by Nathaniel R
The Ohio-born indie auteur Jim Jarmusch first made waves in the cinematic landscape with his black and white sophomore feature Stranger Than Paradise in the mid 80s . It was a big critical success and arthouse sleeper hit. He was suddenly the "cool" new director. His career since then has been, like most critical darling careers, full of small waves of audience popularity versus indifference, sometimes not in relation to the critical fates of whichever film arrived. For example, Paterson (2016), his most recent picture prior to the brand new zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die (opening today) was a huge critical succcess in its year, but grossed just $2 million at the US box office.
Through it all critics have mostly been loyal and actors with more eclectic taste have become his regulars: Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, and Bill Murray have all made 4 pictures with him.
How many of his pictures have you seen? The posters are after the jump...
Chapter 1 - The Hot New Indie Director
PERMANENT VACATION (1980)
STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984) - the breakthrough
DOWN BY LAW (1986)
Chapter 2 - Still Indie in Spirit, but Now He Gets In-Demand Actors
MYSTERY TRAIN (1989)
NIGHT ON EARTH (1991)
DEAD MAN (1995)
GHOST DOG: WAY OF THE SAMURAI (1999)
COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2003)
BROKEN FLOWERS (2005
Chapter 3 - The Recent Stuff
LIMITS OF CONTROL (2009)
ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2013)
PATERSON (2016)
THE DEAD DON'T DIE (2019)
Bonus List - Very Rough Estimate of Audience Popularity by Box Office
(taking inflation into account)
It's hard out there for indie directors now. Their movies used to stay in the arthouse theaters for months if a film was critically acclaimed or the director was a "name" as Jarmusch is, hence the popularity of his early titles.
- Broken Flowers
- Stranger Than Paradise
- Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
- Mystery Train
- Night on Earth
- Down by Law
those were, roughly and arguably speaking, the arthouse "hits" and the rest were lower grossers despite buzz or acclaim - Coffee and Cigarettes
- Dead Man
- Only Lovers Left Alive
- Paterson
- Limits of Control
There's no data available on his first picture and The Dead Don't Die is too new. How will audiences respond? Are you a Jarmusch fan?