Coffee And Cigarettes (DVD)
Written and Directed by: Jim Jarmusch
Starring: Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, RZA, GZA, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits

Coffee and cigarettes are a timeless indulgence of man; despite an acknowledgement in more recent years of the health risks both pose, still they persist — if not because of the coolness factor, then certainly because of the thought-provoking conversations they can inspire when combined. In his movie “Coffee and Cigarettes” indie director Jim Jarmusch (Down By Law, Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai) has brought together a strange and delightfully random all-star cast to pay tribute to these two modern vices in his own unique way. A variety of well-known actors and musicians sit down in diners and restaurants and unspool an assortment of weird, and at times somewhat mundane, conversations… all while sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes.

The idea started as a Saturday Night Live short Jarmusch created back in 1986 (seen here as the opening segment starring Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright), and grew to be an ongoing project which he would continue to cultivate over the years. More segments were filmed in 1989, 1992, and 1993 before finally wrapping up the project early 2003. The resulting feature film is composed of 11 distinct short films, all shot in black and white, and all essentially independent of each other but held together by some repeating themes and dialogue.

As you can expect from something of this nature, the movie is generally hit and miss. The opening segment “Strange To Meet You” with Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni seems promising, but never amounts to anything. It’s barely 5 minutes long, and has a hyperactive Roberto Benigni sitting with a nervous Steven Wright, seemingly making dialogue up off the top of their heads. The Iggy Pop/Tom Waits segment “Somewhere In California” won Best Short Film in 1993 at Cannes and it is definitely one of the highlights. They meet in a diner and discuss music with Iggy seeming eager to please and offering polite suggestions while Waits responds with a humourous stand-off-ish attitude. At times Iggy seems barely able to maintain a straight face during the conversation.

Cate Blanchett has an interesting scene, “Cousins”, where she meets up with a jealous cousin (also played by herself), but it drags on a bit too long. Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan’s short “Cousins?” is also longer than it needs to be at 18 minutes, but echoes a similar theme as Molina meets with Coogan to tell him that after doing some research into his genealogy he has discovered that they are distant relatives. Of course, Coogan wants little to do with Molina until he finds out he is friends with some big names in Hollywood!

Meg and Jack White (aka The White Stripes) have one of the weirdest conversations that culminates with Jack plugging in a tesla coil of his own construction and letting electricity fly. The Bill Murray scene is obviously one of the most memorable as well. Let’s be honest, getting RZA and GZA from the Wu Tang Clan together with Bill Murray pretty much guarantees laughs. In “Delirium”, Murray turns up inexplicably as their waiter in a restaurant, and they end up giving him advice on how to get rid of his smoker’s cough.

Some of the conversations throughout the movie come across as rather stilted and the humour very dry. Part of this is probably because the scenes were shot in an off-the-cuff manner with little preparation, and part of this is probably because some of the people in the movie are simply not professional actors! Still, before long the awkward pauses in the conversations become accepted as part of the quirky style of the film.

In the end Coffee And Cigarettes is probably more of a curiosity than a great movie. You’ll want to see it for the odd celebrity matchups and you’ll get a few laughs out of it, but it’s more of an experiment than a cohesive picture. But even if it’s not as inspirational as you might hope, you’ll find yourself hooked — the movie is just as addictive as coffee and cigarettes themselves.

The DVD release for the movie contains only a single outtake, and it comes from Bill Murray’s segment (demonstrating the economical way in which the movie was shot), an interview with Taylor Mead, and a feature called “Tabletops”, which is nothing more than a montage of overhead shots from each scene set to a Joe Strummer tune. Oh, I should also mention one of the unadvertised special features… a bunch of trailers for other MGM movies that can’t be skipped. What is up with this trend of non-skippable trailers that automatically load on DVDs? Most annoying thing EVER. — Sean

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