One of the first films that was shown to us in film school was Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 realist slacksterpiece, Stranger Than Paradise. Bleak, black and white, and glacially paced compared to the films I was watching in 2003 (I was 20, so I was probably watching an unhealthy mix of Quentin Tarantino and John Woo films), I didn’t know what to make of it at the time. John Lurie from the Lounge Lizards and Richard Edson from Sonic Youth play the aimless leads, while violinist Eszter Balint portrays the in-from-out-of-town cousin who is into Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (because he’s a wild man). 

Right from that first proper feature (and even its predecessor, the meandering, Charlie Parker-obsessed Permanent Vacation) the New York filmmaker was into the music scene - casting his musician friends, jamming along with them and popping up in the nearly un-watchable Straight to Hell with The Clash and The Pogues (worth checking out for his white suit and stilted “Norwood, don’t ruin the suit” performance). I’m not sure exactly what film did it for me (Broken Flowers or Night on Earth maybe), but I started devouring all of the Criterion Collection goodness that Jarmusch fans could ask for, even Fishing with John, an extended part of the Jarmusch universe. Nearly all of his films hold stand-out acting performances from such musicians as Tom Waits (Down By Law, Coffee & Cigarettes), Joe Strummer and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (Mystery Train) and Iggy Pop (Dead Man, which also holds a one-take score by Neil Young). The man has been mixing music and visuals for years, directing videos for Talking Heads and The Raconteurs, most recently delivering a handful of records with Dutch minimalist Jozef van Wissem - he’s even posed on the cover of a Brian Jonestown Massacre album. 

2003’s shorts anthology Coffee & Cigarettes holds a segment in which the “brother/sister” duo of Jack and Meg White talk about Nikola Tesla (Jack has brought his makeshift Tesla coil in a lil’ red wagon) and it’s always been rumoured that Jarmusch has been obsessed with the Serbian inventor from the 1800s. At this year’s New Music Festival, Jarmusch is not only presenting the Tesla in New York opera he co-write with Phil Kline, but he’s performing in it, in addition to speaking in a pre-show panel and conducting a post-show Q&A. He’s also got a gig with Kline and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo at Union Sound Hall and will be introducing a film or two at Cinematheque. All this and he still finds the time to appear to Lisa Simpson at Sundance and show her a cool dissolve. 

The fact that the 60 year-old Jarmusch is coming to Winnipeg in the dead of winter speaks volumes to the quality and importance of such an event as the New Music Festival, but it also speaks to the quality of work coming out of Winnipeg. The deadpan man with the frightfully white hair is a rule-breaking, genre inventing genius in the world of film and music, and with Winnipeg being such a wildcard in this regard (we’ve got Leslie Supnet and John K. Samson, but we’ve also got WindCity and Chantal “Get it at Krevco” Kreviazuk) it’s a perfect fit to host the musical world of a man that is predominantly known for his realistically low-key, yet somehow cartoon-like, filmmaking. 

Besides, if you ask anyone, there’s never anything going on in Winnipeg - and that’s the perfect setting for Jarmusch. He’ll show you just how interesting and important nothing can be.

Published in Volume 68, Number 17 of The Uniter (January 22, 2014)