Stars: Cedric Jonathan, Kennedy Wilson, Jaqueline McNulty, Craig Nigh, Van Quattro, Brenna Jones, Nik L. Guerra, Larissa Dali, Gary Kent, Don Daro, Michael L Garcia Jr. | Written by Stefan Ruf, John Herndon | Directed by Stefan Ruf
Stefan Ruf says that Coyote Woman, his follow-up to Motorpsycho Maniacs aka Sex Terrorists on Wheels, was inspired by both Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue and Bruno Mattei’s Scalps. That combination of critically acclaimed sadism and grindhouse sleaze certainly caught my attention and all but demanded I give it a review.
Deep Water and his warriors attack a family of settlers, scalping the parents and abducting the two daughters Iris who escapes on the way back to their village, and Cynthia (Jaqueline McNulty; The Great Turkey Miracle) who is adopted into the tribe.
Ten years later, J.J. Glanton and his right-hand man Judge Holden decide they’ve had enough of the Texas Rangers...
Stefan Ruf says that Coyote Woman, his follow-up to Motorpsycho Maniacs aka Sex Terrorists on Wheels, was inspired by both Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue and Bruno Mattei’s Scalps. That combination of critically acclaimed sadism and grindhouse sleaze certainly caught my attention and all but demanded I give it a review.
Deep Water and his warriors attack a family of settlers, scalping the parents and abducting the two daughters Iris who escapes on the way back to their village, and Cynthia (Jaqueline McNulty; The Great Turkey Miracle) who is adopted into the tribe.
Ten years later, J.J. Glanton and his right-hand man Judge Holden decide they’ve had enough of the Texas Rangers...
- 5/3/2024
- by Jim Morazzini
- Nerdly
Joe Perry of Aerosmith was asked to name his favorite Beatles song and he picked a classic track from The White Album. The tune in question doesn’t sound much like Aerosmith’s hits, but it was innovative nonetheless. Perry also revealed what he thought when he heard that one of The Beatles died.
Aerosmith’s Joe Perry loved a fusion song from The Beatles’ ‘The White Album’
During a 2009 interview with Cleveland.com, Perry named his favorite Beatles song: “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from The White Album. “Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of the most famous examples of raga rock, a genre fusing Indian classical music with Western rock ‘n’ roll. While “Tomorrow Never Knows” is distinct from Aerosmith’s hits, Aerosmith did experiment with raga rock on their album Nine Lives.
Perry explained why the Fab Four are so important. “The Beatles did everything long before anyone else,” he opined.
Aerosmith’s Joe Perry loved a fusion song from The Beatles’ ‘The White Album’
During a 2009 interview with Cleveland.com, Perry named his favorite Beatles song: “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from The White Album. “Tomorrow Never Knows” is one of the most famous examples of raga rock, a genre fusing Indian classical music with Western rock ‘n’ roll. While “Tomorrow Never Knows” is distinct from Aerosmith’s hits, Aerosmith did experiment with raga rock on their album Nine Lives.
Perry explained why the Fab Four are so important. “The Beatles did everything long before anyone else,” he opined.
- 1/16/2024
- by Matthew Trzcinski
- Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Misfits and Outlaws: Jim Jarmusch's Cinema of Outsiders is now showing on Mubi in many countries.The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.In Permanent Vacation (1980)—Jim Jarmusch’s underseen, undercooked, wholly unpolished first feature—Aloysius “Christopher” Parker (Chris Parker), a disaffected young drifter who recalls the ’50s Jazz-Age hipster and presages the ’90s slacker, wanders around a bombed-out Manhattan without an agenda. He dances in his apartment as his indifferent girlfriend smokes out the window. He talks to various strangers: a concessions attendant at a repertory house, a streetwise saxophone player, a disturbed man who believes he’s in a war zone. Eventually, he steals a car and uses the profits to board a steamer ship to Paris, content to roam as if he’s a tourist on a… well, you know.It's almost beside...
- 4/12/2023
- MUBI
Another week, another legendary artist announces a career-spanning global alliance with a major record company. Last week, it was Madonna and Warner Music Group. This time, it’s Aerosmith and Universal Music Group (Umg), jointly unveiling a new deal inked just ahead of the band’s 50th anniversary.
As a result of the new partnership, Umg will become home to Aerosmith’s entire recorded music catalog in 2022, as well as future music releases, merchandise and audio-visual content.
All of that is interesting, but perhaps the most interesting part is the...
As a result of the new partnership, Umg will become home to Aerosmith’s entire recorded music catalog in 2022, as well as future music releases, merchandise and audio-visual content.
All of that is interesting, but perhaps the most interesting part is the...
- 8/23/2021
- by Tim Ingham
- Rollingstone.com
Dennis Hopper on Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat in Malia Scharf and Max Basch’s documentary, produced with David Koh: “They brought a vitality and an energy to art that just hadn’t been there. The importance of those three artists, they just seemed to bring the eighties alive really.” Photo: Tseng Kwong Chi / Courtesy Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc.
Two of the 2020 Doc NYC highlights are on artists. The world premiere of Chris McKim’s hard-edged Wojnarowicz brings back to life the committed activist/artist/poet/performer David Wojnarowicz who died from AIDS in 1992 at age 37.
Malia Scharf on Kenny Scharf with Keith Haring: "He was and still is such an important part of Kenny and our lives."
And there is Malia Scharf and Max Basch’s intimate portrait, Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide (produced with David Koh), which features remembrances from Kenny of Keith Haring,...
Two of the 2020 Doc NYC highlights are on artists. The world premiere of Chris McKim’s hard-edged Wojnarowicz brings back to life the committed activist/artist/poet/performer David Wojnarowicz who died from AIDS in 1992 at age 37.
Malia Scharf on Kenny Scharf with Keith Haring: "He was and still is such an important part of Kenny and our lives."
And there is Malia Scharf and Max Basch’s intimate portrait, Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide (produced with David Koh), which features remembrances from Kenny of Keith Haring,...
- 11/4/2020
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Leading international sales agency-production-distribution company, FiGa Films, has snagged all worldwide rights to “This is Cristina” (“Ella es Cristina”), the directorial debut of Chilean scribe Gonzalo Maza, who has co-written four of Sebastian Lelio’s films, including his Oscar-winning “A Fantastic Woman” and Berlin Festival winner “Gloria.”
“It’s a pleasure to collaborate with Gonzalo, whose writing we’ve admired so much in the past. He’s got a great future as a director and we’re fortunate to be behind his lovely feature,” said FiGa’s Sandro Fiorin who has already sold it to China’s Beijing Hualu NewMedia.
Produced by Primate Lab, Noise Media and Maza’s Mar Humano, the black and white dramedy revolves around the titular Cristina and her best friend, played by Mariana Derderian and Paloma Salas, who are both in their 30s. After a major bust up between them, Cristina’s life spirals just...
“It’s a pleasure to collaborate with Gonzalo, whose writing we’ve admired so much in the past. He’s got a great future as a director and we’re fortunate to be behind his lovely feature,” said FiGa’s Sandro Fiorin who has already sold it to China’s Beijing Hualu NewMedia.
Produced by Primate Lab, Noise Media and Maza’s Mar Humano, the black and white dramedy revolves around the titular Cristina and her best friend, played by Mariana Derderian and Paloma Salas, who are both in their 30s. After a major bust up between them, Cristina’s life spirals just...
- 10/17/2019
- by Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
1. DRIFTDead Man (1995)Drift, like the sort of drift that whisks Johnny Depp along a Native American river to the afterlife, is the chief abstract quality that lends the films of Jim Jarmusch their poetic power.One wafts through a Jarmusch film never quite sure what end-goal he has in mind—if he has one at all. It’s a calculated and it’s a composed drift, one that’s easy and pleasurable to get caught up in—especially when one sees his films back to back, one after the other, misremembering whether this scene came from that film. Consuming these films in such a fashion, as I did recently at the Metrograph in New York City, reveals that Jarmusch’s master stroke is his disregard for the logic of plot mechanics (a key move for drifter filmmakers) in favor of serene gusts or currents that wind their way around hard,...
- 7/14/2019
- MUBI
The man who quietly (and always weirdly) helped to define American Independent Cinema in the 1980s, Jim Jarmusch has stubbornly made his own kinds of films in his own way. If Hollywood ever thought they could make him fit into one of their boxes, they were wrong to try, and eventually, his actor admirers sought him out to be in a series of idiosyncratic and always fascinating films. Here’s our ranking of his singular output:
13. “Coffee & Cigarettes” (2003): Sure, it’s the last one on this list, which technically means it’s the “worst,” but even the least plotted, most indulgent and freely floating Jim Jarmusch film provides memorably weird, comedic pleasures. This brazenly pointless sequence of non-events is 11 segments long, each one starring different actors, all of them talking — most frequently about the Tesla Coil — while drinking coffee and smoking. All except for Gza and RZA, that is,...
13. “Coffee & Cigarettes” (2003): Sure, it’s the last one on this list, which technically means it’s the “worst,” but even the least plotted, most indulgent and freely floating Jim Jarmusch film provides memorably weird, comedic pleasures. This brazenly pointless sequence of non-events is 11 segments long, each one starring different actors, all of them talking — most frequently about the Tesla Coil — while drinking coffee and smoking. All except for Gza and RZA, that is,...
- 6/13/2019
- by Dave White
- The Wrap
“Deadpan Alley”
By Raymond Benson
The maverick independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch burst into art-house public consciousness in 1984 with his strikingly original slice-of-life comedy, Stranger Than Paradise, and we hadn’t really seen anything like it before. I remember going to see it at the little cinema across from Lincoln Center in New York City. As the guy interviewed in front of the theater in the supplemental documentary on this Criterion Collection doozy says, the queue of people to get inside was indeed full of “hipsters.” It was the picture to see if you were in tune to the downtown arts scene, avant-garde theatre/music/film/literature, and far-from-Hollywood-mainstream moviemaking.
For me, it was my favorite film of the year. Audience members who dug it found subtle humor in the three main characters’ seemingly aimless existences and motivations to live their lives in a spontaneous, who cares? fashion. Those viewers who...
By Raymond Benson
The maverick independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch burst into art-house public consciousness in 1984 with his strikingly original slice-of-life comedy, Stranger Than Paradise, and we hadn’t really seen anything like it before. I remember going to see it at the little cinema across from Lincoln Center in New York City. As the guy interviewed in front of the theater in the supplemental documentary on this Criterion Collection doozy says, the queue of people to get inside was indeed full of “hipsters.” It was the picture to see if you were in tune to the downtown arts scene, avant-garde theatre/music/film/literature, and far-from-Hollywood-mainstream moviemaking.
For me, it was my favorite film of the year. Audience members who dug it found subtle humor in the three main characters’ seemingly aimless existences and motivations to live their lives in a spontaneous, who cares? fashion. Those viewers who...
- 4/27/2019
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
The seemingly inevitable time has finally come for Jim Jarmusch's first directorial efforts, Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise, to join the Criterion Collection’s already brimming Jim Jarmusch subsection, thus far consisting of, in order of DVD release: Down By Law, Night On Earth, Mystery Train, and Dead Man. For the completionists arranging the Jarmusch subsection of their collections in chronological order, Stranger Than Paradise aesthetically compliments its 1986 follow up, Down By Law (Criterion’s first Jarmusch release) beautifully, offering something of a full circle for the filmmaker whose future Criterion release output is anyone’s guess. While there are oh-so-many worthy works in his filmography, I’m personally calling Coffee and Cigarettes. Perhaps the three B&W films will make for a stunning Criterion trilogy. And yet,...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 4/23/2019
- Screen Anarchy
Above: detail from 2018 UK quad for Khrustalyov, My Car!.One of the most beautiful and confounding of modern masterpieces, Aleksei German’s Khrustalyov, My Car! is getting a 20th anniversary restoration release in both the U.K. and the U.S. on December 14 courtesy of Arrow Films. A potent source for Armando Ianucci’s The Death of Stalin, German’s fever dream of a satire has some the most gorgeous high-contrast black and white cinematography I’ve ever seen (watch the trailer here). It is fitting then that the new poster for the film, by the great Andrzej Klimowski, is in such stark black and white.A new film poster by Klimowski is an event. Born in London to Polish parents in 1949, the designer emigrated to Poland in 1973 to study under the legendary Henryk Tomaszewski at the Academy of Fine Arts. By 1976 he was designing posters for the state-run Film...
- 11/27/2018
- MUBI
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Bam
Films by Elaine May, Yvonne Rainer, and Shirley Clarke play under “A Different Picture: Women Filmmakers in the New Hollywood Era, 1967—1980.”
Metrograph
As an Emile de Antonio retro ends, four of Paul Schrader’s best films screen.
Quad Cinema
The long-longed-for Alan Rudolph retrospective continues and mustn’t be missed.
Museum of Modern Art...
Bam
Films by Elaine May, Yvonne Rainer, and Shirley Clarke play under “A Different Picture: Women Filmmakers in the New Hollywood Era, 1967—1980.”
Metrograph
As an Emile de Antonio retro ends, four of Paul Schrader’s best films screen.
Quad Cinema
The long-longed-for Alan Rudolph retrospective continues and mustn’t be missed.
Museum of Modern Art...
- 5/4/2018
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
The Big Sick (Michael Showalter)
From start to finish, The Big Sick, directed by Michael Showalter, works as a lovingly-rendered, cinematic answer to the dinner party question: “So how did you two meet?” Based on comedian Kumail Nanjiani‘s real life (he co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Emily V. Gordon), we meet Kumail (Nanjiani) as he finishes a stand-up set in Chicago. He becomes fast friends with a...
The Big Sick (Michael Showalter)
From start to finish, The Big Sick, directed by Michael Showalter, works as a lovingly-rendered, cinematic answer to the dinner party question: “So how did you two meet?” Based on comedian Kumail Nanjiani‘s real life (he co-wrote the screenplay with his wife Emily V. Gordon), we meet Kumail (Nanjiani) as he finishes a stand-up set in Chicago. He becomes fast friends with a...
- 11/24/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
In the early 1970s, while in the midst of making his Trilogy of Life, Pier Paolo Pasolini publicly remarked that a kind of “cultural genocide” had overtaken his home country of Italy. Essentially, he pointed his finger at the overwhelming dominance of consumerism that he believed had begun to erase the positive values instilled by the nation’s history of peasantry.
Even decades removed, many will still find this statement heavily contentious, as it seems representational of a debate that’s raged in film culture — that, of course, over “aestheticizing poverty,” or, in some cases, romanticizing it. Among the many figures in contemporary world cinema who can be branded with this label, Pasolini’s countryman of a different generation, Roberto Minervini, certainly embraces the act while still complicating it.
His first three films forming a “Texas trilogy” showcase a deeply religious and increasingly abandoned milieu far from, say, the conservative...
Even decades removed, many will still find this statement heavily contentious, as it seems representational of a debate that’s raged in film culture — that, of course, over “aestheticizing poverty,” or, in some cases, romanticizing it. Among the many figures in contemporary world cinema who can be branded with this label, Pasolini’s countryman of a different generation, Roberto Minervini, certainly embraces the act while still complicating it.
His first three films forming a “Texas trilogy” showcase a deeply religious and increasingly abandoned milieu far from, say, the conservative...
- 6/10/2016
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
Exclusive: Film becomes the seventh Jarmusch title in the company’s classic collection.
Cult director Jim Jarmusch is a major presence at this year’s Cannes with two films in official selection. Now, one of his classics from a decade ago, Coffee And Cigarettes (2003), has been added to The Match Factory’s Jarmusch library
The Match Factory’s Jarmusch library already includes Permanent Vacation (1980), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down By Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night On Earth (1991), and Dead Man (1995). With the addition of Coffee And Cigarettes, there are are seven Jarmusch titles in the Tmf classic collection.
Coffee And Cigarettes consists of a series of short films shot over a period of almost 20 years, featuring icons like Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Roberto Benigni, Bill Murray and Cate Blanchett.
“With the motif of coffee and smoke, Jim Jarmusch has brought together the most outstanding figures from the film and music scene. I’m thrilled to handle this original and timeless...
Cult director Jim Jarmusch is a major presence at this year’s Cannes with two films in official selection. Now, one of his classics from a decade ago, Coffee And Cigarettes (2003), has been added to The Match Factory’s Jarmusch library
The Match Factory’s Jarmusch library already includes Permanent Vacation (1980), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Down By Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night On Earth (1991), and Dead Man (1995). With the addition of Coffee And Cigarettes, there are are seven Jarmusch titles in the Tmf classic collection.
Coffee And Cigarettes consists of a series of short films shot over a period of almost 20 years, featuring icons like Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Roberto Benigni, Bill Murray and Cate Blanchett.
“With the motif of coffee and smoke, Jim Jarmusch has brought together the most outstanding figures from the film and music scene. I’m thrilled to handle this original and timeless...
- 5/12/2016
- by geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk (Geoffrey Macnab)
- ScreenDaily
Sometimes you need to let the past be the past and do something original for a change. And sometimes you just need to give us fans what we want. Do we need for Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo to co-star in a TV show that strangely doesn’t have anything to do with the Vacation movie franchise? No. Do we want for the duo, best known together as Clark and Ellen Griswold, to just co-star in a TV show based on the Vacation movie franchise? Yes. At this point, why not? They’ve done so many of those movies, some great and some not, and there’s another sequel/reboot on the way focused on grown-up Rusty and Audrey (Ed Helms and Leslie Mann). They’ve also done commercials as their Vacation characters. A TV show like what ABC has a pilot order for, titled Chev & Bev, is only going to remind us of their iconic...
- 1/27/2015
- by Christopher Campbell
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
As many successful American filmmakers who get their start in independent filmmaking quickly find themselves comfortable in Hollywood studios, Jim Jarmusch feels like the anachronism that the economics of filmmaking rarely find room for but the culture of cinema certainly needs. After making the No Wave-era Permanent Vacation on the seemingly post-apocalyptic landscape of a crumbling late-70s New York, Jarmusch made waves at the then-young Sundance film festival with Stranger Than Paradise, a bare bones indie that exhibited the director’s penchant for deliberate pacing, wry humor, an insistent soundtrack and a canted examination of Americana. Jarmusch’s productions are few and far between, partly due to the fact that he is ever in want of funding and seeks final cut on all his films. The process may be difficult, but it’s worth it: thirty years after Paradise, Jarmusch crafted Only Lovers Left Alive (recently released on disc and digital), a film that surprised me...
- 8/27/2014
- by Landon Palmer
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
For Toronto moviegoers currently suffering from summer blockbuster fatigue, the Tiff Bell Lightbox is offering just the solution with "Strange Paradise: The Cinema of Jim Jarmusch," the first comprehensive retrospective of the cult director's films in Canada.
Presented by Tiff Cinematheque and programmed by Brad Deane, the series runs from July 24 to August 16, covering the indie icon's entire career. All 12 of Jarmusch's films are being brought back to the big screen, from his Nyu film studies Master's thesis "Permanent Vacation" and breakout Cannes Film Festival darling "Stranger Than Paradise" to his most recent offering "Only Lovers Left Alive," for anyone who missed the quirky vampire love story during last year's Toronto International Film Festival.
An acclaimed art house auteur minus any of the off-putting pretension -- case in point: just watch the near-prison riot started by Roberto Benigni chanting "We all scream for ice cream" in "Down By Law" --...
Presented by Tiff Cinematheque and programmed by Brad Deane, the series runs from July 24 to August 16, covering the indie icon's entire career. All 12 of Jarmusch's films are being brought back to the big screen, from his Nyu film studies Master's thesis "Permanent Vacation" and breakout Cannes Film Festival darling "Stranger Than Paradise" to his most recent offering "Only Lovers Left Alive," for anyone who missed the quirky vampire love story during last year's Toronto International Film Festival.
An acclaimed art house auteur minus any of the off-putting pretension -- case in point: just watch the near-prison riot started by Roberto Benigni chanting "We all scream for ice cream" in "Down By Law" --...
- 7/23/2014
- by Rick Mele
- Moviefone
We recently took a look back at the films of Jim Jarmusch and highlighted The 10 Best Performances in his movies, and make no mistake, Johnny Depp's turn as William Blake in "Dead Man" was right in there. Not only is it one of best turns in a Jarmusch film, it's one of the best of Depp's career. That being said, it's only one element of what makes "Dead Man" one of Jarmusch's most beloved films, and the director recently elaborated at length about the making of the movie. Earlier this month, The Film Society Of Lincoln Center presented the movie series, "Permanent Vacation: The Films of Jim Jarmusch," and had the director himself on hand for Q&A following a screening of "Dead Man." Now the 30-minute talk is online and it's well worth a watch. The director discusses a wide variety of topics from getting Neil Young to do the score,...
- 4/25/2014
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
“We no longer exist as playwrights or actors but as terminals of multiple networks […] passive spectators of an empty scene where nothing takes place and which nonetheless fills our vision.”
—Jean Baudrillard (The Ecstasy of Communication, 1987)
The human geography of Jim Jarmusch’s cinema has always been one of the most cosmopolitan American cinema could ever afford. Long before the budget of his productions allowed him to cross the Atlantic his curiosity brought him closer to the foreign streams that formed his country and away from its paradoxical provincialism. Allie in Permanent Vacation (1980) wanting to move to Paris (only to meet, at the end of the film, his Parisian equivalent wanting to move to New York…), Willie’s Hungarian cousin in Stranger Than Paradise (1984), the bizarre Italian in Down By Law (1986), the Japanese couple, the Brit and the Italian woman in Mystery Train (1989), and so on; his cinema is densely populated by immigrants.
—Jean Baudrillard (The Ecstasy of Communication, 1987)
The human geography of Jim Jarmusch’s cinema has always been one of the most cosmopolitan American cinema could ever afford. Long before the budget of his productions allowed him to cross the Atlantic his curiosity brought him closer to the foreign streams that formed his country and away from its paradoxical provincialism. Allie in Permanent Vacation (1980) wanting to move to Paris (only to meet, at the end of the film, his Parisian equivalent wanting to move to New York…), Willie’s Hungarian cousin in Stranger Than Paradise (1984), the bizarre Italian in Down By Law (1986), the Japanese couple, the Brit and the Italian woman in Mystery Train (1989), and so on; his cinema is densely populated by immigrants.
- 4/12/2014
- by Celluloid Liberation Front
- MUBI
Loners and outcasts have no greater cinematic patron saint than Jim Jarmusch, the fiercely independent writer-director who's spent over three decades chronicling urban fringe-dwellers, road trippers, rockabilly tourists, Zen hitmen and, now, vampires. The 60-year-old filmmaker's latest, Only Lovers Left Alive, centers on a centuries-old couple (played by Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston) who like their Type O served neat, though its a far cry from the recent wave of vampire chic; it's really a languorous romance in which two lovers struggle with immortality-engendered ennui. It may be Jarmusch's first foray into horror films,...
- 4/11/2014
- Rollingstone.com
Adam and Eve have been married for centuries. Over time, though, this pair of British vampires has drifted apart. Now she wanders Tangier by night while her musician husband mopes, inspiration-starved, inside a dark Detroit room. As they talk by Skype one evening, she says she'll return to him. He tells her he loves her so much, and she answers, "I'll take that for the journey." These eternal lovers, played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton, are the focus of writer-director Jim Jarmusch's 11th feature, Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). The film opens at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on April 11 following the eight-day retrospective "Permanent Vacation: Th...
- 4/2/2014
- Village Voice
While the rest of his cohort have fallen by the wayside or been absorbed into the Hollywood system, the film-maker has stayed weird, as his new movie of erudite vampire love reveals
The word "hipster" invariably crops up in discussions about American film-maker Jim Jarmusch, not least because he looks the part. He is tall, lean, often wears shades and has a famous shock of hair that started turning silvery grey in his teens; his basso drawl completes the uncanny resemblance to a certain Hollywood great, which inspired Jarmusch to found a jokey secret society, The Sons of Lee Marvin.
Jarmusch is without a doubt the most rock'n'roll of film-makers – although he obliges you to define the term. He has worked with a lot of musicians, either as composers or as actors – Neil Young, Tom Waits, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, hip-hop producer RZA. But if you look at the breadth of Jarmusch's references,...
The word "hipster" invariably crops up in discussions about American film-maker Jim Jarmusch, not least because he looks the part. He is tall, lean, often wears shades and has a famous shock of hair that started turning silvery grey in his teens; his basso drawl completes the uncanny resemblance to a certain Hollywood great, which inspired Jarmusch to found a jokey secret society, The Sons of Lee Marvin.
Jarmusch is without a doubt the most rock'n'roll of film-makers – although he obliges you to define the term. He has worked with a lot of musicians, either as composers or as actors – Neil Young, Tom Waits, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, hip-hop producer RZA. But if you look at the breadth of Jarmusch's references,...
- 2/23/2014
- by Jonathan Romney
- The Guardian - Film News
Listen up Jim Jarmusch' fans. The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be hosting Permanent Vacation: The Films of Jim Jarmusch -- an event that will screen all of the acclaimed director's 11 feature films, music videos and shorts -- in honor of his latest film "Only Lovers Left Alive," which will show at the Film Society on April 11. "Only Lovers Left Alive," which Indiewire's Eric Kohn described as a "amusingly offbeat and intentionally meandering narrative," about "retro cool vampires" was the 5th of Jamusch's films to play at the Nyff, all which are deadpan funny, yet insightful and romantic. "Over the course of his single-minded yet constantly surprising career, Jim Jarmusch has become a beloved, forever-cool icon of independent cinema," said Dennis Lim, the Film Society's Director of Programming. "We're proud to present a complete survey of his work timed to the release of Only Lovers Left Alive.
- 2/19/2014
- by Eric Eidelstein
- Indiewire
Susan Kouguell speaks with director Aaron Brookner on his journey of re-mastering and re-leasing the documentary on William Burroughs, Burroughs: The Movie (1983) directed by his uncle, Howard Brookner, and Smash the Control Machine the feature documentary that tells the story of Aaron Brookner’s investigation into the mysterious life and missing films of Howard Brookner, who died of AIDS at age 34 in 1989 on the cusp of fame. Howard Brookner’s films also include Bloodhounds on Broadway (1989) and Robert Wilson and The Civil Wars (1987).
Born in New York City, Aaron Brookner began his career working on Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes and Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity before making the award-winning documentary short The Black Cowboys (2004). His first feature documentary was a collaboration with writer Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), and his film, The Silver Goat (2012) was the first feature created exclusively for iPad, released as an App and downloaded across 24 countries, making it into the top 50 entertainment apps in the UK and Czech Republic.
The re-mastered print of Burroughs: The Movie will have its premier University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, 2014.
Susan Kouguell: On your Kickstarter site you wrote:
“Howard Brookner directed three films before his death in 1989 from AIDS at the age of thirty-four. In the final year of his life he wrote:
If I live on it is in your memories and the films I made.
It was this quote that inspired me, Howard's nephew and enthusiastic Burroughsian, to search for the missing print of his first film, Burroughs: The Movie. After a long search I found the only print in good condition and embarked on a project to digitally remaster it and make it available to the public.”
This has been both a personal and artistic journey for you. When did this journey begin?
Aaron Brookner: It probably began when Howard died, originally. My lasting memories of him were of watching him make his final movie Bloodhounds on Broadway on the set, hanging out together and rough-housing, walking around downtown, the secret handshake and spoken greeting we had, the cool toys from Japan he brought me, messing around with video cameras, trips down to Miami, and oddly enough the Rolling Stones 3D halftime show during the 1989 Super Bowl.
But I also had seen him in a hospital bed. I had been to the AIDS ward. I was over at his apartment quite a bit during his final few months of life. Watched his funeral. And I was seven. Kids know everything that’s going on around them even when they don’t. I guess this was the case and that making Smash the Control Machine is some sort of way to articulate my childlike perspective on the story, as an adult. It’s also a way to satisfy my curiosity.
Howard, I’ve found out, in some weird cinematic way, left clues all over the world really, which show how he lived, and what he lived. He documented everything.
A few years ago when I started the search for the Burroughs: The Movie print, I started to find all these pieces to his puzzle. Not to mention his films! So I went all the way and committed to gathering up everything and telling his story, which has brought me into contact with the people who knew him best -- and survived him -- who each knew a completely different yet same Howard. It’s amazing to watch Howard come to life in the eyes of someone that knew him, through the stories they recall.
It’s been a very interesting journey, and still is. It was a hard one to start, obviously, because of the awful tragedy looming at the end, and I was sensitive to not want to stir this back up for the people who really suffered his death, but the feeling has really changed. There is so much life and joy of living and making movies that transcends through Howard’s work which I’ve discovered, and in the people who knew him best; that this feeling of life and art really trumps death and AIDS, and a lot of the political bulls--t that fueled that fire, and this is a good feeling, and sort of what I hope to bring out in my film.
Sk: You successfully raised more than the requested budget with Kickstarter to fund your film. Talk about the pros and cons of using this crowdsourcing resource.
Ab: A big pro is that you skip all the gatekeepers, which saves a lot of time. You go straight to the audience and in the case of remastering Howard’s Burroughs: The Movie film there was pretty straightforward thinking behind it. I thought if enough people know about this film and want it back, or if they want it for the first time, they’ll help me deliver. If not, so be it.
A con, and I don’t know if I’d call it a con or just the reality, is that you’re never getting something for nothing; you’ve got a lot of work to do to run a crowd-funding campaign. It’s great if there’s an audience for your project, but how are they gonna hear about it?! My partner, Paula Vaccaro, and I spent months working on this day and night, not knowing if we’d even succeed. A little stressful...but overall I think it’s amazing that crowd-sourcing exists, and that it can work. It’s also a pretty great exercise in clearly communicating what you want to do and why, and what’s the plan for how.
Sk: Smash the Control Machine, the film you are making on Howard’s story and the search for his lost work was selected in its early stages for the Berlinale. What was that experience like for you?
Ab: In a lot of ways it was like the Burroughs: The Movie Kickstarter experience, in that first of all, it was a great endorsement and support to have, and that it certainly helped to streamline the concept and see what worked and what didn’t.
We were specifically selected to the Talent Project Market at Berlinale as the only documentary of 10 total films from around the world. It was a few very intense and focused days like a workshop on all the different angles around your film, that as a creator you might not be thinking about -- like what your pitch is going to be and how to pitch for that matter -- to what are the comparable going numbers around and how an international co-production might work. It’s great to learn this because then, after the workshop days, you’re sitting at a table where film market people are coming to meet you and talk to you, and you kind of understand where they are coming from, so you’re confident in talking about your project, and knowing what’s good or not good for it.
Sk: Do you have any international partners with whom you are working?
Ab: The main production company for the film is Pinball London, which is mainly based in London, UK, our other partners are of course the executive producer of the film, Jim Jarmusch, producer Sara Driver in New York City, the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Talent Project Market, (who have been invaluable allies of the film) the Jerome Foundation, Media Program (the European Union’s main audiovisual development program (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/media/index_en.htm), the Independent Filmmaker Project in NYC, which runs our fiscal sponsorship campaign and supports the film with knowledge and an amazing network, and the generous support of other partners, such as the Arnie Glassman Foundation and private individual donors. We’re currently having conversations with other co-producers, distributors, transmedia partners, as well as sales companies from Us and EU but I can’t go into more details at this stage.
Sk: Film director Jim Jarmusch, who worked with Howard, is your executive producer. His features Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise, were influential works not only to the downtown New York City art film scene, but to the wider independent/art film movement. You mentioned that through this filmmaking process you have been exposed to the art and film created during this time and its staying power. Please elaborate.
Ab: New York City in the late 1970s was really the last place and time where two generations of artists overlapped and met and fed off each other. They lived in the same neighborhood, did the same drugs, went to the same clubs, and in some cases slept with the same people. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, much as they were artistic innovators for the way they completely broke the rules of literature, were also pioneering in the way they were open about their homosexuality and the way they put in their work.
Writer Brad Gooch, Howard’s long-time partner, told me that his and Howard’s was the first generation who really got to live openly when they got to New York. All the first love straight people get to experience in high school, gay men (and women) were experiencing at age twenty-five in downtown NYC against this epic backdrop of all sorts of art and space and time to create it. This sexual liberation really fed into the art scene. It was political without having a message, just by being.
The films that Jim Jarmusch and others were making at this time, they sort of applied the total lack of respect for rules that Burroughs and Ginsberg had laid in literature, and applied it to cinema. They took what they saw around them and put it in their work. And in the case of Howard making Burroughs: The Movie, with Jim and also Tom Dicillo who was doing camera, he went straight to the source. Howard decided not only am I going to apply the lack of rules, rule to movie-making, I’m gonna turn the camera on this moment in time as it’s really happening. I mean it’s incredible. They’re filming Burroughs at home, working out his speech to protest Proposition 6 in 1978, which Burroughs then incorporates into his reading at the Nova Convention -- to a packed-to-the-rafters theatre filled with 20 and 30-year-olds. Howard and his crew actually shot this.
There is just so much truth that shines through this work, and the work of that time like in Jarmusch’s films, and I think it’s because you had new artists’ energy directly side by side with the source. It was exceptionally rare, I think, historically, where one generation of artists so directly influenced another, only with the newer generation using a different medium, which of course was film.
Sk: You discovered more than 35 hours of film Howard shot from 1978-1983 that was stored in Burroughs’ bunker for 30 years. These reels include footage of Andy Warhol, Burroughs and Howard in the Chelsea Hotel, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Zappa and Patti Smith. How did you learn about this footage?
Ab: James Grauerholz, who was very close friends with my uncle and co-produced Burroughs: The Movie, who is William Burroughs’ heir, early on when I was looking for a print of the film sent me a detailed inventory of everything Howard had stored in the bunker (Burroughs’ NYC residence). I looked at the list and my jaw dropped. Howard had finished Burroughs: The Movie with the BBC (who provided completion funds) in 1983. Sometime later they shipped back these giant trunks of all of Howard’s rushes, outtakes, workprints, and negative rolls. Howard didn’t have a permanent residence at that time because he was traveling the globe making his next film on theatre director , who was preparing six different international plays around the world to all come together for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. So Howard got these trunks of his films and asked Burroughs if he could stash it in the back room of the Bunker. And there it sat undisturbed for 30 years! After Burroughs died, John Giorno, who lived above the bunker, decided to keep it as a sort of museum to William. And of course along with Burroughs’ hat, canes, and spices from 1978, are Howard’s films.
Sk: What condition are the reels?
Ab: The negatives look great. The work-prints are all kind of pink, which happens to color film over time, but this is fixable with a good colorist as per example:
There’s a tiny bit of shrinkage, as photochemical film will shrink over time, but it is very minimal considering 30 years with no climate and humidity control. Only one roll was lost completely to severe water damage. It’s very fortunate really so much of it survived. It was a race against the clock. Film is a living breathing organic material.
Sk: How were you able to access them? Where was/is the bunker?
It was a complicated battle. I fought, with support, a dedicated fight that lasted for well over a year. It was extremely anxiety-provoking, as every day there was a potential risk these precious films could have been destroyed. For all I knew there could have been vinegar in the cans, which happens to deteriorated film. There was a lot of faith involved, a bit like the Kickstarter campaign. You can image what Hurricane Sandy did to my nervous system. It was indeed a race against the clock with all sorts of obstacles, and so stressful I had to document it to cope, and because it really illustrated an issue that’s central to my film, which is: What happens to the work created by artists when they are gone? And this is key to artists who died of AIDS as they generally did not have the time or resources to prepare for their legacy. So, now that is a part of my film. There was a more or less happy ending. But you’ll have to see the film to get the story! The Bunker is on the Bowery in NYC.
Sk: With some of the clips you’ve shown me, this is quite a treasure trove that captures an important history.
Ab: There is a definite staying power of the art from that time because of its authenticity, and also because of New York City; these film rolls capture what New York City was like! So much space. Desolate downtown streets. Gritty details. It’s just pure beautiful decay. No one watching you. It looks like artistic paradise. And I’ve seen Howard’s rental contract for his loft on Prince and Bowery: $100/month!
Sk: Film preservation is vital, and as you mentioned, it’s a race against the clock before more films are lost.
Ab: This is a huge issue. Hundreds of thousands of films that maybe aren’t necessarily directly on the Hollywood radar are really in danger of being lost forever. You got time working against you because film deteriorates. You got money working against you because it costs a lot to keep climate and humidity-controlled vaults. Traditionally, labs all had vaults, but labs are closing. If not very nearly all closed. So it comes down to institutions and their funding, space and ability. You also got technology working against you. How many people out there know how to fix a film splice or thread a projector, or read camera roll code? And how many people will know this in 30 years? Who’s going to know how to fix the old film machines that stopped seeing use decades ago? It really needs attention because we’re looking at a century of film facing extinction.
Robert Wilson is a majorly important figure in the theatre and art world. Most people don’t know about Howard’s second feature documentary, which took the audience inside Robert Wilson’s creative process, and emotional process of making his work. I know this because I found part of these original film rolls packed into unmarked Igloo picnic containers stashed in the supply room behind the toilet in an archive in Hamburg.
Sk: When and where will Smash the Control Machine have its premiere?
Ab: The film is currently in early production and there is a very strong element of unpredictability in this story, making deadlines pretty impossible. But, Berlinale really gave us great support at a very early stage, and it would be a very nice honor to premier the film with them in 2015. But we will need to keep working and see what unfolds. There is a long year ahead.
Sk: What are the distribution plans for Burroughs: The Movie and Smash the Control Machine ?
Ab: For Burroughs: The Movie, we’ll be unveiling the remastered Dcp (Digital Cinema Package) of the film at University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, followed by other Burroughs events throughout the year, such as at the Ica in London and the Photographer’s Gallery for their William Burroughs/Andy Warhol/David Lynch show.
The New York City premier will happen next fall at the New York Film Festival -- where the film first screened in 1983(!) -- possibly followed by a theatrical re-release and DVD/Blu-ray sale towards the end of the year. (Those who pledged for a DVD through our Kickstarter campaign however, will be sent their own copies of the film shortly.)
I’m also putting together a video art/sound installation piece from some of the never before seen material, that will show along with the film at Bafici in April, and likely in New York and London if not elsewhere. And we’re putting together a record with All Tomorrow’s Parties, using much of the never before heard audio from Howard’s Burroughs archive, to be sampled by select musicians.
For Smash the Control Machine: There are various plans I can’t discuss at this stage. What I can say is that our distribution will be tied to other impactful activities and events. I am working closely to build partnerships with those who care about the subjects of the film and the themes. Gentrification, Gay history, art legacy lost to AIDS. There are many great ways to distribute this film along these lines, as well as having a commercial release. My producer, PaulaVaccaro, and I are working hard to make sure this is tied up with whatever the film will do out there.
Sk: What advice do you have for aspiring documentary filmmakers?
Ab: Sometimes the best story for a film is right under your nose!
Breaking News: We are now working together with Janus Films and Criterion Collection for the distribution of Burroughs: The Movie. We are still creating a plan for the film although we know we will do a theatrical run in the Us sometime after the re-launch at the Nyff
See the Trailer Here
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting and film at Tufts University and presents international seminars. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com .
Born in New York City, Aaron Brookner began his career working on Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes and Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity before making the award-winning documentary short The Black Cowboys (2004). His first feature documentary was a collaboration with writer Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), and his film, The Silver Goat (2012) was the first feature created exclusively for iPad, released as an App and downloaded across 24 countries, making it into the top 50 entertainment apps in the UK and Czech Republic.
The re-mastered print of Burroughs: The Movie will have its premier University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, 2014.
Susan Kouguell: On your Kickstarter site you wrote:
“Howard Brookner directed three films before his death in 1989 from AIDS at the age of thirty-four. In the final year of his life he wrote:
If I live on it is in your memories and the films I made.
It was this quote that inspired me, Howard's nephew and enthusiastic Burroughsian, to search for the missing print of his first film, Burroughs: The Movie. After a long search I found the only print in good condition and embarked on a project to digitally remaster it and make it available to the public.”
This has been both a personal and artistic journey for you. When did this journey begin?
Aaron Brookner: It probably began when Howard died, originally. My lasting memories of him were of watching him make his final movie Bloodhounds on Broadway on the set, hanging out together and rough-housing, walking around downtown, the secret handshake and spoken greeting we had, the cool toys from Japan he brought me, messing around with video cameras, trips down to Miami, and oddly enough the Rolling Stones 3D halftime show during the 1989 Super Bowl.
But I also had seen him in a hospital bed. I had been to the AIDS ward. I was over at his apartment quite a bit during his final few months of life. Watched his funeral. And I was seven. Kids know everything that’s going on around them even when they don’t. I guess this was the case and that making Smash the Control Machine is some sort of way to articulate my childlike perspective on the story, as an adult. It’s also a way to satisfy my curiosity.
Howard, I’ve found out, in some weird cinematic way, left clues all over the world really, which show how he lived, and what he lived. He documented everything.
A few years ago when I started the search for the Burroughs: The Movie print, I started to find all these pieces to his puzzle. Not to mention his films! So I went all the way and committed to gathering up everything and telling his story, which has brought me into contact with the people who knew him best -- and survived him -- who each knew a completely different yet same Howard. It’s amazing to watch Howard come to life in the eyes of someone that knew him, through the stories they recall.
It’s been a very interesting journey, and still is. It was a hard one to start, obviously, because of the awful tragedy looming at the end, and I was sensitive to not want to stir this back up for the people who really suffered his death, but the feeling has really changed. There is so much life and joy of living and making movies that transcends through Howard’s work which I’ve discovered, and in the people who knew him best; that this feeling of life and art really trumps death and AIDS, and a lot of the political bulls--t that fueled that fire, and this is a good feeling, and sort of what I hope to bring out in my film.
Sk: You successfully raised more than the requested budget with Kickstarter to fund your film. Talk about the pros and cons of using this crowdsourcing resource.
Ab: A big pro is that you skip all the gatekeepers, which saves a lot of time. You go straight to the audience and in the case of remastering Howard’s Burroughs: The Movie film there was pretty straightforward thinking behind it. I thought if enough people know about this film and want it back, or if they want it for the first time, they’ll help me deliver. If not, so be it.
A con, and I don’t know if I’d call it a con or just the reality, is that you’re never getting something for nothing; you’ve got a lot of work to do to run a crowd-funding campaign. It’s great if there’s an audience for your project, but how are they gonna hear about it?! My partner, Paula Vaccaro, and I spent months working on this day and night, not knowing if we’d even succeed. A little stressful...but overall I think it’s amazing that crowd-sourcing exists, and that it can work. It’s also a pretty great exercise in clearly communicating what you want to do and why, and what’s the plan for how.
Sk: Smash the Control Machine, the film you are making on Howard’s story and the search for his lost work was selected in its early stages for the Berlinale. What was that experience like for you?
Ab: In a lot of ways it was like the Burroughs: The Movie Kickstarter experience, in that first of all, it was a great endorsement and support to have, and that it certainly helped to streamline the concept and see what worked and what didn’t.
We were specifically selected to the Talent Project Market at Berlinale as the only documentary of 10 total films from around the world. It was a few very intense and focused days like a workshop on all the different angles around your film, that as a creator you might not be thinking about -- like what your pitch is going to be and how to pitch for that matter -- to what are the comparable going numbers around and how an international co-production might work. It’s great to learn this because then, after the workshop days, you’re sitting at a table where film market people are coming to meet you and talk to you, and you kind of understand where they are coming from, so you’re confident in talking about your project, and knowing what’s good or not good for it.
Sk: Do you have any international partners with whom you are working?
Ab: The main production company for the film is Pinball London, which is mainly based in London, UK, our other partners are of course the executive producer of the film, Jim Jarmusch, producer Sara Driver in New York City, the Berlinale Talent Campus and the Talent Project Market, (who have been invaluable allies of the film) the Jerome Foundation, Media Program (the European Union’s main audiovisual development program (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/media/index_en.htm), the Independent Filmmaker Project in NYC, which runs our fiscal sponsorship campaign and supports the film with knowledge and an amazing network, and the generous support of other partners, such as the Arnie Glassman Foundation and private individual donors. We’re currently having conversations with other co-producers, distributors, transmedia partners, as well as sales companies from Us and EU but I can’t go into more details at this stage.
Sk: Film director Jim Jarmusch, who worked with Howard, is your executive producer. His features Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise, were influential works not only to the downtown New York City art film scene, but to the wider independent/art film movement. You mentioned that through this filmmaking process you have been exposed to the art and film created during this time and its staying power. Please elaborate.
Ab: New York City in the late 1970s was really the last place and time where two generations of artists overlapped and met and fed off each other. They lived in the same neighborhood, did the same drugs, went to the same clubs, and in some cases slept with the same people. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, much as they were artistic innovators for the way they completely broke the rules of literature, were also pioneering in the way they were open about their homosexuality and the way they put in their work.
Writer Brad Gooch, Howard’s long-time partner, told me that his and Howard’s was the first generation who really got to live openly when they got to New York. All the first love straight people get to experience in high school, gay men (and women) were experiencing at age twenty-five in downtown NYC against this epic backdrop of all sorts of art and space and time to create it. This sexual liberation really fed into the art scene. It was political without having a message, just by being.
The films that Jim Jarmusch and others were making at this time, they sort of applied the total lack of respect for rules that Burroughs and Ginsberg had laid in literature, and applied it to cinema. They took what they saw around them and put it in their work. And in the case of Howard making Burroughs: The Movie, with Jim and also Tom Dicillo who was doing camera, he went straight to the source. Howard decided not only am I going to apply the lack of rules, rule to movie-making, I’m gonna turn the camera on this moment in time as it’s really happening. I mean it’s incredible. They’re filming Burroughs at home, working out his speech to protest Proposition 6 in 1978, which Burroughs then incorporates into his reading at the Nova Convention -- to a packed-to-the-rafters theatre filled with 20 and 30-year-olds. Howard and his crew actually shot this.
There is just so much truth that shines through this work, and the work of that time like in Jarmusch’s films, and I think it’s because you had new artists’ energy directly side by side with the source. It was exceptionally rare, I think, historically, where one generation of artists so directly influenced another, only with the newer generation using a different medium, which of course was film.
Sk: You discovered more than 35 hours of film Howard shot from 1978-1983 that was stored in Burroughs’ bunker for 30 years. These reels include footage of Andy Warhol, Burroughs and Howard in the Chelsea Hotel, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Zappa and Patti Smith. How did you learn about this footage?
Ab: James Grauerholz, who was very close friends with my uncle and co-produced Burroughs: The Movie, who is William Burroughs’ heir, early on when I was looking for a print of the film sent me a detailed inventory of everything Howard had stored in the bunker (Burroughs’ NYC residence). I looked at the list and my jaw dropped. Howard had finished Burroughs: The Movie with the BBC (who provided completion funds) in 1983. Sometime later they shipped back these giant trunks of all of Howard’s rushes, outtakes, workprints, and negative rolls. Howard didn’t have a permanent residence at that time because he was traveling the globe making his next film on theatre director , who was preparing six different international plays around the world to all come together for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. So Howard got these trunks of his films and asked Burroughs if he could stash it in the back room of the Bunker. And there it sat undisturbed for 30 years! After Burroughs died, John Giorno, who lived above the bunker, decided to keep it as a sort of museum to William. And of course along with Burroughs’ hat, canes, and spices from 1978, are Howard’s films.
Sk: What condition are the reels?
Ab: The negatives look great. The work-prints are all kind of pink, which happens to color film over time, but this is fixable with a good colorist as per example:
There’s a tiny bit of shrinkage, as photochemical film will shrink over time, but it is very minimal considering 30 years with no climate and humidity control. Only one roll was lost completely to severe water damage. It’s very fortunate really so much of it survived. It was a race against the clock. Film is a living breathing organic material.
Sk: How were you able to access them? Where was/is the bunker?
It was a complicated battle. I fought, with support, a dedicated fight that lasted for well over a year. It was extremely anxiety-provoking, as every day there was a potential risk these precious films could have been destroyed. For all I knew there could have been vinegar in the cans, which happens to deteriorated film. There was a lot of faith involved, a bit like the Kickstarter campaign. You can image what Hurricane Sandy did to my nervous system. It was indeed a race against the clock with all sorts of obstacles, and so stressful I had to document it to cope, and because it really illustrated an issue that’s central to my film, which is: What happens to the work created by artists when they are gone? And this is key to artists who died of AIDS as they generally did not have the time or resources to prepare for their legacy. So, now that is a part of my film. There was a more or less happy ending. But you’ll have to see the film to get the story! The Bunker is on the Bowery in NYC.
Sk: With some of the clips you’ve shown me, this is quite a treasure trove that captures an important history.
Ab: There is a definite staying power of the art from that time because of its authenticity, and also because of New York City; these film rolls capture what New York City was like! So much space. Desolate downtown streets. Gritty details. It’s just pure beautiful decay. No one watching you. It looks like artistic paradise. And I’ve seen Howard’s rental contract for his loft on Prince and Bowery: $100/month!
Sk: Film preservation is vital, and as you mentioned, it’s a race against the clock before more films are lost.
Ab: This is a huge issue. Hundreds of thousands of films that maybe aren’t necessarily directly on the Hollywood radar are really in danger of being lost forever. You got time working against you because film deteriorates. You got money working against you because it costs a lot to keep climate and humidity-controlled vaults. Traditionally, labs all had vaults, but labs are closing. If not very nearly all closed. So it comes down to institutions and their funding, space and ability. You also got technology working against you. How many people out there know how to fix a film splice or thread a projector, or read camera roll code? And how many people will know this in 30 years? Who’s going to know how to fix the old film machines that stopped seeing use decades ago? It really needs attention because we’re looking at a century of film facing extinction.
Robert Wilson is a majorly important figure in the theatre and art world. Most people don’t know about Howard’s second feature documentary, which took the audience inside Robert Wilson’s creative process, and emotional process of making his work. I know this because I found part of these original film rolls packed into unmarked Igloo picnic containers stashed in the supply room behind the toilet in an archive in Hamburg.
Sk: When and where will Smash the Control Machine have its premiere?
Ab: The film is currently in early production and there is a very strong element of unpredictability in this story, making deadlines pretty impossible. But, Berlinale really gave us great support at a very early stage, and it would be a very nice honor to premier the film with them in 2015. But we will need to keep working and see what unfolds. There is a long year ahead.
Sk: What are the distribution plans for Burroughs: The Movie and Smash the Control Machine ?
Ab: For Burroughs: The Movie, we’ll be unveiling the remastered Dcp (Digital Cinema Package) of the film at University of Indiana’s Burroughs 100th birthday event on February 6th, followed by other Burroughs events throughout the year, such as at the Ica in London and the Photographer’s Gallery for their William Burroughs/Andy Warhol/David Lynch show.
The New York City premier will happen next fall at the New York Film Festival -- where the film first screened in 1983(!) -- possibly followed by a theatrical re-release and DVD/Blu-ray sale towards the end of the year. (Those who pledged for a DVD through our Kickstarter campaign however, will be sent their own copies of the film shortly.)
I’m also putting together a video art/sound installation piece from some of the never before seen material, that will show along with the film at Bafici in April, and likely in New York and London if not elsewhere. And we’re putting together a record with All Tomorrow’s Parties, using much of the never before heard audio from Howard’s Burroughs archive, to be sampled by select musicians.
For Smash the Control Machine: There are various plans I can’t discuss at this stage. What I can say is that our distribution will be tied to other impactful activities and events. I am working closely to build partnerships with those who care about the subjects of the film and the themes. Gentrification, Gay history, art legacy lost to AIDS. There are many great ways to distribute this film along these lines, as well as having a commercial release. My producer, PaulaVaccaro, and I are working hard to make sure this is tied up with whatever the film will do out there.
Sk: What advice do you have for aspiring documentary filmmakers?
Ab: Sometimes the best story for a film is right under your nose!
Breaking News: We are now working together with Janus Films and Criterion Collection for the distribution of Burroughs: The Movie. We are still creating a plan for the film although we know we will do a theatrical run in the Us sometime after the re-launch at the Nyff
See the Trailer Here
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting and film at Tufts University and presents international seminars. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with over 1,000 writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com .
- 1/29/2014
- by Susan Kouguell
- Sydney's Buzz
Exclusive: German outfit boards Jim Jarmusch titles.
The Match Factory has secured rights to six Jim Jarmusch titles.
The haul includes Permanent Vacation, Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Dead Man.
“We are proud to handle these masterpieces of one of the greatest contemporary directors” said Michael Weber, managing director of The Match Factory. “It is a delight to have our library grow with Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch’s films are timeless, as proven by their ongoing demand and interest“.
“I am so proud to have my films represented by Michael Weber and the Match Factory team, and to be in the company of filmmakers I admire such as Aki Kaurismäki and Fatih Akin,“ added Jarmusch.
The Match Factory’s Afm slate includes Sam Garbarski’s Vijay And I, David Wnendt’s controversial Wetlands and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen’s The Hour of the Lynx.
The deal was negotiated between Michael Weber and ICM Partners...
The Match Factory has secured rights to six Jim Jarmusch titles.
The haul includes Permanent Vacation, Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Dead Man.
“We are proud to handle these masterpieces of one of the greatest contemporary directors” said Michael Weber, managing director of The Match Factory. “It is a delight to have our library grow with Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch’s films are timeless, as proven by their ongoing demand and interest“.
“I am so proud to have my films represented by Michael Weber and the Match Factory team, and to be in the company of filmmakers I admire such as Aki Kaurismäki and Fatih Akin,“ added Jarmusch.
The Match Factory’s Afm slate includes Sam Garbarski’s Vijay And I, David Wnendt’s controversial Wetlands and Soren Kragh-Jacobsen’s The Hour of the Lynx.
The deal was negotiated between Michael Weber and ICM Partners...
- 11/9/2013
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Comedy writers Andy Bobrow, co-exec producer on NBC’s Community, and Kristin Holloway have sold a pitch to ABC through Sony Pictures TV and Will Gluck’s studio-based Olive Bridge banner. The single-camera Permanent Vacation is about a group of middle-of-the-road misfits in a mediocre bar on an average resort in the middle of a lake in the middle of America. Bobrow, who has an overall deal with Sony TV, executive produces alongside Olive Bridge’s Gluck and Richie Schwartz. Holloway co-exec produces. Bobrow is repped by UTA and Hansen Jacobson; Gluck is with UTA and Sloane Offer. Michael Saltzman, who spent the past two seasons on AMC’s Mad Men, is returning to his comedy roots with a half-hour sale at Fox through CBS TV Studios and Jeffrey Kramer’s Juniper Place Prods. Kramer and Saltzman will exec produce the project, about a successful executive who returns home to...
- 10/18/2013
- by NELLIE ANDREEVA
- Deadline TV
Ranked: Every Jim Jarmusch Film from Worst to Best Can anything possibly be better than Dead Man? Nathaniel Janowitz Over his career, Jim Jarmusch has created some of the most innovative and idiosyncratic films of the late 20th and early 21st century, cementing himself as one of the greatest, absurd filmmakers of our time. Throughout the years he's won just about everything at Cannes, (The Grand Prix, Palme d'Or – Short Film, Best Artistic Contribution, and The Golden Camera), except the Palme d'Or, although he's been nominated six times. His latest film, Only Lovers Left Alive, which just premiered at Cannes, is an unconventional love story and vampire epic starring Tilda Swinton (so, of course we can't wait to see it). To commemorate this, we decided to look back on the whole Jarmusch oeuvre—the good, the laconic, and the RZA-ridden. 10. Permanent Vacation (1980) This is [...]...
- 6/5/2013
- by Nathaniel Janowitz
- Nerve
"As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn't sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can't shake, so it's not phony anymore." – Ryan Gosling
Greetings from the apocalypse! I gave up hunting for Cadbury Creme Eggs on my front lawn for Lent, so this Easter holiday comes as a huge relief. Let's celebrate this holiest of weekends with a story featuring death and glorious resurrection … of Hasbro toy characters.
Friday, March 29
Pow! In Theaters
Get locked and loaded as Dwayne Johnson brings out the big guns for "G.I. Joe: Retaliation." Ever since the trailer debuted in 2011 I've had visions of mountain-climbing ninjas dancing in my head, but what the good lord giveth, the good lord taketh away, and the summer 2012 release got delayed so they could add more Channing Tatum. That better not be at...
Greetings from the apocalypse! I gave up hunting for Cadbury Creme Eggs on my front lawn for Lent, so this Easter holiday comes as a huge relief. Let's celebrate this holiest of weekends with a story featuring death and glorious resurrection … of Hasbro toy characters.
Friday, March 29
Pow! In Theaters
Get locked and loaded as Dwayne Johnson brings out the big guns for "G.I. Joe: Retaliation." Ever since the trailer debuted in 2011 I've had visions of mountain-climbing ninjas dancing in my head, but what the good lord giveth, the good lord taketh away, and the summer 2012 release got delayed so they could add more Channing Tatum. That better not be at...
- 3/29/2013
- by Max Evry
- NextMovie
Within the world of avant-garde, experimental filmmaking, there happens to be a pantheon of patron saints that young filmmakers become inspired by. Be it something as tame as early Jim Jarmusch (I’m thinking the bizarre and kinetic Permanent Vacation), something as breathtakingly simplistic and beautiful as the films of Jean Painleve, or the god of the experimental world Stan Brakhage, experimental cinema carries with it some of the most refreshing pieces one could imagine.
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Read more on Blu-ray Review: A Hollis Frampton Odyssey (The Criterion Collection)...
Other articles that you might like:
Blu-ray Review: The Organizer [The Criterion Collection] Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Zazie Dans Le Metro Blu-ray Review: Alambrista (The Criterion Collection)
Other articles that you might like: Blu-ray Review: The Organizer [The Criterion Collection] Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Zazie Dans Le Metro Blu-ray Review: Alambrista (The Criterion Collection)...
- 5/2/2012
- by Joshua Brunsting
- GordonandtheWhale
So, just who is Sara Driver? She's a filmmaker who worked the New York scene, collaborating with Jim Jarmusch (producing "Stranger Than Paradise," working on "Permanent Vacation" and inspiring the story behind "Broken Flowers") and also made her own movies through the '80s and '90s. But as these stories sometimes go, while the indie movie world moved forward, she was left behind. However, a resurgence of appreciation for her contributions and her work have put her name back in the spotlight thanks to a recent retrospective at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City and new boxset of her films, and she's going to strike while the iron is hot.
Doing the interview rounds, she tells the Huffington Post that her next endeavor will find her working alongside some pretty big names. "[It's] a European production for children, a series of folk tales to be called 'Tales from the Hanging Head,...
Doing the interview rounds, she tells the Huffington Post that her next endeavor will find her working alongside some pretty big names. "[It's] a European production for children, a series of folk tales to be called 'Tales from the Hanging Head,...
- 3/29/2012
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Since his understated debut, Permanent Vacation in 1980, Jim Jarmusch has consistently followed a pattern of making small, unique films that most definitely don’t rely on the Hollywood formula. Although he has worked with high profile stars such as Johnny Depp and Bill Murray, his films have always had an amateurish feel. That’s not to say they lack in quality, but they are certainly very low-key and often require multiple viewings to fully understand.
With that said, when the news came out that he wanted to follow up The Limits of Control with a Vampire love story, it would be a safe bet to assume that it’s pretty much going to be the complete opposite of something like the Twilight franchise. Details have been pretty scarce on the long gestating project, it’s now been 3 years since his most recent film hit theaters, so today is a great...
With that said, when the news came out that he wanted to follow up The Limits of Control with a Vampire love story, it would be a safe bet to assume that it’s pretty much going to be the complete opposite of something like the Twilight franchise. Details have been pretty scarce on the long gestating project, it’s now been 3 years since his most recent film hit theaters, so today is a great...
- 1/30/2012
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
By David Savage
Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
The generation of subversive filmmakers who emerged out of the rubble of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1970s, who wrote, cast, produced and directed their own punk riffs on narrative feature films long before the digital revolution made it easy, has long gone without a proper documentary that chronicles their fascinating emergence during this era. Well, no more. Blank City, directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, was one of the most talked about docs at festivals worldwide in 2010, and recently started its theatrical engagement at the IFC Center in Manhattan and across the USA at major indie-cinema venues.
Packed with film clips, period footage and insightful interviews with key players from the scene, such as Debbie Harry, John Waters, Ann Magnuson, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor and Jim Jarmusch, Blank City is a fascinating and inspiring documentary...
Normal 0 false false false En-us X-none X-none
The generation of subversive filmmakers who emerged out of the rubble of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1970s, who wrote, cast, produced and directed their own punk riffs on narrative feature films long before the digital revolution made it easy, has long gone without a proper documentary that chronicles their fascinating emergence during this era. Well, no more. Blank City, directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, was one of the most talked about docs at festivals worldwide in 2010, and recently started its theatrical engagement at the IFC Center in Manhattan and across the USA at major indie-cinema venues.
Packed with film clips, period footage and insightful interviews with key players from the scene, such as Debbie Harry, John Waters, Ann Magnuson, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor and Jim Jarmusch, Blank City is a fascinating and inspiring documentary...
- 5/17/2011
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Although it's an unfortunate turn of phrase given the era, the best way to describe the documentary "Blank City" is still as something of a gateway drug when it comes to the late '70s, early '80s underground film scene in New York. It's easy to tell this since it's obvious French director Celine Danhier recreates her own experience of discovering the no-budget avant garde movement known as "No Wave" cinema in her documentary, presenting one snippet of rare footage after another, teasing the audience with clips of Michael Holman's self-descriptive "Vincent Gallo as Flying Christ" and Charlie Ahearn's groundbreaking hip-hop flick "Wild Style" and having such personalities as Deborah Harry and Steve Buscemi talk about what a wild and crazy time it was.
It's the shortcoming of "Blank City" that it isn't as adventurous in mirroring the era the film documents, settling into a style where...
It's the shortcoming of "Blank City" that it isn't as adventurous in mirroring the era the film documents, settling into a style where...
- 4/8/2011
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
Despite the fact that Jim Jarmusch has been making films for about 25 years, I felt like I was watching a film by a filmmaker possibly experimenting, or rather, maybe more accurately, discovering (or rediscovering) the medium and all its elements, but yet, still mostly coloring within familiar boundaries.
Let’s face it, at this stage of the game, I don’t really expect Jarmusch to suddenly become Tony Scott or Michael Bay. But I sensed a kind of freshman creative processing – maybe even amnesic or alien, in the sense that he’d suddenly forgotten everything he knew about cinema, and was, in essence, rediscovering it again, as only someone with Jarmusch’s sensibilities could.
While watching Limits Of Control (released in 2009), there were moments when I unintentionally laughed to myself – not because there was something specifically humorous happening on the screen, but rather because I felt like I was part of a joke,...
Let’s face it, at this stage of the game, I don’t really expect Jarmusch to suddenly become Tony Scott or Michael Bay. But I sensed a kind of freshman creative processing – maybe even amnesic or alien, in the sense that he’d suddenly forgotten everything he knew about cinema, and was, in essence, rediscovering it again, as only someone with Jarmusch’s sensibilities could.
While watching Limits Of Control (released in 2009), there were moments when I unintentionally laughed to myself – not because there was something specifically humorous happening on the screen, but rather because I felt like I was part of a joke,...
- 3/14/2011
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
“Downtown 81 represents Manhattan’s last stand as a beatnik haven for creatively driven impoverished artists, a moment where everyone was connected in one giant electrical circuit creating their own cultural power.”
Downtown 81, featuring a nineteen year old Jean-Michel Basquiat, captured the movers and shakers from the no wave, hip-hop, graffiti, and alternative fashion scenes, as they collided down in the depths of New York’s lower east side. Originally shot by director Edo Bertoglio in the winter of 1980-81, it remained unreleased for nearly twenty years before being re-assembled in 1999 by co-producer Maripol Fauque (a Polaroid photographer and fashion designer, behind the iconic look for Madonna on the cover of Like a Virgin). Basquiat first acquired notoriety in the early eighties New York art scene with his ‘Samo’ graffiti slogans, which caught the attention of TV Party host Glenn O’Brien. After Basquiat appeared as a guest on...
Downtown 81, featuring a nineteen year old Jean-Michel Basquiat, captured the movers and shakers from the no wave, hip-hop, graffiti, and alternative fashion scenes, as they collided down in the depths of New York’s lower east side. Originally shot by director Edo Bertoglio in the winter of 1980-81, it remained unreleased for nearly twenty years before being re-assembled in 1999 by co-producer Maripol Fauque (a Polaroid photographer and fashion designer, behind the iconic look for Madonna on the cover of Like a Virgin). Basquiat first acquired notoriety in the early eighties New York art scene with his ‘Samo’ graffiti slogans, which caught the attention of TV Party host Glenn O’Brien. After Basquiat appeared as a guest on...
- 2/23/2011
- by Tom Jarvis
- SoundOnSight
Nicky Wire has claimed that the upcoming Manic Street Preachers album is "unashamedly '90s". The bassist and lyricist revealed details of the band's tenth studio LP in a blog on the group's official website and said that the album is more like 2007's Send Away The Tigers than last year's Journal For Plague Lovers. Wire said: "James [Dean Bradfield] likes to make an analogy with Aerosmith, that Satt was Permanent Vacation and this record is like Pump. Bigger and better. "I most point out that is absolutely not a musical analogy! It's just us ramping everything up. There's strings everywhere, gospel choirs, John Cale is on a track, Duff McKagan is on a track... we've even got Ian McCulloch doing a duet with James." Wire admitted that (more)...
- 7/22/2010
- by By Mayer Nissim
- Digital Spy
This is a follow-up to my post a little bit ago urging black filmmakers with mostly unseen feature films to contact me, so that we can profile their films here…
One of the films I received is called Jake Gets Paid, a 2009 film written and directed by Ed DuRante of The Leagues – the group of Nyu Mfa grads who brought you the feature film, 6 Things I Never Told You, which we’ve talked about previously on this blog, and which we screened here in New York City to packed houses. I actually profiled Jake Gets Paid on Shadow And Act last year, but the film disappeared soon thereafter, and I’d forgotten about it… until recently, with Ed telling me a week or so ago that he’s planning on self-releasing the film some time soon, hopefully; although it’ll be an extremely limited release, possibly followed by an online presence.
One of the films I received is called Jake Gets Paid, a 2009 film written and directed by Ed DuRante of The Leagues – the group of Nyu Mfa grads who brought you the feature film, 6 Things I Never Told You, which we’ve talked about previously on this blog, and which we screened here in New York City to packed houses. I actually profiled Jake Gets Paid on Shadow And Act last year, but the film disappeared soon thereafter, and I’d forgotten about it… until recently, with Ed telling me a week or so ago that he’s planning on self-releasing the film some time soon, hopefully; although it’ll be an extremely limited release, possibly followed by an online presence.
- 6/29/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
IFP will honor director Jim Jarmusch with a special tribute recognizing his body of work at the 15th annual Gotham Awards, set for Nov. 30 in New York. "We have wanted to celebrate Jim Jarmusch's impressive work for quite some time as part of the Gotham Awards," IFP executive director Michelle Byrd said Thursday. Jarmusch's career ranges from his 1980 directorial debut, Permanent Vacation, to his latest film, Broken Flowers, which Focus Features released in August.
- 11/10/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
CANNES -- Fortissimo Films has extended its relationship with Jim Jarmusch, with the Dutch sales company taking on international theatrical, video and television distribution of the director's film library, the company said Wednesday at MIPCOM. Fortissimo first worked with Jarmusch last year on Coffee and Cigarettes, a collection of short movies in which various celebrities discuss the pros and cons of caffeine and nicotine. It was released in the United States through United Artists. Included in the deal -- which was negotiated by Fortissimo co-chairmen Michael Werner and Wouter Barendrecht and ICM's Bart Walker and Stacey Smith on behalf of Jarmusch -- are Permanent Vacation (1980), Stranger Than Paradise (1983), Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991) and Dead Man (1995). The deal was formally completed this week, allowing the Fortissimo Films team to present the Jarmusch library to buyers at MIPCOM.
- 10/6/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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