Stop Making Sense has long been an obsession, but I haven’t really published about it. I’m going to be uploading a few pieces I’ve published that are only tangentially related to Stop Making Sense.
Here is a piece I wrote for WORN Fashion Journal about Mr. Jim Jarmusch. It first appeared in WORN Issue 3, and was included in The WORN Archive: A Fashion Journal about the Art, Ideas, & History of What We Wear (Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2014).
Director Jim Jarmusch, by most accounts, virtually invented contemporary independent American film (Stranger than Paradise, Dead Man, Broken Flowers) and ranks among the finest living directors. This has no relevance to the musings at hand.
FIVE REASONS JIM JARMUSCH IS THE COOLEST PERSON ON EARTH (OTHER THAN THE FACT THAT HE MAKES GREAT MOVIES)
Text by Ted Kulczycky
1. “NEVER TRUST ANYBODY WITHOUT HOLES IN THEIR CLOTHES.” He’s well off but still proudly wears thrift shop. The sharp lines and dapper trims on most of his outfits scream “style,” but despite this attention to his appearance, he never seems especially handsome or pretty. His clothes look old, but they don’t convey the preciousness of vintage. Even with the odd hole, they don’t have that ratty feel you sometimes get with thrift. His stuff looks sharp but still — for lack of a better word — worn. One further note on fashion: he’s a film director. He likes baseball. He’s almost never seen in a baseball cap. Thank you.
2. THE HAIR. The straight-up shock of salt and pepper has progressed, through the years, to a straight-up shock of salt. During the halcyon days of punk, while everyone on the Lower East Side was using chemicals, food colouring, and bodily fluids to make a “striking new ‘do,” Jim Jarmusch’s hormones styled his hair naturally.
3. HE’S A MEMBER OF THE SONS OF LEE MARVIN. There is, apparently, a secret society with meetings and handshakes and everything) that also includes Tom Waits, Neil Young, Nick Cave, and several other celebrities. Membership requires the individual to bear “more than a passing resemblance” to the hard-living, horse-faced, and gravel-voiced star of The Wild One and The Dirty Dozen. With his stretched features, thick eyebrows, and premature white, Jarmusch was one of the founding members.
4. HE SMOKES. Smoking is bad. It kills. It stains your teeth. It harms your unborn baby. People who smoke are bad. Bad. But it’s cool! And very few of us look as cool as Jarmusch while smoking. What could possibly frame that hair as well as a cloud of smoke? In Blue in the Face, Jarmusch has a cameo as a man about to quit smoking. He philosophizes about the filthy habit for 15 minutes before taking his last puff: “Why do the Nazis always hold their cigarettes in a funny way in movies? Does it signify their evilness?” Among Jarmusch’s own films, Dead Man comments on the differences between Native American spirituality and Western capitalism via a running gag about tobacco; Coffee and Cigarettes is a two-hour meditation on what my uncle commonly refers to as a “whore’s breakfast.” Jarmusch has been quoted as saying, “I hope I’m not a notorious smoker.” Sorry, Jim.
5. HE’S ACTUALLY BLACK AND WHITE. I recently noted to a friend, in casual conversation, that I’d never seen a colour photo of Jim Jarmusch, My friend was polite enough not to correct me, but I soon realized the absurdity of my statement_ I’d seen the movies Blue in the Face, Tigrero, and Sling Blade. All three are in colour and all three feature Jarmusch. Hell, I’ve seen him in person a couple of times. So why can’t I get a colour image of him in my mind?
Sure, there are other people it’s impossible to visualize in colour — Charlie Chaplin, Ralph Kramden, Hitler. But this seems to be a consequence of familiarity. Most of the images we’ve seen of these people are over 40 years old and in black and white. But I saw two documentaries with a colour Jarmusch in them a month ago. I checked my magazine collection for interviews and articles, and Jarmusch is usually photographed in black and white, even for full-colour magazines. I still don’t think that’s it. I think the fact that he seems made up of shades of grey is what leads photographers to shoot him devoid of pigmentation. I’ve racked my brain trying for an explanation, and it could be 1) An odd geometrical visual phenomenon caused by his hair and the length of his face. 2) A strange psychological condition related to the way people perceive colour in dreams. 3) He’s actually black and white.
2024 STOP MAKING SENSE PROJECT POST-SCRIPT
I was thrilled last year to discover deep in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts the first issue of the Barnard College Upstart from early 1977 which included one of the first ever interviews with Talking Heads side-by-side with photos by one “James Jarmusch.” James has always been cool.
