How Jim Jarmusch and Iggy Pop teamed up for The Stooges documentary Gimme Danger
US auteur tells why he has no interest in making films about dead musicians, and instead focused on a rock icon and friend who is still very much alive
Throughout his career, Jim Jarmusch has been known for making mild-mannered, minimalist films. They mirror his character well: the 64-year-old filmmaker cuts a mellow figure in person.
But when the conversation touches on something he really dislikes, he bristles – and he has a few choices for the recent raft of documentaries seeking to explore the tumultuous personal lives of deceased musicians.
“I think it’s insulting, rude and uninteresting,” he says of Brett Morgen’s Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.
“You take Kurt Cobain, whom I love, and you take things he did privately in high school, in his room, things he’s working on, and you’ve capitalised on it and exploited it, and trick his daughter [Francis Bean Cobain] to be executive producer so you could have access to that stuff? I’d say, f*** you, I don’t like that and I hate that kind of thing.”
Jarmusch doesn’t like Asif Kapadia’s film about Amy Winehouse, either. “I don’t like the film when it goes into her brother’s condition and psychological health,” he says. After a slight pause, he apologises for his outburst. “I’m sorry – I get very emotional about people going into other people’s private spots.”
Film review: Amy - Asif Kapadia’s heartbreaking portrait of Winehouse
The director is very reverential towards his subjects in his own rockumentaries. In Year of the Horse, Jarmusch captured rocker Neil Young reminiscing about his past and “the trail of destruction I’ve left behind”. But the film, which Jarmusch describes as “kind of a concert movie”, hardly provides proof about the Young’s youthful mayhem.