E-Mail This Article to a Friend This bud’s for you Jarmusch and Murray sniff the Flowers BY GERALD PEARY
	Related Links   Broken Flowers' official Web site Jim Jarmusch's official Web site Peter Keough reviews Broken Flowers. Gerald Peary writes about Jim Jarmusch at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Chris Fujiwara reviews Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes.

Here’s one obvious area where Europe trumps the USA: filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, marginalized in his homeland as a fringe talent, stands tall as a major artist overseas. When his Broken Flowers premiered at Cannes last May, the huge Palais des Festivals was packed with journalists for an 8:30 am screening — more, I’d guess, for Jarmusch than for his star, Bill Murray.

The press conference was a different beast, however, as entertainment writers jumped in to get droll, colorful quotes from the ex-SNL comic. Was it fun for Murray to pop up in Jarmusch’s story as a middle-aged loser? "It’s tough to go back to loves of your life," he said, "recalling the hurt you caused, the love that passed you by." Has he ever looked up an old amour? "I’ve tried. I’m usually in a strange town in the middle of the night," he joked. "But I do think of people in my past all the time. Having done it in this film, for six weeks of shooting with four different actresses, I found it unsettling and disturbing. Much of the time I was stung by what they’d say. You might try to go to a circus camp instead. It’s the same kind of feeling, trying to learn on a high trapeze."

Did he attempt to create a biography for Don? Hardly at all. "I try as much as I can to ‘be there’ when the camera rolls. I’ve tried a little of that ‘back-story’ stuff, but it kind of takes you away from who you are." Jarmusch agreed: "I’m not interested in Don’s back story, or what holes he has. It’s sort of my style anyway, looking at details and nuances instead of strong plot devices. As a lot of critics have made clear, I’m not very plot-oriented. And I have no idea what genre the film is, which I’m happy about. I have always been attracted to stories of travel. The road-movie idea is the oldest story form: the Odyssey of Homer. A journey is just a metaphor for one’s life. That’s a kind of vague answer, but it’s the best I’ve got.

"I wrote a script several years ago with Bill in mind and decided not to do it. Bill said, ‘I liked that story! Do you have any other ideas?’ A few days later, I told him another story I was writing, about this character." (Speaking to the Cannes Metro, Jarmusch elaborated: "Instead of Alain Delon, you have Bill Murray, who looks very human. In this film, you start with a guy you don’t relate to. He’s made money, so what? Now he does nothing. But as the film goes on, because it’s Bill Murray, you start to feel little things for him.")

Jarmusch was asked whether Broken Flowers is his own tale. "I don’t think of it in personal terms. It’s certainly not autobiographical. I don’t analyze characters in my films based on my life."

Tilda Swinton, after sitting quietly through much of the press conference, piped in about appearing in this Jarmusch picture about a desperately lonely guy. "I saw the film this morning for the first time. That loneliness is not just a prerogative of men, that’s something very clear in Broken Flowers. The film is about the irrelevance of the past, which only gets you so far, it’s also in a way about the irrelevance of the future. It’s about questions and, gracefully, not about answers."

Murray: "You just keep returning to the questions, and that’s sobering in a result-oriented world."

I’m not sure why, but a journalist queried Jarmusch about the new technology. "I don’t do e-mail. I’m already irresponsible enough. I don’t respond to phone calls from my friends, and I don’t want another area where I’m delinquent. I’m still a kind of Luddite. I still write my scripts in a notebook, which I use to carry around my ideas. I’m terrified of losing my ideas in cyberspace."

Mr. Film Culture can be seen and heard discussing early gangster films on an "extras" documentary accompanying the Warner Brothers DVD of Little Caesar, the 1931 Edward G. Robinson classic. Contact Gerald at gpeary@geraldpeary.com