We all shared one apartment that had no hot water, that was up the hill, he recalls.
What would he reveal about it?
I prefer not to reveal much of anything about it, he deadpanned.
Carter Logan and Jim Jarmusch, AKA SQÜRLSara Driver
I have an incredible cast, though.
Ill just say this.
It makesPaterson if you sawPatersonlook like a Jean Claude Van Damme action film.
Return To Reasonby Man Ray. © Man Ray Trust
So thats about all Id like to say about it.
But Im excited to be working with some of these actors.
Watch on Deadline
DEADLINE:Jim, youve just recently released an album, Silver Haze.
Does it bear any resemblance to the music youve done for this project?
JIM JARMUSCH:I dont know.
Our albums a little bit more diverse.
For this album, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anika, Marc Ribot are our guests.
DEADLINE:How did the Man Ray project come about?
She was 15 or so at the time.
She was a cinephile, and I love teenagers.
I get a lot of info from them, I get inspiration.
Its kind of magical but its not quite what Im thinking.
And she just said, You must do the Man Ray films, Jim.
Id only seen two of the four.
And I was like, Of course, the Man Ray films.
So, it came about really by her suggestion.
But I knew about Man Ray.
When I was a teenager, I discovered Dada and Surrealism, which opened up everything for me.
And at the same time, or a little later, I discovered psychedelic drugs.
And there was an interconnection there, which involved altered consciousness.
And it suits the films, I think.
DEADLINE:Are they restored?
Whats the historical background?
JIM JARMUSCH:Were in the process of restoring them.
Oddly enough, her companys called Woman Ray.
That was before we ever met her and knew anything about her.
Theyre mostly in progress, although one film,Les Mysteres…is not.
We cannot locate any original materials.
So, theyve found the best there is.
That ones a little complicated.
Also, the score here [in Cannes] is not the final mix.
All this has been quite quick.
Its a live recording from Paris, from when we played at the Pompidou Center [in February].
Its beautifully recorded, technically, but not mixed, because it all happened so fast.
We get another pass at that because the visual restorations not totally complete.
No, you dont want to remove anything.
We just want to bring it as close as we can.
And were not sure; did Man Ray reuse other material or did he hide those images in there?
Because theyre, like, three frames long.
Subliminal, in a sense.
You wouldnt register them of course.
But also, film runs vertically, and the image is horizontal.
Man Ray was quite a character, a troublemaker in some ways.
DEADLINE:Well come back to that, but how do you prepare for a live score?
How do you work out what youre going to do?
JIM JARMUSCH:Oh, yes.
Weve been doing it for a while.
We want it semi-improvised, but we have a map for sure.
Also, Man Ray doesnt want you to.
If you see a train, he probably would rather you hear the sound of the ocean.
So, its very dreamlike, and we have a lot of freedom in there.
I hope Man Ray would like it.
We bring that sort of psilocybin element to the films.
And thats when Carter and I say its like ecstatic music, because even we dont know whats happening.
We dont face the screen, obviously, but we have monitors so we can follow the films.
DEADLINE:Is it always just the two of you?
JIM JARMUSCH:Just the two of us.
DEADLINE:The drum sections in the film are pretty intense.
JIM JARMUSCH:I love when Carter plays drums.
When we play live, its guitar, drums, and bass.
[Carter Logan joins the conversation.]
JIM JARMUSCH:[To Carter] Weve talked about our improvisational element.
Our map, which we like.
What else did we talk about?
How Alice Labadie generated this project years ago.
And so, I have a go at stay very open to teenagers.
The older I get, the more I appreciate them.
JIM JARMUSCH:Think Rimbaud, think of Mary Shelley, think Joan of Arc.
Teenagers fucking rule in a lot of ways, for me.
DEADLINE:Its funny you mentioned that you discovered Man Ray as a teenager.
I was into the whole Zurich scene and everything.
Kurt Schwitters was my aesthetic hero and all these things, so great.
But then surrealism sort of extended the next step.
CARTER LOGAN:For me as well.
When I was a teenager, it appealed to me.
I had similar sensibilities.
I was a punk, but my parents had an incredible collection of books.
And that was the time that I spent digging through them.
I was very interested in the things that were around me.
This was pre-internet ubiquity: you had to have guides.
And then their book collection as well.
And when I discovered that book and flipped it open, it blew my mind.
Seeing the Readymades from Duchamp, seeing the Dadaist collages, seeing Man Rays sculptures and photographs.
I was a teenager in the 90s, so I discovered that stuff first.
To see that through-line through music was one thing.
What appeals to you about him as an artist?
JIM JARMUSCH:Well, a lot.
All those things that were around him, he just used and transformed to be some other thing.
I love that so much about him.
And I just love his openness to all these different forms.
He was a painter, he designed jewelry and lamps, and he was a filmmaker.
And his friends were incredibly interesting.
So yeah, I liked the way he lived his life too.
But oh no, this was the early 1900s.
And that really then exploded once he moved to Paris.
DEADLINE:Its interesting how readily his work translates to fashion.
He moved seamlessly in and out of that world.
JIM JARMUSCH:Well, yeah.
Other people I love have done that too.
He did all of it.
He was just playing with stuff and very playful all the time.
DEADLINE:Jim, is he on the wall of influences in Only Lovers Left Alive?
[Laughs] I think hes not, but I had too many.
That could have been five walls.
I recently found the list and it was like five times as long.
I remember the production designer saying, We have to clear these too.
And some of them I couldnt clear, they wouldnt allow us.
Francesca Woodmans parents wouldnt let me use a photo of her.
The films are the board.
The board doesnt change, and the pieces dont change.
Thats what he would rather do than make art or even have sex with Kiki de Montparnasse.
Its not just freeform.
Were not doing completely improvised experimental music.
JIM JARMUSCH:But heres a weird thing.
Weve played this set a lot.
We did a tour where we played, in two and a half weeks, 18 shows or something.
DEADLINE:Do you ever rehearse it?
Is the spontaneity a key ingredient?
Were not classical, orchestral musicians.
We come from punk rock and all this and shoegaze and stuff.
CARTER LOGAN:And theres just two of us.
JIM JARMUSCH:Were half-and-half.
Were improvising from a map, so were following the map.
But sometimes we also diverge.
Its the way I make films.
I have a script as a blueprint.
Im not rigid, because things happen when they happen.
And often the most beautiful things are the things you didnt quite plan for or were accidental even.
And thats certainly true in how we approach music, for sure.
CARTER LOGAN:I think that theres something in that about how Man Ray approached cinema as well.
Each of these films had a slightly different approach, but none of them really had a formal script.
There were poems to guide.
He just had a lot of cool stuff to make the films out of, I think.
CARTER LOGAN:Le Retour a la Raisonis definitely that.
He considered it a Dadaist film.
But, yes, he just experimented.
Sometimes he didnt even execute the film through a camera.
It took me some time to really understand all of that.
JIM JARMUSCH:Le Retour a la Raisonis the title that Marieke chose.
Me, I wouldve chosen the titleBelle Etoile dIvresseA Beautiful Star of Inebriation.
Hes trying to say that the world is fucked up, so lets go to thelackof reason.
The kind of reason hes talking about is unbridled imagination.
