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"In theory," I say, "you should be the accomplished artist who says complex and interesting things, and I'll be the benevolent parasite who encourages you and pretends to understand what you're talking about."
"In theory," says Jarmusch, sucking down a healthy dose of smoke. "We'll see about that."
In art school, one of my painting instructors took our class to see a film called Stranger Than Paradise. That was Jarmusch's first commercial release, and I became an instant fan. Over the next two decades, I followed faithfully as Jarmusch continued to create these heroically small, inimitably patient pictures, filled with austere absurdities and precise, silent punch lines: Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995), the Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert film/documentary Year of the Horse (1997), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), which he'd begun in 1986 as a series of black-and-white shorts. One of those shorts featured Bill Murray, star of Jarmusch's newest work, Broken Flowers, which recently received the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.
"Did you know Bill Murray before Coffee and Cigarettes?"
"Yeah, but not really. I wrote a script for Bill in 2001.
Bill Murray's ability to reveal Johnston's simultaneous anxieties and exhaustion without discernibly moving a muscle is a constant and solid pleasure to behold. It's some of his best work. The same _expression passes over Johnston's face when he regards a young girl annoying him with her toy horse on an airplane as when he finds himself painfully alone with an ex's daughter, Lolita (Alexis Dziena), parading through the house in the altogether. Same _expression, but the one appearance wields fatherly authority as clearly as the other betrays vulnerability, lust and fear. How the hell did Murray do that?
"He's a master of that minimal thing," says Jarmusch. "Which is kind of odd for someone initially known for painting in broad comedic strokes. And then to see him work with a tiny, fine, one-haired brush like that, you know? He's really pretty amazing. He can go either way, as far as you want him to."
In general, Jarmusch makes films wherein the pauses and inactions are as important as what transpires between them. But it's difficult to describe inactions in a script, and a venerable Hollywood equation--one page of script equals one minute onscreen--generally prevents studios from investing in such things. As a rule, no studio will even consider producing, for example, a 59-page script as a feature. Won't even look at it.
"The Huns cross Europe, raping and pillaging," says Jarmusch. "You know? That's only half a line, so that must take 12 seconds."
"The cells divide," I propose, "and the race wipes itself out. Five seconds."
"World war decimates the planet."
"My criticism of Hollywood is not that they make films that way, or that films are commercial products in their minds. That doesn't bother me. That's the nature of the 'entertainment industry,' or whatever. My real criticism is that they're so timid. They just force shit down people's throats because of their very conservative marketing analysis and all that. But it's always mysterious, what people are going to like. Even just on a business level--wouldn't it make sense to have a wider variety of products that cost less to produce? Wouldn't you have a better chance of increasing your profit margin? But I don't know. I'm not a business guy, so maybe I'm completely wrong."
Dave Shulman is a columnist for LA Weekly.

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