June 11, 2019
For 35 years, writer/director Jim Jarmusch has been one of the leading voices in American independent cinema. His films include "Stranger Than Paradise," "Down by Law," "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," "Coffee and Cigarettes," and "Paterson."
Jarmusch visited Philadelphia earlier this month to promote his latest film, the zombie movie "The Dead Don't Die," which opens Friday. He talked to Philly Voice about the film, his career, and whether those stories about directors being required to leave voicemails for Bill Murray are true.
The film, which mixes elements of comedy and horror, centers on weird events that take place in a small town, which later turn out to be a zombie invasion. There are allegories about climate change and other pressing matters for humanity, and film's biggest inspirations, Jarmusch said, are George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" movies, as well as the music of Frank Zappa. And speaking of music, the catchy title track, by Sturgill Simpson, plays throughout.
"I'm not a big zombie fan, I'm more of a vampire fan," said the director, who made a vampire movie, "Only Lovers Left Alive," in 2013. He called "Night of the Living Dead" "the touchstone, the godmother of our film… the same kind of social commentary that's in our film, 51 years later, is pretty much the same. The kind of dead-end of capitalist consumerism, it's in our film intentionally."
The film, in addition to the zombie stuff, includes some funny, off-kilter touches, such as a gas station covered in comic book memorabilia, one scene when the characters suddenly appear aware that they're characters in a movie, and the hilarious visual of the very tall Adam Driver driving around in a tiny smart car.
Why did Jarmusch make this film, at this particular point in his career?
"I started working on it a few years ago, and I wanted to make a zombie film because of its very broad metaphorical resonance," the director said. "It's one of the most obvious kind of metaphors."
The zombie apocalypse in the film is caused by "polar fracking," an energy extraction method that screws up the rotation of the earth, leading to re-animation of the dead.
"My biggest concern is ecological crisis that we're in," Jarmusch said. "My hero is Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Danish girl with Asperger's Syndrome who is leading all of Europe to wake up to a crisis- it's scary to me."
The film, which was shot in upstate New York, is set in a generic small town, which is meant to recall the Western Pennsylvania locales of "Night of the Living Dead" and other Romero pictures. The name of the town, Centerville, came from Frank Zappa's 1971 film "200 Motels."
Jarmusch's films occasionally have a big star or two in them, but his newest is different, as its cast consists of something of an all-star team of big name actors who have worked with the director before.
Bill Murray and Adam Driver play police officers, while Tilda Swinton is a mortician with a weakness for samurai swords. The cast also includes such Jarmusch veterans as Iggy Pop, Rosie Perez, Steve Buscemi and Tom Waits, as well as newcomers Chloe Sevigny, Selena Gomez and Danny Glover.
"The idea from the start, before I even wrote the script, is that I wanted to make a silly comic film like a film I made years ago 'Coffee and Cigarettes' with vignettes and I had a lot of actors I love in it," Jarmusch said. "So I thought I'll use a zombie structure where the people are sort of holed away, cordoned off against the zombies coming, and in the lag time, I can have them talk about any stupid stuff, or just silly. So I started with that, but then it became Centerville, and it changed."
He added that he wrote specific parts for Murray, Driver, Buscemi, Sevigny, and others, but also was able to get actors who he'd wanted to work, such as Carol Kane, Glover, and Gomez.
Murray had appeared in "Coffee and Cigarettes" and "Broken Flowers" for Jarmusch.
Soare those stories true, as detailed in South Jersey native Tommy Avellone's 2018 documentary "The Bill Murray Stories," that Murray only communicates with directors via a special voicemail box?
"That is true," Jarmusch said. "I have a little better in than that," he said, adding that while he has Murray's special number for getting in touch with him for roles, he's acquired a couple of other phone numbers for the actor over the years. "If it's about business or a project, I don't call the cell, I still call that number. But I bug him on the other number, just for goofy stuff."
The film is the highest-budgeted of the director's career, although he said the majority of that money didn't go into actor salaries.
"I know for me, personally, it's getting harder and harder and harder to finance things. It's just really hard, I think because I'm a bit marginal, and I'm not a big mainstream guy, so it's getting really hard for me."
However, the director feels good about the state of independent film itself.
"There's a healthiness to the form. You can never kill the form, it's just too beautiful. It's just such a beautiful form that people are going to use it to express themselves, you're not gonna kill it."
Jarmusch added that he has mixed feelings about the migration of much of movies to streaming services.
"I love seeing things with other people on a big screen. But at the same time, I love the fact that I can find an obscure Turkish film on YouTube, and watch it at my choice. So I love both things… I embrace new technology and old technology. I don't have a purely negative view of it."
He added that his last three films have been shot on digital video, and has he has been editing digitally since 1995.
And while Jarmusch hasn't ever shot a movie in Philadelphia, he's a devotee of the city's music.
"From TSOP to the Stylistics, I love all that stuff- and then you have Kurt Vile, and War on Drugs, lots of cool music."
"The Dead Don't Die" opens Friday at Ritz Five, AMC Cherry Hill, AMC Plymouth Meeting Mall, and other local theaters.
