Jim Jarmusch names his most ridiculous movie: “It’ll be a running joke”
No list of cinema’s most idiosyncratic independent filmmakers is complete without Jim Jarmusch. Ever since his big screen debut with 1980’s Permanent Vacation, the alliterative auteur has delighted cinephiles with a plethora of varied movies, ranging from the absurdist Stranger Than Paradise to heartfelt comedy-drama Broken Flowers, neo-noir Down by Law to the slice-of-life drama Paterson.
The latter starred Adam Driver in the title role, where he plays a bus driver who lives in the titular New Jersey city and has big dreams of becoming a poet. His wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) also harbours her own creative ambitions, with the central trio rounded out by an English bulldog named Marvin, with canine thespian Nellie winning the ‘Palm Dog’ award at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance.
Paterson is undoubtedly one of the most straightforward entries in Jarmusch’s filmography, offering an intimate slice-of-life drama that’s as unvarnished and authentic as they come. And yet, the director was adamant that Driver’s character trying to wriggle his way out of an existential crisis was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever done.
Everything about Paterson is intentionally understated, as he explained to HeyUGuys. “Paterson is very close to New York, and nobody ever talks about it,” he said, “I went there, and I sat by the falls in the same place that Paterson sits in the movie, and I walked around the factories, and I read the beginning of the poem Paterson by William Carlos Williams. Very long poem.”
Jarmusch sat in a place called Paterson, reading a poem called Paterson and imagining a story about a guy named Paterson. It was a little odd, maybe, but hardly ridiculous. However, he would disagree. “I translated that into a ridiculous thing of ‘OK, his name will be Paterson’, and it’ll be a running joke in the film,” the filmmaker explained. “And Paterson’s a fairly common name, and there are people in Paterson named Paterson, so… I don’t know, that’s as much as there is behind it.”
A key moment in the movie comes when Paterson finally agrees to get his poems published. Unfortunately, before he goes to the copy shop, his notebook is ripped to shreds by the dog, destroying all of his efforts. “It’s a pretty dumb thing, I admit,” Jarmusch claims of his own work. “A lot of dumb things in the movie. The dog eats his poetry – that’s ridiculous. Stupid. The biggest drama is when the bus breaks down. It’s kind of a ridiculous movie plot-wise, I agree. Or I’m aware.”
Paterson is a homely, bittersweet movie about the potential and the purpose of creativity. It’s far from ridiculous in the traditional sense, but as Jarmusch said, he knows his films inside and out. If anyone is able to pass judgement on them, it’s him.
That said, it’s nonetheless unusual for the creative mind behind the lo-fi zombie flick The Dead Don’t Die, the vampiric romantic tragedy Only Lovers Left Alive, and Forest Whitaker’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai to think a dog ruining a book of amateur poetry was the pick of the ridiculous bunch.
