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GreenCine Movie Talk
	Independent Talk about the world of independent film.	42

Dead Man.
	Topic by: dpowers Posted: February 19, 2003 - 12:45 AM PST Last Reply: February 23, 2003 - 11:16 AM PST

author	topic: Dead Man.
dpowers	post #1  on February 19, 2003 - 12:45 AM PST   When Jonathan Rosenbaum (wow writing with caps is making me dizzy!) was here in SF, three nights in a row I listened to the introduction listing various books JR had written, including "monographs on Greed and Dead Man." (Both published by the /a>: greed, dead man.) I saw Dead Man when it played in SF, I think it was 1996. (I'd seen only Mystery Train of Jim Jarmusch's stuff before that.) So Dead Man was really my first exposure to Jarmusch-as-director and even though at the time I wasn't too much into indie movies, or foreign movies, something about how the newspapers were talking about this one really resonated, and the movie itself picked me up and just hurled me so far I haven't really ever figured out where I landed. Anyway when I heard that JR had written about these two movies: Greed, Eric von Stroheim's mangled masterpiece, which I had seen at the Castro a few years ago with restored gold tinting and stills and titles for missing sections, the movie that I have seen blamed for American film's shift away from artist control; and Dead Man, Jim Jarmusch's beautiful, personal epic; not only did that confirm for me that for years I had been heading toward JR's sort of rigorous-humane way of looking at movies, but I realized, He's putting Dead Man and Greed side by side. He really thinks Jarmusch was on to something. I gotta see it again! I gotta get that book! Got the book today. Hoping to get the the movie to look at this week. From the book: ... the existential innovation of Jarmusch, simple yet crucial, is to acknowledge that he inhabits the same universe as Native American spectators who might happen to see Dead Man: a modest gesture that proves to be a radical one only because apparently no one has ever made it before, at least not in the same way. And: By the time Dead Man appeared, the popular notion of American independent film-making had largely shifted from the paradigm represented by Jarmusch to the murkier model of Quentin Tarantino - a film-maker who has never owned the negatives, much less had final cut, on any of his features. The role played by Miramax in this shift is of course crucial, and not only because Miramax has distributed Dead Man as well as Tarantino's features, so some consideration of this hands-on distributor and its flair for promotion is crucial to understanding the altered public perception of "independence." A very intresting book.
dpowers	post #2  on February 19, 2003 - 12:47 AM PST   ... both published by the British Film Institute: ...
dwhudson	post #3  on February 19, 2003 - 8:15 AM PST   > ...so some consideration of this hands-on distributor and its flair for promotion is crucial to understanding the altered public perception of "independence." Absolutely. We're in desperate need of a good, solid book on Miramax. Unless it's already been written? If so, I don't know about it. What a book that could be in the hands of a Po Bronson or Michael Lewis-type writer, but you know, for the movie business. But yes, JR is constantly letting on that he's got a well-rounded argument re: Miramax that he has yet to spell out completely, far as I know.
dpowers	post #4  on February 19, 2003 - 9:59 AM PST   this book actually goes on for a few pages, in "consideration" of miramax and of their handling of dead man's distribution. jarmusch still, in 2000 when the book was published, believed that miramax had intentionally shelved dead man because he wouldn't let them edit it, and JR lends a little support to this with some hearsay from a "prominent programmer." the main thing is, three or four years ago when JR was writing it, he noted that the cameras at the oscars regularly went to harvey weinstein to show his reaction to award decisions, and that this NY times article, a wrap up of cannes in 1999, was, basically, all about harvey. yeah a whole book would be nice. but maybe JR talks about it in his movie wars, i haven't read that, i'm avoiding it because getting so far into the business side of things makes me queasy.
Eoliano	post #5  on February 19, 2003 - 10:14 AM PST   "There's something wrong with Cannes, and it needs to be fixed" - Harvey Weinstein Like what? Perhaps Harvey needs to be fixed and I know just the doctor to perform the operation!
dwhudson	post #6  on February 19, 2003 - 11:04 AM PST   Hee! E... > yeah a whole book would be nice. but maybe JR talks about it in his movie wars, i haven't read that, i'm avoiding it because getting so far into the business side of things makes me queasy. > --------------------------------- He does go on a bit about Miramax, but it sounds like he pretty much says the same things. I remember the bits on the NYT article, for example. Like some of his other books, Movie Wars recycles some material, but that's fine by me since I probably wouldn't have seen it any other way. Plus, he actually goes through and revises and updates rather just collect. When I'm in the US, I'm going to try to find a copy of the New Yorker with the Ken Auletta (?) piece on Weinstein. From what I've heard/read about it, it sounds like it'd be a good starting point for the sort book I do think we need.
dpowers	post #7  on February 19, 2003 - 1:54 PM PST   sound like a promising article. it might freak people out to compare with selznick, but i wonder. okay the real reason i wanted to talk about dead man is i think talking about this movie is a way to talk about how supposed changes in how "independent" is viewed in the united states might have been, in fact i think they were, based on a misunderstanding. jim jarmusch's movies were strongly influenced by new york, but even more obviously influenced by the new german cinema, particularly wim wenders. jarmusch seems to me a sort of a pivot point for a rotation of ideas between european art people and american lo-fi filmmakers. keep in mind the first and only movie i saw of his before dead man was mystery train, which would have fit nicely in german theaters anywhere between 1975 and 1995. and dead man is another step toward a bigger world. so i was actually a little surprised that people traced things like slackers and clerks back to stranger than paradise, even after i saw it, because i thought it was really clear that jarmusch took "film" seriously and was trying to do stuff. the appearance of fucking around in the first few movies was checking out the lay of the land in other people's territory. then when he really gets to something that's his, that was hard for him and for other people, it gets rejected, because what, people liked the bronx cheer aspect of the earlier stuff, and the financiers spent lots of money refining and throwing fake dirt on the bronx cheer guys to make it into a trend.
Eoliano	post #8  on February 19, 2003 - 3:02 PM PST   > When I'm in the US, I'm going to try to find a copy of the New Yorker with the Ken Auletta (?) piece on Weinstein. I read it at the library and it's practically a book unto itself. It's practically a book unto itself. Someone that worked in the publicity department at Miramax mentions towards the end of the piece that Weinstein would like to go down in the history books as an Irving Thalberg, but he seems to be weighing in more like a David O. Selznick, only heavier. [g]
SRhodes	post #9  on February 20, 2003 - 12:56 AM PST   I haven't read the Weinstein piece (another complaint about the New Yorker site, it wasn't online), but Auletta is good at access which provides details like what laptop Barry Diller is using which can be very useful. He isn't good at taking a real critical look at media. I have a copy of Three Blind Mice, his 1991 book on ABC, NBC & CBS. He describes a 1986 meeting at GE where the NBC news head resisted a request by Jack Welch for a 5% cut: "S-s-s-hit!" should ted Welch...as he pounded on the table. "Ted Turner puts on C-C-N-N-N-N for twenty-four hours a day for only $100 million! Ted Turner makes $50 to $60 million. We do three hours of news. We spend $275 million and lose $100 million." (Ofcourse now Welch's retirement package was worth over $100 million, and Warner may lose that much on Turner's gods & generals) I'm sure someone will write a good book on Miramax, but it won't be published by Talk/Miramax books.
dwhudson	post #10  on February 23, 2003 - 6:20 AM PST   I've been meaning to reply to this... > jim jarmusch's movies were strongly influenced by new york, but even more obviously influenced by the new german cinema, particularly wim wenders. jarmusch seems to me a sort of a pivot point for a rotation of ideas between european art people and american lo-fi filmmakers. Basically, I agree, but I think we can flesh that out a bit, too. I know this isn't what you're saying, but I do think people tend to look at American indie film and draw too thick a line between pre-Jarmusch and post-Jarmusch. Don't get me wrong, Stranger was crucial, no doubt about it. We've got our quotes from Spike Lee and the rest in our intro to the Jarmusch interview to prove it, too. But the impression given by books like John Pierson's Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes, which begins with a few pages on pre-1984 history but really opens with Stranger, is that the phase of American independent film production that runs from 1984 through the 90s is absolutely unique and separate from anything that had gone on before. It is unique, yes, but it's got its roots and aerials, too. That view overlooks the fact that Sayles and Cassavetes were playing in art and rep houses right alongside the New Germans and the Italian Neorealists and French New Wavers and a lot of "classic" Hollywood films as well, especially those by directors championed by the Europeans. Somewhere, Jarmusch has said that the two films that impressed him most in the mid-70s, before he went to Europe and started raiding the archives of the Cinémathèque Française (where, btw, he also emphasizes how impressed he was by Japanese directors such as Imamura, Ozu and Mizoguchi), were Night of the Hunter and Thunder Road. An intriguing question, I think, might be: What might Stranger have been if Jarmusch had had more resources besides borrowed film stock and a few thousand dollars? The actual result is due to a series of very, very smart choices given a set of severe restrictions. So the Bronx cheer aspect does look very arty, terribly European and all, but would he have made something more like Dead Man right off, if given the chance? My point, I suppose, is that what may seem like a straight line -- "a pivot point for a rotation of ideas between european art people and american lo-fi filmmakers" -- might have been messier, might have been more 'multi-', for better or worse. The next question would be whether the indie filmmakers of his generation showed as much of a European influence; I don't think they did. Very soon, you start seeing stuff very rooted in contemporary American culture, in comics, in alt.rock, sort of "videotracks" (as opposed to soundtracks) of a culture people were calling Gen X at the time.
Eoliano	post #11  on February 23, 2003 - 10:23 AM PST   David, as you say, the Bronx cheer aspect seems to be a very relevant point, and is certainly relevant to Jarmusch's later films as well as several others, some of whom are making terrific films with lots of money, but there is a reactionary faction of critics who, for whatever reason, love to attack them. Unfortunately, the one Jarmusch film of that I haven't seen is Dead man, and I have always had a particular affection for Down by Law and Night on Earth, both of which I saw on art-house screens in San Francisco. I suppose what I am getting at is something I mentioned elsewhere about art-phobia in relation to film; for example, one has only to consider the negative reactions to Eyes Wide Shut. I have to agree that indie filmmakers of his generation were not particularly influenced by European cinema as Jarmusch was, as many of those Gen X filmmakers had completely different roots, as you have mentioned, such as the "videotracks", comics or firmly rooted in contemporary American culture. Jarmusch has a wider view of the world, culturally and influentially, one that is not necessarily rooted in American culture, except by way of admiration for such films as Night of the Hunter and Thunder Road, along with a certain beat generation sensibility.
Eoliano	post #12  on February 23, 2003 - 11:16 AM PST   corrective surgery: David, as you say, the Bronx cheer aspect seems to be a very relevant point, and it's certainly relevant to Jarmusch's later films as well as to the films of several other filmmakers, some of whom are making terrific films with lots of money, but there is a reactionary faction of critics who, for whatever reason, love to attack them.