The 73-year-old has been at the cutting edge of US independent cinema since the 1980s. As Father Mother Sister Brother opens in the UK, he talks about grief, greed and ‘doing crazy shit’ with Steve Coogan
I
n 1991, Jim Jarmusch was casting for his anthology film Night on Earth. The premise was simple: five taxi drivers in five cities pick up passengers, set to a soundtrack by Tom Waits. The writer-director wanted Gena Rowlands to play a passenger, but she took some persuading. “Night on Earth was the first film she’d made since losing John [the director John Cassavetes, her husband] and she wasn’t sure. Eventually she said: ‘OK, I’ll be in this film for you.’” Jarmusch does a perfect impression of Rowlands, as he does with everyone he quotes – it’s quite a talent.
In the first vignette, Winona Ryder picks up Rowlands, who plays a casting director. Ryder, chewing gum, baseball cap on backwards, lights a cigarette; Rowlands, all old-school Hollywood elegance, sits in the back, asking Ryder about her hopes and dreams. Ryder turns down Rowlands’ offer of potential stardom, declaring that her dream is not to act, but to be a mechanic.
Watching it again now, knowing how she was grieving, Rowlands seems infused with melancholy and quiet humanity – but then, that was her great gift to cinema. As for Jarmusch’s gift, it’s surely the empathic, idiosyncratic indie films in which he elicits low-key performances from big stars. He always puts his characters at the centre of his films – as he once said, he has no interest in writing scripts about “sex, revenge, making a lot of money”.
