Interview (Written): Jim Jarmusch

An Indiewire interview with Jim Jarmusch:

Jim Jarmusch is member of that elite (non-existent) club of multi-hyphenate, fiercely independent filmmakers that have covered almost every role in the filmmaking process. Included in this group are the likes of Robert Rodriguez, Julie Delpy and Shane Carruth. For Jarmusch, music has always been a vital part of his creative expression, whether scoring his films, performing with his band, casting musicians in his films or shooting documentaries about them. His latest film “Only Lovers Left Alive,” not only takes the vampire genre back from teenagers with a smart and funny screenplay, but casts one of the lead vampires, Adam (Tom Hiddlestone) as a musician with a penchant for expensive, classic guitars and analogue recording, with Jarmusch performing the guitar parts on the soundtrack.

Interviewed at Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece, Jarmusch talks about his latest film and the importance of music in his life. “Only Lovers Alive” opens in select theaters this Friday.

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What’s your view of independent cinema in the U.S. at the moment?

It depends how you define independent cinema. It’s become a kind of marketing tool, especially in America, so I don’t really know what it means. Things have changed, and the worldwide economic crisis, and the new ways of films being distributed, has changed the way they can be financed. I don’t know what the future is, but I know that the new wave of Greek films, using small budgets, is really the future, and maybe the best way. If you look at the history of any art form, let’s just say of rock ’n’ roll for example, you find that it goes in cycles and there are cycles where, for example, when I was younger we were tired of this big stadium rock ’n’ roll, this record company, commercial rock ’n’ roll that was forced on you, in a mainstream way. So it’s very important that, starting, maybe, with “The Stooges,” or the Sex Pistols, or the Ramones; the idea is to reduce down to the essential thing. Don’t worry that you’re not a professional, and this is the future, in a way, where cinema is now. Strip away everything.

I’m much more interested in seeing a film by a Greek filmmaker that made film for $200,000 than I am in seeing “The Great Gatsby” by Baz Luhrmann. That’s just my taste, but cinema needs to be reduced to its essential poetry. It’s a cycle that happens, and we’re in it now, maybe forcibly by worldwide economics, and maybe that’s a very good thing. Already in Greece, Romania, for years now in Iran, there are these beautiful gardens of new cinema that come in places where you would think, “How can they be making films in places the crisis is so severe?” But it’s happening. I’m not a predictor, but I embrace people finding their own way to express themselves. I have a lot of hope for it. You cannot kill these beautiful forms, but you just can’t help them with a lot of money.

Here are two scenes from Jarmusch’s most recent movie Only Lovers Left Alive:

For the rest of the interview, go here.

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