Jim Jarmusch is one of the most prolific filmmakers and one with the most diverse list of films!
So, let’s find out some trivia and facts about this filmmaker!
- His full name is James Robert Jarmusch
- He was born in January 22, 1953
- He is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor, and composer
- He has been a major proponent of independent cinema since the 1980s
- Directing such films as Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Broken Flowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Paterson (2016)
- Stranger Than Paradise was added to the National Film Registry in December 2002
- As a musician, Jarmusch has composed music for his films
- And released two albums with Jozef van Wissem
- He was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
- He is the middle of three children of middle – class suburbanites
- His mother, of German and Irish descent, had been a reviewer of film and theatre for the Akron Beacon Journal before marrying his father
- His father was a businessman of Czech and German descent who worked for the B.F. Goodrich Company
- She introduced Jarmusch to cinema by leaving him at a local cinema to watch matinee double features while she ran errands
- The first adult film he recalls seeing was the 1958 cult classic Thunder Road
- The violence and darkness of which left an impression on the seven-year-old Jarmusch
- Another B-movie influence from his childhood was Ghoulardi
- An eccentric Cleveland television show which featured horror films
- Despite his enthusiasm for film, Jarmusch was an avid reader in his youth
- And had a greater interest in literature
- Which was encouraged by his grandmother
- Though he refused to attend church with his Episcopalian parents
- Jim Jarmusch credits literature with shaping his metaphysical beliefs
- And leading him to reconsider theology in his mid-teens
- From his peers he developed a taste for counterculture
- And he and his friends would steal the records and books of their older siblings
- This included works by William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and The Mothers of Invention
- They made fake identity documents which allowed them to visit bars at the weekend but also the local art house cinema
- Which typically showed pornographic films
- But would occasionally feature underground films such as Robert Downey, Sr.’s Putney Swope and Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls
- At one point, he took an apprenticeship with a commercial photographer
- After graduating from high school in 1971, Jarmusch moved to Chicago
- He enrolled in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University
- After being asked to leave due to neglecting to take any journalism courses, Jarmusch favored literature and art history
- He transferred to Columbia University the following year
- With the intention of becoming a poet
- At Columbia, he studied English and American literature under professors including New York School avant garde poets Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro
- At Columbia, he began to write short “semi-narrative abstract pieces”
- And edited the undergraduate literary journal The Columbia Review
- During his final year at Columbia, Jarmusch moved to Paris for what was initially a summer semester on an exchange program
- But this turned into ten months
- There, he worked as a delivery driver for an art gallery
- And spent most of his time at the Cinémathèque Française
- Jim Jarmusch graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975
- Broke and working as a musician in New York City after returning from Paris in 1976
- He applied on a whim to the graduate film school of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts
- Despite his lack of experience in filmmaking, his submission of a collection of photographs and an essay about film secured his acceptance into the program
- He studied there for four years
- Meeting fellow students and future collaborators Sara Driver, Tom DiCillo, Howard Brookner, and Spike Lee in the process
- During the late 1970s in New York City, Jarmusch and his contemporaries were part of an alternative culture scene centered on the CBGB music club
- In his final year at New York University, Jarmusch worked as an assistant to the film noir director Nicholas Ray
- Who was at that time teaching in the department
- In an anecdote, Jarmusch recounted of the formative experience of showing his mentor his first script
- Ray disapproved of its lack of action
- To which Jarmusch responded after meditating on the critique by reworking the script to be even less eventful
- On Jarmusch’s return with the revised script, Ray reacted favourably to his student’s dissent
- Citing approvingly the young student’s obstinate independence
- Jarmusch was the only person Ray brought to work, as his personal assistant, on Lightning Over Water
- A documentary about his dying years on which he was collaborating with Wim Wenders
- Ray died in 1979 after a long fight with cancer
- A few days afterwards, having been encouraged by Ray and New York underground filmmaker Amos Poe and using scholarship funds given by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation to pay for his school tuition
- Jarmusch started work on a film for his final project
- The university, unimpressed with Jarmusch’s use of his funding as well as the project itself, promptly refused to award him a degree
- Jim Jarmusch rarely discusses his personal life in public
- He divides his time between New York City and the Catskill Mountains
- He stopped drinking coffee in 1986
- The year of the first installment of Coffee and Cigarettes
- Although he continues to smoke cigarettes
- In a February 2014 interview, Jarmusch stated that he is not interested in eternal life
- As there’s something about the cycle of life that’s very important
- And to have that removed would be a burden
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