"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic." - Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch, The Authentic Theft. For a director that has been at the game for over thirty-five years, Jarmusch has a short catalog of only 13 feature films, a fact that hasn't stopped him from providing his own take on almost every genre under the sun. We've seen him do the road trip film (Stranger Than Paradise), the jailbreak film (Down By Law), the hyperlink film (Mystery Train, possibly one of the first of its kind, a term for a style of storytelling later seen in films like Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros, Crash etc.), the western (Dead Man), the mob revenge film (Ghost Dog), the soul-searching love story (Broken Flowers), and most recently his wonderful take on the vampire genre (Only Lovers Left Alive). Possessing a fierce attention to detail, a tendency to never compromise until his vision is fully realized, and a history of almost always privately funding his films (at least all of them up until Broken Flowers). These being among some of the reasons for the gap of time between his projects. While every film has been vastly different, in each Jarmusch piece, there is always a strong homage paid to the inspirations he surrounds himself with, harnessing these inspirations as fuel for completing his clear, unique, and beautiful vision. Probably more prominent than any other director, the inspirations that are most evident are the musicians and music found in these films, each soundtrack acting as a sort of mixtape to accompany the film. So with that in mind, we present to you two sides of a short mixtape of music from the films of Jim Jarmusch, with a short synopsis of why we chose these songs after the jump.