Jim Jarmusch Talks Family, Filmmaking, & His Love for Charli xcx
With Father Mother Sister Brother, the cult icon turns his deadpan humor toward the complicated bonds between parents and their adult children.
Since the 1980s, you’ve been considered a hero of American independent cinema. Your tenderly funny new film, Father Mother Sister Brother, which you both wrote and directed, tells three different stories about grown-up siblings and their parents, with an ensemble cast that includes Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, Tom Waits, Vicky Krieps, and Indya Moore. What made you want to explore the complex kinds of love and understanding—and misunderstanding—in families?
Well, I started with “Gee, it’d be cool if Tom Waits was Adam Driver’s father.” Parents are not honest with their children for various reasons: They want to protect their own boundaries, or be a guide to them, or conceal things about themselves. In the first chapter, the son [Driver] needs love from his father [Waits] so much that he allows himself to be duped. But is it a bad thing? The whole point of this film is to not judge anyone. I left home when I was 17. I wasn’t close with my father. I was close with my mother, but I didn’t keep in contact with them much for years.
You grew up in Akron, Ohio, with a brother, Tom, who’s an artist, and a sister, Ann, a writer and editor. Is it true that your mother wrote about movies?
Yes, my mother [Betty Jarmusch] was a film reviewer for the Akron Beacon Journal before I was born. She reported on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall getting married in Ohio. She took a train to New York with her own money to review Marlon Brando onstage, and she coined the term “animal magnetism” in reference to him. When I went to Florida on a vacation with my mother, sister, and father, she took us to the drive-in to see Thunder Road, with Robert Mitchum. I was 7 or something. That really did it for me. Hillbilly criminals with fucking souped-up cars and illegal alcohol, and the cops are after them. Just incredible.
Your second feature, Stranger Than Paradise [1984], is a beloved classic of New York independent film. You moved to the city about a decade before that, at age 17, to study at Columbia University.
I came here partly because one of my best friends in Ohio, [the composer] Phil Kline, came to Columbia University. Immediately, I met the writer Luc Sante, now Lucy Sante, who’s one of my closest friends. We had combined interests in the emerging punk rock scene, the New York School poets, the Beat poets, all kinds of abstract expressionism, avant-garde music, jazz, and experimental stuff. At one point, there was a little bar that lasted only a year or so called Madam Rosa’s. I’d hang out with Fab 5 Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Futura 2000, Mick Jones from the Clash, and cool artists like Barbara Kruger.
In Father Mother Sister Brother, Driver plays the square office-worker son of a secretly hip dad, while in another storyline, Blanchett plays a straitlaced woman with a free-spirited sister. You often cast actors against type.
I originally wrote for Cate to be the mischievous sister and Vicky to be the nerdy one. I gave the script to Cate first, and she said, “Could I be the other one?” Vicky was thrilled, because she wanted to be the mischievous one!
At 72, you’ve directed 16 feature films and documentaries. It’s a tough business—how do you deal with people who say no?
I just go to the next one. I also say no. I own the copyright. I choose my collaborators. I have final cut. I write the script. I will take your notes, but I’m under no obligation to address them. If you agree, let’s go forward. If you don’t, let’s not waste each other’s time. Iggy Pop taught me what he calls “brat theory.” He said, “You know, man, what you gotta do is, you gotta be a brat. You gotta say, ‘No, I don’t do it that way.’ And then they’ll come back and say, ‘Okay, let’s talk about it.’ If you [always] say okay, then they’re just gonna walk all over you.” Speaking of brat, I love Charli xcx. I love her style and attitude, man. She does it her fucking way.
Your signature look is sunglasses and a suit. Where do you get them?
Now I’m a Saint Laurent guy. I love their stuff, and I love Anthony Vaccarello. The majority of the money in Father Mother Sister Brother, or a large part, was from Saint Laurent Productions. It’s the only time I got money from an artist. I’m not a fashionista, but I am a style person. They’ve given me some suits and now the sunglasses, man. I couldn’t afford it if I had to buy it.
Self-portrait by Jim Jarmusch. Artwork by June Leaf: Courtesy of the Estate of June Leaf.
