Jim Jar­musch: ​‘Teenagers define our cul­ture – Bil­lie Eil­ish is a genius’

Hav­ing left his own inim­itable mark on the vam­pire genre in 2013’s Only Lovers Left Alive, Amer­i­can indie god­head Jim Jar­musch has turned his atten­tion to anoth­er of horror’s most endur­ing mon­sters for his 13^th nar­ra­tive fea­ture. Fea­tur­ing a stacked cast of Jar­musch reg­u­lars, includ­ing Adam Dri­ver, Til­da Swin­ton, Bill Mur­ray, Chloë Sevi­gny, Iggy Pop and RZA, The Dead Don’t Die is an irrev­er­ent zom­bie com­e­dy that takes aim at cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca while flash­ing a sub­tle thumbs up towards the younger generation.

LWLies: This is the first film you’ve made since Trump became pres­i­dent. To what extent does it reflect your per­son­al con­cerns about the state of things?

Jar­musch: First off, may I just say I don’t give a fuck about Don­ald Trump. He’s not my con­cern, he’s not my inter­est. What has been dis­heart­en­ing for me is a lot of my friends who dis­like Don­ald Trump spend all of their time read­ing about what he did today and what he tweet­ed. But he means noth­ing to me – he’s just a real­i­ty TV pre­sen­ter. What means some­thing to me is the eco­log­i­cal cri­sis we face and the cor­po­rate over­lords behind Trump.

Let’s talk about the film’s eco­log­i­cal theme then, specif­i­cal­ly how it con­nects to the zom­bie genre.

Well, zom­bies are a very potent metaphor for human dead­ness. They’re emp­ty, soul­less ves­sels, they lack empa­thy and have a basic inabil­i­ty to inter­act with the world around them. This idea real­ly begins with [George A] Romero because before him, zom­bies were like voodoo enti­ties that could be con­trolled and pro­grammed to car­ry out cer­tain tasks. [Imper­son­ates zom­bie] ​‘Aggh… Kill. Don­ald. Trump.’

Since Romero, the zom­bies have become us, and they come from with­in the social struc­ture, not out­side it like Franken­stein or Godzil­la. But they are also vic­tims because they are invari­ably the result of some stu­pid thing humans did, bring­ing a virus back from space, or in this case polar frack­ing. But I don’t real­ly like zom­bies – I much pre­fer vam­pires. I’ve nev­er seen The Walk­ing Dead, for exam­ple. Although one bad ass zom­bie movie I real­ly loved was Train to Busan. As Tom Waits would say, that movie real­ly combed my hair.

It’s telling that Tom Waits’ char­ac­ter, Her­mit Bob, is the only one who doesn’t become a zombie.

That’s right, Her­mit Bob and also the three teenagers from the deten­tion cen­tre. I wouldn’t let you see them become zom­bies because I love them. Teenagers, man, they define our cul­ture – just look what they’ve giv­en us over the years, whether it’s Mary Shel­ley, or [Arthur] Rim­baud, or it’s the songs Car­ole King wrote as a teenag­er. Now you’ve got a huge pop star like Bil­lie Eil­ish, who’s just a musi­cal genius. So the teenagers in this film are the hope, and Her­mit Bob rep­re­sents a shift away from con­sumerism which we all must make if we’re going to survive.

Do you think there’s more we all could be doing to com­bat the eco­log­i­cal cri­sis we face today?

Yes, def­i­nite­ly. My heart goes out to the Sun­rise Move­ment and all the young peo­ple whose objec­tive is to make us aware that we have maybe 12 years before we go 1.5 degrees warmer, mean­ing real, real prob­lems and irre­versible dev­as­ta­tion. Or the Extinc­tion Rebel­lion in Britain and Europe, or Gre­ta Thun­berg – these peo­ple are real­ly work­ing at some­thing. Some­times I feel like I’m just part of the prob­lem. I drink out of plas­tic fuck­ing bot­tles, I have cred­it cards, I dri­ve a fos­sil-burn­ing vehi­cle, I fly in air­planes. I have friends who are activists and I real­ly respect them. Gee, I’m just a guy mak­ing a sil­ly zom­bie movie.

The zom­bie genre is con­stant­ly rein­vent­ing itself while build­ing on the lega­cy of direc­tors like Romero. In The Dead Don’t Die, the zom­bies dif­fer in the way they are des­ic­cat­ed – they turn to dust.

There were two rea­sons for this: visu­al­ly, I liked the idea of hav­ing dust spray every­where when the zom­bies are killed; and also I had no inter­est in mak­ing a splat­ter movie. Imag­ine the end scene if the zom­bies had blood – I couldn’t even watch it. When I was writ­ing the film I thought about the dust and I realised, you know, we’re 75 per cent flu­id. I took a walk that day and I thought, ​‘Wow, I’m basi­cal­ly just a cross between a water bal­loon and a sausage.’ It’s kin­da freaky, man.

Your zom­bies behave in a curi­ous man­ner, too.

Yes, they have a resid­ual mem­o­ry of what they used to do. So for instance their cloth­ing indi­cates what they used to wear. The Cof­fee Zom­bies are my hero zom­bies, they’re the first ones we see and the only ones I real­ly want­ed to do some­thing real­ly bloody with. What I told the actors [Iggy Pop and Sara Dri­ver] is, imag­ine you guys were com­ing back from a Blue Öyster Cult con­cert in 1973 on a motor­cy­cle and you crashed and died. So that’s what they’re wear­ing; they were rock ​’n’ rollers from the ​’70s.

Where would your zom­bie alter ego instinc­tive­ly go?

It might be a musi­cal instru­ment store, or a book­store. Or you might find me in a video store. [Imper­son­ates zom­bie] ​‘Kau-ris-mä-ki’

The Dead Don’t Die is released 12 July. Read the LWLies review.