Coffee and Cigarettes
Eleven comic, mostly improvised skits in which well-known actors from Jarmusch’s films meet in a café, enjoying coffee and cigarettes.
Elvis is not dead! He switched places with his twin brother and is alive and well. Or so claims a waiter in COFFEE AND CIGARETTES, a film in which people chat about anything and everything over coffee and nicotine. The idea for this film originated in 1986, when Jim Jarmusch recorded a short improvisation by comedians Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright. Over a period of about fifteen years, Jarmusch made similar short films with befriended actors and musicians, and in 2003 he compiled eleven shorts into this entertaining anthology of caffeine- and nicotine-fuelled conversations. In the short films, Jarmusch often cleverly played on the public image of the actors and musicians in front of his camera. The film’s biggest surprise is the episode featuring a double role by Cate Blanchett, who plays both a celebrated actress and her less successful cousin. Perhaps no more than an interlude in Jarmusch’s oeuvre, but a very tasty one.