the way to approach it for me.

Have you seen much of Dri­ver or Farahani’s films before shoot­ing? What qual­i­ties of them did you think would work well as this real­ly hap­py domes­tic couple?

I hadn’t seen much of either of them – just a lit­tle bit. I saw Adam do some small things in dif­fer­ent films and I heard some inter­views with him that were very impres­sive and made me want to meet him. I like his look, I like his approach to act­ing, I like his voice, and I like his rhythm. So on meet­ing him I was like, ​‘Yeah, this guy is great.’ I first saw Gol­shifteh a long time ago in 2006 in a film called Half Moon – the Kur­dish-Iran­ian film. Beau­ti­ful film. She was quite young when I saw her in that. I’ve seen her in a few oth­er films since then. I just loved the idea of not mak­ing Lau­ra an Amer­i­can actress. I thought, ​‘I’m going to have trou­ble from K5 or Ama­zon when I say I want Gol­shifteh for a lead role. I have to tell them who I’m cast­ing. They didn’t have the right to say no, but they had the right to say their opin­ion. Their opin­ion was ​‘She’s fan­tas­tic. We love her.’ Ama­zon was like ​“She’s great. What a great idea.’ I wasn’t ask­ing their per­mis­sion, but that was a nice thing. I just love her, she’s fantastic.

Have you seen About Elly by Asghar Farhadi?

She’s great in that. Yes I have. She is. She’s great.

Do you think young cre­ative types today have an out­let sim­i­lar to some­thing like punk in the 70s or the ener­gy in New York in the ​’80s? And are you see­ing any cre­ative modes for dissent?

Cre­ativ­i­ty and dar­ing cre­ativ­i­ty are like weeds – you can’t stop them grow­ing even if you want­ed to. It has to do with want­i­ng to say some­thing, hav­ing inspi­ra­tion and ignor­ing social media or the neg­a­tive parts like, ​‘How many likes do I get?’ Of course, there are peo­ple all over this plan­et. There are lit­tle gar­dens in film­mak­ing and music. You just have to find it, but cer­tain­ly it’s out there. There’s a lot of great stuff going on, you just have to look for it.

Could you think of any spe­cif­ic peo­ple – maybe younger peo­ple – who could do this?

I find things. I just dis­cov­ered a band from Cana­da called Nad­ja. It’s two drone musi­cians. I love a band from Chile called Föllakzoid. I don’t know if you know the elec­tron­ic music of Ty Brax­ton. He’s ground-break­ing – the future of fuck­ing music. I love Dead Skele­tons from Ice­land. I love Blanck Mass with one of the guys from Fuck But­tons. There’s a lot of stuff. I love this gui­tarist Steve Gun. He played for a while with Kurt Vile. I like a psych band from the West Coast called Eter­nal Tapes­try. I like these two girls called The Cas­ket Girls. I like a lot of stuff. I like some more main­stream hip hop stuff. It’s not nor­mal­ly my taste but I think Kendrick Lamar is a fuck­ing musi­cal genius. I love Run the Jew­els, but that’s not young, unknown stuff. There’s a lot out there. I could go home and make you a good list, but I can’t do it right off of my head.

Punk was about ques­tion­ing author­i­ty and see­ing ener­gy. Do you think the form of drone music or the con­tent of some­thing like Run the Jew­els are just as radical?

I think you can be rad­i­cal even from a main­stream place like Kendrick Lamar, or from a very under­ground place. But it’s found in the peo­ple who aren’t look­ing for main­stream recog­ni­tion. That’s the dilem­ma of it. True punk wasn’t try­ing to get main­stream FM air­play. They had some­thing to say, and they fuck­ing said it. That’s not dead, that spir­it is there. It’s even more valu­able now than ever.

Is there any advice you’d give to Jim Jar­musch of 1980?

No, I can’t even think that way.

Do you still keep up with your cohorts of that time? I’m curi­ous specif­i­cal­ly about Amos Poe.

Oh yeah, I keep in touch with a lot of my friends back then – Amos Poe and James Nares. I see lots of peo­ple. I just saw Lee Quinones, the mas­ter graf­fi­ti artist. I see Char­lie Ahearn. I see a lot of peo­ple for sure still.