Jim Jarmusch Quotes

A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren`t in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.

I wanted to make an Indian character who wasn`t either a) the savage that must be eliminated, the force of nature that`s blocking the way for industrial progress, or b) the noble innocent that knows all and is another cliche. I wanted him to be a complicated human being.

I start with actors that I know personally or I know their work, and there are things about their work or their presence or their own personality that make a character, that exaggerates some qualities and suppresses other qualities. It`s always a real collaboration for me.

I`m happiest when I`m shooting the movie. Filming is like sex. Writing the script is like seduction, then shooting is like sex because you`re doing the movie with other people. Editing is like being pregnant, and then you give birth and they take your baby away. After this process is done, I will watch the movie one more time with a paying audience that doesn`t know I`m there, and then I will never see it again. I`m so sick of it.

I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don`t like looking back. I don`t even like talking about `em! So I`m really digging back in my memory because I don`t like to sit and look at my films again.

I started working with friends of mine and that, to some degree, continues.

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you`ll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

I consider myself a dilettante in a positive way, and I always have. That affects my sense of filmmaking.

I feel so lucky. During the late 70`s in New York, anything seemed possible. You could make a movie or a record and work part time, and you could find an apartment for 160 bucks a month. And the conversations were about ideas. No one was talking about money. It was pretty amazing. But looking back is dangerous. I don`t like nostalgia. But, still, damn, it was fun. I`m glad I was there.

I didn`t get the degree because in my last year, for my thesis film I made a feature called Permanent Vacation and they`d given me a scholarship, the Louis B Mayer fellowship and they made a mistake.

What I did was I completed the half-hour film, but before really showing it, I wrote two more sections for a potential feature film which I didn`t think would really happen, but at least I had it in case.

I didn`t get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one.

I like doing them and they`re ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don`t have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They`re really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

Aw, man, is that the only adjective they know? It`s like every time I make a goddamn movie, the word quirky" is hauled out in the American reviews. Now I see it`s being applied to Wes Anderson, too. All of a sudden, his films are quirky. And Sofia Coppola is quirky. It`s just so goddamn lazy."

I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

I didn`t go to classes there, but ended up at the Cinematheque, and there it opened up even wider because there I saw a variety of films from all over the world.

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal - a small newspaper.

I`m stubborn. I have to fight. The studios want to be your partner in the creative process. That`s why I find most of my financing overseas. I don`t let the Money give me notes on my scripts. I don`t allow the Money on the set. I don`t allow the Money in the editing room. These days, even the little independent studios, they act like Hollywood. Some kid is making a movie for $500,000, and they want the final cut. Seems like the squares are taking over everything.

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we`re really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events.

I know. It`s all so . . . independent. I`m so sick of that word. I reach for my revolver when I hear the word `quirky.` Or `edgy.` Those words are now becoming labels that are slapped on products to sell them. Anyone who makes a film that is the film they want to make, and it is not defined by marketing analysis or a commercial enterprise, is independent. My movies are kind of made by hand. They`re not polished -- they`re sort of built in the garage. It`s more like being an artisan in some way.

I`d wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

I never talk to actors as a group. Only one at a time. I talk to them about being their characters. Never, ever, about the meaning of the scene. I don`t want the actors overladen with research, so they grow stale.

The intention was to shoot short films that can exist as shorts independently, but when I put them all together, there are things that echo through them like the dialogue repeats; the situation is always the same, the way they`re shot is very simple and the same.

Hopefully, if not it`s not working right. I`m like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn`t have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.

I don`t like American football. I think it`s boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It`s played on a diamond.

I was very lucky and eventually showed the film, got some good responses, and some people helped to make the longer version of the film.

I love rehearsing because in rehearsals there are no mistakes, nothing is wrong, some things apply or lead you to focus on the character and the things that don`t apply are equally valuable because they lead you to towards what does.

When I left Ohio when I was 17 and ended up in New York and realised that not all films had the giant crab monsters in them, it really opened up a lot of things for me.

I`ve always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there.

It`s great that the audience have their own different takes on what they have just seen, and don`t know all the answers. Often, I don`t know all the answers either.

I prefer to be subcultural rather than mass-cultural. I`m not interested in hitting the vein of the mainstream.

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn`t play, it has a poignancy to it.

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don`t understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn`t understand what they were talking about.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

I am interested in the non-dramatic moments in life. I`m not at all attracted to making films that are about drama. A few years back, I saw a biopic about a famous American abstract expressionist artist. And you know what? It really horrified me. All they did was reduce his life to the big dramatic moments you could pick out of any biography. If that`s supposed to be a portrait of somebody, I just don`t get it. It`s so reductive. It just seems all wrong to me.

Baseball is one of the most beautiful games. It is. It is a very Zen-like game.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.