Young again

Jarmusch goes crazy over Crazy Horse

Because so few saw his Johnny Depp-starring mystical Western, Dead Men, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train) blasted the distributor, Miramax Films, for what he considered a lack of support. He's chosen Miramax's arch-competitor, October Films, to distribute his Neil Young-featuring concert picture, Year of the Horse.

So far, so good.

"I have a strong code, I'm very stubborn and very direct," Jarmusch explained at last month's Toronto International Film Festival. "October tells you what it thinks; they seem respectful of the people they work with. They're not trying to make you into someone else. I'm feeling no pressure about Year of the Horse's release."

Jarmusch knows his concert-film history. He considers D.A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (about Dylan) and Robert Frank's Cocksucker Blues (backstage with the Stones) the two masterworks of the genre.

"I don't think Year of the Horse has nearly their depth," he says when I compliment his oft-stirring, musically generous Neil-Young-and-Crazy-Horse documentary. "But it doesn't intend to be in that category. I'm very Zen about it. It is what it is. It had no blueprint at all, no plan, which was very liberating. We were on the road shooting a music video for Neil's `Broken Arrow' and he said, `Do you want to shoot some more? If we don't like it, we can throw it away.'

"So we just started shooting, and I liked the way it looked: super-eight beauty with 40-track Dolby sound. It became a celebration of Crazy Horse's longevity, how they're just getting better and better, a little insight into the greatest garage band in the world. They dress more like garbage collectors than a band, but when they aren't fighting with each other, it's the music! I'm a fan. I don't ever get tired of hearing the Horse play."

What's bad about Year of the Horse is what's bad about most rockumentaries: Jarmusch indulging brain-dead, off-the-cuff moments by the band as they lounge in their hotel rooms or ride the bus from gig to gig. Despite being Bill Clinton's age, they act just as spoiled and imfatile (Young included) as any bratty bunch opening at the Rat.

Yet there are moments when these old buzzards say something genuinely funny or revelatory, and there's an interesting interview with Young's sportscaster-intellectual father. And then there's the fabulous, fabulous music: Crazy Horse cook, Neil sings in that inimitable forlorn tenor, and Jarmusch lets the long numbers build and build. "Tonight's the night," let's say it, is one of the most thrilling numbers ever in a concert film.

Jarmusch wants me to write down what he's tired of.

"I'm sick of the term `independent film.' It's a label used over everything as a marketing device. Shine and The English Patient are `independent'? If filmmakers want to make a Hollywood studio film, then be straight about it. Don't represent yourself in a different way. I have a hard time looking at myself in this `independent' context. I thought it means having control over the cutting and creativity. Now, John Cassavetes was independent."

Jarmusch is also finding himself out of sorts with the young new `indies' whose only filmic sources are recent pop culture. "I was lucky enough to be an assistant to Rebel Without a Cause filmmaker Nicholas Ray. He said you can learn about filmmaking from poetry, literature, and also watching the way people flip a pancake. From everything! When I was a film student at Columbia University, we fought to convince the professors of the values of pop culture and rock, saying we love James M. Cain and Dante. But now you have to defend Dante!"

And defend doing your film-history obsession. "I discovered Sam Fuller, Nick Ray, through Rivette and Godard. I love it when things lead you to other places, the Cubists to Cézanne, Ginsberg and Burroughs, our great lost Beatnik godfathers, to Reich and Blake and Nikola Tesla. I get annoyed how I'm considered from the punk-rock generation, now `a period of history being reviewed.' History? Everything overlaps. When you look at the ocean, you can't label waves 155 or 156."

Jarmusch hasn't kept up with recent films, though he liked Irma Vep a lot and called "luminously beautiful" the newly restored print of Fritz Lang's M. "I'll go through different obsessions, like seeing every film Steve McQueen was in, every Max Ophuls film made."

What becomes obvious from an hour of talking to Jarmusch is how little he fits into the 1990s celeb-drenched film world, and how though he's instantly recognizable with his ghost-white mane, he genuinely craves the serious, out-of-the-spotlight, time to concentrate on his film craft.

"What I really like about Neil Young is that he's very stubborn about what he creates. He has a very specific circle around him so that nothing interferes. That's the important thing I learned from him: to keep elements out of your eyeline so they don't distract you."