Stranger Than Paradise

For many film lovers, the 1990s was the golden age of independent cinema. That was indeed the decade that saw the rise of Sundance and other indie film festivals, as well as the creation of independent distributors such as Miramax, Good Machine, and New Line Cinema, and the indie-wings of the major Hollywood studios like Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Vantage, and Warner Independent. The '90s was also the era that the Oscars began to recognize and award independent pictures on par with major releases, culminating in 1997 when only one Best Picture nominee, Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire, was a major studio release. But I can't help but view the '90s as simply the time when indie movies became commercialized and more successfully marketed. For me, the 1980s were the true golden age of independent cinema—when indies were truly indies. As in the '70s, countless low-budget horror, action, and exploitation pictures were produced, but the new surge in American markets, bringing an increase in available independent financing, also made possible an explosion in production for British, Australian, and foreign-language pictures that would play in the US. More significantly, the '80s was an era when young, self-determined writer/directors, often working with meager resources, started making little dramas and comedies that drew attention from a mass audience. It was the decade that gave us the débuts of John Sayles, Abel Ferrara, Sara Driver, Tim Hunter, Gus Van Sant, John McNaughton, Stuart Gordon, Susan Seidelman, James Cameron, Robert Townsend, Wayne Wang, Alex Cox, Allison Anders, Bill Sherwood, the Coen Brothers, and perhaps the three that loom largest in our ongoing conception of the '80s indie filmmaker, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, and Jim Jarmusch.

Of those last three, Jarmusch was the first one out of the gate. The decade kicked off with his 75-minute 16mm "No Wave" downtown hipster comedy Permanent Vacation, which he made in 1980 as his NYU film school thesis. He followed up that movie with this iconic, moody, deadpan character study, Stranger Than Paradise. With its stark black-and-white images (more like grey-and-white), long takes of the protagonists doing little to nothing, absurdist humor in which nothing funny happens, and dry-cool aesthetic that makes sitting around smoking cigarettes and playing cards seem like the most interesting thing imaginable, this 1984 winner of the Cannes Film Festival's Caméra d'Or award for debut feature is perhaps the ultimate independent movie of its (and maybe any other) decade.

Stranger Than Paradise stars three musicians. Jazz saxophonist and painter John Lurie plays Willie, a young guy living in a bare downtown Manhattan apartment who is visited by his cousin Eva, played by Hungarian actress and violinist Eszter Balint. Eva has traveled from Hungary to live with her and Willie's Aunt Lotte, but she must stay in New York for ten days before continuing to Cleveland because Lotte has had an unexpected medical issue. When Eva arrives at Willie's tiny, dingy, dirty apartment, he is inhospitable to her, not including her in any of his daily activities. The third member of the film's trio is Eddie, Willie's dim but affable buddy, played by former Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson. Eddie is more friendly towards Eva but defers to Willie's insistence that she not come out with them to the race track or join in any of the small-time hustles they engage in. Over the course of the ten days, Willie and Eva warm to each other but hardly become close.

That's basically the plot of the 30-minute version of Stranger Than Paradise, which was released as a standalone short in 1982 and got some attention. Jarmusch spent the next two years expanding the short into a feature, shooting two more half-hour segments a year after the first section, giving the feature version its three-act structure. Part of what makes Stranger Than Paradise feel like the ultimate American indie movie is the near-anti-social vibe that seems to dare you to dismiss it as a banal work of self-involved creators while sneakily captivating you. But it's also that the film became so successful by breaking so many traditional Hollywood filmmaking conventions. A key behind-the-scenes aspect of its production enhances the movie's notoriety among indie movies but also contributes to its distinctive editorial rhythm. The legend goes that while Jarmusch was at NYU, he studied under Hollywood maverick director Nicholas Ray, who brought him along as his personal assistant during the production of Wim Wenders' documentary about Ray called Lightning over Water. Wenders took a shine to Jarmusch and gave the budding filmmaker the 35mm short ends from his subsequent production, The State of Things (1982), and Jarmusch used this leftover film to make the 30-minute short.

This story (confirmed by all involved) created a booming market in New York for both 35mm and 16mm short ends, which are the remaining unexposed stock cut from a not-yet-fully-exposed reel of film that a movie production would normally discard if the cinematographer or director deems it more prudent to reload the camera with a fresh roll of film than to shoot out what's left in the magazine. Since short ends don't have a fixed length, it can be a little hard to determine exactly how much available footage each re-canned reel has. That wasn't an issue for Jarmusch, who just allowed each of his scenes in Stranger than Paradice to play out for however long each film load took to run through the camera. Most of his shots were locked down static angles of characters not doing much of anything, so it didn't matter exactly how much film would be devoted to each shot. He spliced these takes together in ways that would cause a jump, except that he'd slug a few seconds of black leader in between them. This unusual aesthetic should be annoying, but instead, it's kind of mesmerizing, as each cut to black instantly makes us think about whatever we were just looking at more than we did when we were actually watching it.

While I can't say I enjoy this movie as much as Lee's She's Gotta Have It or Soderbergh's sex, lies, and videotape (two of my 100 favorite films of all time), I will also acknowledge that I was never as hip as any of my peers who made this picture their touchstone. But one of the things that's so endearing about Stranger Than Paradise is how unpretentious such a deliberately affected approach to filmmaking ends up being. Part of the picture's charm is the three lead performances. Lurie's character may seem unapproachable, but Edson's goofy Eddie comes across as someone who would enjoy hanging out with anyone. Balint's Eva is neither looking to these guys for some kind of acceptance nor is she dismissive of them for their less-than-stellar personalities. Whatever world she had just arrived from in Hungary was probably far less enjoyable than sitting quietly in rooms with these two guys. And when they come to visit her in Cleveland a year later, she's excited to have a change of pace from working at her tedious fast-food job.

The best character studies are films where we learn about the people on screen by how they behave more than by what they say. Typical character studies follow unique individuals and show us why they're special. Stranger Than Paradice may not be about particularly special people, but Jarmusch lingers on their minimalist behavior to such an extent that we come to develop a deep understanding of who they are, what they think and feel, and then we start to relate to them, sometimes profoundly. This is a movie about the ways people connect with one another without speaking. They're both consciously and sub-consciously sizing each other as they sit, smoke, eat, drive, play cards, argue, and listen to music—music is key here; specifically, the repeated use of Screamin Jay Hawkins's 1956 spoken-word (and shouted-word) song "I Put a Spell on You." As these characters casually observe each other, we intently observe them. Forty years later, the movie still comes across as a marvelously authentic portrait of a certain disaffected segment of both the Gen-X and Boomer generations, whose deadpan appeal, I would imagine, also extends to younger viewers who can't imagine ever sitting in a room without some kind of screen to look at.