Returning to the screens once again is the ever-productive Jim Jarmusch, whose latest work, Father Mother Sister Brother [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Jim Jarmusch
scheda film], is part of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival competition line-up. Three different stories are served up this time, all dealing with family dynamics in various configurations. The director shared some thoughts on his stories, his work and his love for cinema, veering off at times into some minute detail, always worthy of exploration.

Cineuropa: The obvious opening question: to what degree have you drawn from you own family, if at all?
Jim Jarmusch: Some funny and interesting things did make their way into the script, like the twins in the third story with Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat. My mother and her brother were twins and quite telepathic. I swear, in my house, the phone could be ringing, and my mother would go, “That’s Bob” – and it would be Bob. Or she might say, “I think Bob isn’t feeling well today” and call him up; “Oh, you have the flu, I felt it.” As a child, observing these things, I just wondered, “How does this work, exactly?!”

My uncle’s name was Bob. My father’s name was also Bob. When I was together with my cousins, it would always be, “Where’s Uncle Bob?” “Your Uncle Bob or my Uncle Bob?”. Later, I’m in England and I’ll keep hearing, “Bob’s your uncle!” and I’ll go, “Yes, he is. How did you know that?”

But in general, it’s not an autobiographical story. I really don’t know why I wrote it. I’m very intuitive in what I do, not analytical. I usually carry ideas around for a year or two, and then I write the script, very fast. This idea was with me for some months, and then I wrote the script, very fast.

What was the first story that came to you?
The one with Tom Waits as the father of Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik. Mayim is a kind of child TV star in America [The Big Bang Theory, etc], and I didn’t know, because I’m not a TV guy. But I do love Jeopardy, and she was my favourite host there. Later, I thought that she’d be great as Adam’s sister in this little thing. So that was the beginning. And while writing that first chapter, the others were forming themselves mysteriously behind it. I write with specific actors in mind, so that’s really the impetus of things.

You’ve worked with a number of big names through the years, and here we have Charlotte Rampling, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett all on board. Are they easy to bring along, perhaps even quite happy to be in a Jim Jarmusch film?
They seem to be, yes. They know I really appreciate them, and I’m very collaborative and also very fearless in approaching them. With only one exception: Robert Mitchum. I’ve never been intimidated working or being with known people, except when shooting Dead Man. The cameras would roll, and I’d be standing there thinking, “That’s fucking Robert Mitchum I’m fucking directing!” But he was generous and very funny. “How are you today, Mr Mitchum?” “Worse!!!”

One of the common elements shared by all three stories in this new film is the “Bob’s your uncle” remark. Another is the appearance of a Rolex watch that might or might not be fake. Where did that idea emerge?
I have this friend who lived in the Central African Republic and is a musicologist. He lived with the Bayaka pygmies and recorded their music for years, and he would pick up these fake Rolex watches on Canal Street in New York, and then use them to bribe any African official that he would have to go through. At one point, that got me quite obsessed with fake Rolexes, for a while.

Did your friend get Rolexes for the pygmies as well?
They didn’t want them; they wanted Michael Jackson T-shirts. 

Do you have one yourself?
I do not. I have a flea-market one for $35 that I got years ago. It’s automatic.

Your style has been consistent since the very start, including the use of silence in the dialogue. Can you recall what led you to discover this?
It’s part of my cinematic journey, going from monster movies back in Akron, Ohio, as a kid to Paris as a student who never finished his studies because he was living at the cinematheque and discovering directors like Dreyer, Naruse, Bresson and Ozu, who used different rhythms compared to Hollywood and other US movies. And I realised that films are like music – sometimes quiet, sometimes dynamic. So it really started there.