night on earth JIM JARMUSCH INTERVIEW

GA: How did you decide on the cities to use in Night on Earth?

JJ: To be honest I had written a script for another film, but was not able to make it due to things that were very frustrating, and I felt somewhat betrayed due to certain circumstances, so I thought to hell with that then, I'll just write something else real fast. I wrote Night on Earth in about eight days and what I was thinking was, "there's friends I'd like to work with and friends I'd like to see and I'm just going to write something that will get me to work with them and see them," which included Roberto Benigni, Isaach de Bankolé, all the actors in the Finnish section, and Gena Rowlands. The cities were really based on what actors I wanted to work with, or people I wanted to see. It wasn't very calculating, it was just, "I've got to do something" because I was very frustrated by this other project that didn't work out.

GA: But each episode is coloured by the culture in which it is set. With the Finnish, you have the moroseness, with the Italian influence you not only have the influence of the Catholic church, but very broad Italian comedy, in New York you have the cultural mix and the aggression. Was that calculated or did that just come naturally?

JJ: That comes as soon as you decide, "I want to work with these actors in Finland", then my impressions of Helsinki or Finland or their culture certainly filter in, and that is the atmosphere that I'm thinking of while writing. I love cities, they are almost like lovers. I'm attracted to many cities I've been in, often cities other people don't like at all. I like Detroit and Gary, Indiana, cities other people would avoid like the plague. The cities become characters even though they're enclosed in a cab, the atmosphere, the colour, the quality of light in each city is very different and has a different effect on the people who live there and on your emotions when you are there.

GA: Those things do come over, but as you say, shooting virtually within a cab all the time - you get shots looking out of the cab and establishing shots of the cities - it must have been a very difficult film to make given all those constraints you set yourself.

JJ: That was ridiculous. I wrote the film really fast and I was saying to myself, "This will be something real easy to do and I can do it fast" and then I stepped back in pre-production, realising, "Oh man, this is in four different countries in five different cities all inside of cars." Shooting in a car is really, really difficult and anyone who has made a film in a car interior will tell you, "Don't ever do that again."

I had people locked into the cars because there was a speed-rail built on the outside of the car to put the lighting rigs on, and if they had to get out and use the bathroom, it was a big nightmare. We had to roll the windows down and put sandwiches in for them just to keep them alive at times. (Laughter) It's really not fun shooting in a car.

At one point in Helsinki, we were towing a car, a rig broke and the car with the actors in was stopped on the line of the streetcar and a streetcar was coming. And my Finnish actors are, (puts on Finnish accent) "What the bloody hell, are we going to die here in a jam?" on the walkie-talkie. We had to run and get these guys to stop the train. But just physically shooting in a car is really, really hard.

Fred Elms, the director of photography in some of the shots when we were towing the car, we had taken away the engine out of the engine cavity and mounted the engine in there and he was riding on the car, operating, sometimes holding a diopter - which allows you to have two different focus areas in the frame - and it was 14 degrees below zero. It was really cold and we were out all night and [it was] really not an easy film to make. I was deluded when I said, "This'll be easy, little stories, a few characters." It was hell.

We were stopped in Italy because we drove by the American embassy in a car that looked like some sort of gun mount and we were held there by the police for a long time, asking for our passports. Of course, our passports were all in the hotel, so we each had to tell a young Italian person working on the film, "Okay, there's a shelf in the closet, it's got a green bag, it's not in the green bag, but underneath that is a red bag, if you open that… Five hours later the guy comes back (puts on Italian accent), "I have ze passports!"

It was really insane and we were shooting over a holiday and we told this Italian guy, "please make photocopies of this schedule". He came back about nine hours later and had copied them by hand. (Laughter) And I said, "Why?" and he said, (puts on Italian accent) "Because there was no photocopy place to make, its all closed, it's a holiday, now I copy for you the schedule." (Laughter) Lots of absurd things like that going on; and then Fred Elmes is very interested in using silks over the lens for different light diffusion in each city, and he uses very expensive lingerie. In Paris, he'd see a lingerie shop and he'd rush in there and he'd be saying, "Could I see more of these stockings please?" which got a little bit embarrassing. "Jim, do you think that this is nice?"(Laughter) French girls waiting on us looking around thinking, "strange Americans…"

GA: Was it difficult working in different languages?

JJ: It's not, surprisingly. I can understand Italian somewhat, French I can understand very well and Finnish I don't understand at all, but I wrote the dialogue and I worked with the actors in advance and with a translator. The actors spoke English in Finland and we were able to discuss the nuances of their translation to make sure it was the right way; for example, working-class guys would speak, and I'd already worked with Japanese actors in Mystery Train. It sounds funny, but it is not difficult at all.

When I came back from Japan, I came back with a load of videotapes of Japanese films that I couldn't find in the States that, of course, had no subtitles. If you watch an Ozu film not subtitled, believe me you understand what the characters are feeling. Nick Ray also compared acting to piano playing and he said, "The dialogue is just the left hand, the melody is in the eyes." Language is very important, but it is not necessarily the primary way of knowing what someone is feeling. Actors are expressing a lot of things through many tiny things, not just the language, so that was not a problem at all for me.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/Guardian_NFT/interview/0,4479,110606,00.html#b