John Lurie - Fishing With John

into a selling system. It's just shit that most musicians admit to this little game and finally sound like the sign indicating the record store’s style."

Waits on "Lounge Lizards" and their music: "They used to accuse John Lurie of doing fake jazz - a lot of posture, a lot of volume. When I first heard it, it was so loud, I wanted to go outside and listen through the door, and it was jazz. And that was an unusual thing in New York, to go to a club and hear jazz that loud, at the same volume people were listening to punk rock. Get the first record, 'The Lounge Lizards'. You know, John's one of those people, if you walk into a field with him, he'll pick up an old pipe and start to play it, and get a really good sound out of it. He's very musical, works with the best musicians, but never go fishing with him. He's a great arranger and composer with an odd sense of humor."

IMPORTANT WORKS

Discography Stranger Than Paradise (1984) Stranger than Paradise (Soundtrack, 1984) Paris, Texas (1984) Down By Law (Soundtrack, 1986) Down By Law (1986) Queen of all ears (1986) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) Mystery Train (Soundtrack, 1989) Mystery Train (1989) Voice of Chunk (1989) Wild at Heart (1990) Men with Sticks (1993) John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards in Berlin Get Shorty (Soundtrack, 1995) (1991) Manny & Lo (Soundtrack, 1996) Night on Earth (1992) Fishing with John (Soundtrack, 1998) Blue in the Face (1995) African Swim (Soundtrack, 1999) Get Shorty (1995) Manny & Lo (1996) Fishing with John (1998) Filmography New Rose Hotel (1999) Permanent Vacation (1980)

B) FISHING WITH JOHN

While watching one of those fishing TV show in the early morning hours, John Lurie got the idea of making one serial himself, but as a spoof one.

However, if you would like to take it from charming Lurie, that idea wasn’t strategic but to evade taxes. In 1991, he was on fishing holidays with Willem Dafoe shooting a private video of it and afterwards he wrote it off against the tax claiming he was working on a new TV show. A friend of his saw the video, liked it at once and offered it to a Japanese Production Company. So that Company financed his pilot broadcast. Later, the series "Fishing with John" has been telecasted in the USA on IFC (the Independent Film Channel).

Lurie visited with his guests places like Jamaica and Thailand, Northern Maine, Montauk (NY). Those guests were buddies like Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Dennis Hopper, Matt Dillon, and Willem Dafoe. With Jim Jarmusch he went fishing off Montauk, NY, – they hook a 12-foot blue shark, Waits got seasick in the Caribbean and with Willem Dafoe he run out of cheese crackers while ice fishing in Maine.

Eventually John Lurie feared that everything would go wrong. For the first sequel with Jim Jarmusch they had shot about 10 hours. They were pretty lucky and caught right away three sharks – to make it look more dramatically in the programme we feigned it was only one – but then an especially big one. But the scenery was still totally boring – two guys sitting in a boat waiting. So Lurie had the idea with the narrator – very serious, base voice/deep-throated - , who conveys kinky information about fish and water, man and nature sounding like a speaker on Discovery Channel. And this sonorous voice belongs to Robb Webb who is just as well-known in the USA as is Harald Schmidt in Germany. With imperturbable seriousness and stoic-sedate he reports on wonderfully dull pearls of wisdom like:

"Life is so beautiful… for some more than for others. Everywhere, everyday of our lives… ah – fishing."

Lurie also says he thinks it’s an odd thing that people like Hopper or Waits suddenly show this really sweet and disarming side of their personality the moment you put them on a boat in the middle of nowhere. When Dennis is playing in a film or is giving an

interview he has a distinct face; but when he is concentrating on fishing he forgets about it and rather looks like a 9-year-old.

The music and sounds in "Fishing with John" are composed and performed mostly by John Lurie himself. It is very emotional and with many strange sound effects, e.g. children's laughter and whispering high-pitched voices.

QUOTATIONS

"Life is so beautiful… for some more than for others. Everywhere, everyday of our lives… ah – fishing."

TW: What about chicken fish?

Leon: Chicken?

TW: Yeah.

Leon: No, no, no. No chicken fish.

JL: (to Leon:) He doesn't know anything about fish! (to all:) This is amazing you know because everywhere you go they have different names for different fishes.

TW: The same fish has 25 names.

JL: By the time you get to France it has a different name. TW: Cheese fish, they call it. Cheese fish in France. Leon: Why do they call it cheese fish? TW: I don't know… it's France!

TW: Where do you hook this bait?

JL: Through the eyes.

TW: Oh, Jesus.

JL: You want me to do it?

TW: Yeah, want you to do it. He's already looked at me. I can't do it now we have a relationship.

LITERATURE

Hillier, Jim (Ed.). American Independent Cinema. A Sight and Sound Reader. British Film Institute: London, 2001.

Jim Jarmusch. Fishing with John. TV Production 1998.

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