JJ=Jim Jarmusch
doesn't do translations, just words.
- On the film synopsis, on the vampire
NP: In using horror tropes-the zombie, werewolf or in this case the vampire-filmmakers often feel th eneed to turn the creature in question into a metaphorical placeholder: vampirism as metaphor for addiction and so on. I didn't catch much of that in Only Lovers...
JJ: Well there are elements of that. Vampires are always metaphorical at some level. Maybe in our film-and I'm not Mr. Analytical about it, I just make the things-vampires are metaphors for humans, basically. They have an overview of history,they see humans are becoming more and more fragile...Maybe they're just metaphorical for the fragility of human beings,for what's happened to our world.They're more fragile than humans,they're very fragile. They could get bad blood. In the 21st century, with forensic evidence and authorities, you can't just leave around dead bodies, you have to be very careful. They're quite sophisticated about it. So maybe that's the metaphor.
NP: The gloomy, despairing Nosferatu cursed to eternal life is a cliche, but there immortality has some element of wish-fulfilment about it. These characters get to live a fantasy that lots of people indulged in-there is time enough to read everything- and they've taken full advantage of this. On the one hand there's the tragic plight of immortality, but on the other there's a sense of what a gas it would be to live forever.
JJ: I think the only way you want to live forever, especially with someone else-because it's also a drag, and Adam is suffering in a way-the only way to survive immortality would be to have a sense of wonder and interest in things .If you didn't, you'd do yourself in. Who wants to live forever if you're not interested in your own consciousness? Adam and Eve are quite involved because of their lifetime, and when they throw out Eve's sister, Ava ,she calls them snobs. Well they are snobs in a way, but wouldn't we be if we'd been alive for a thousand years and absorbed all this? People would think, "Wow,Mr Know-it-all,I guess they know everything." Well, compared to them we would, but it's the nature of their experience, not of their personalities. They're not innately snobbish, but they seem that way to everyone else.
-About character characters
NP: Not to mention the fact that Johnny Guitar is, ironically, kind of a second fiddle in the movie that carries his name. Back to Only Lovers...,there's one point where Eve says to Adam,"You missed all the fun ."which implies that he was turned into a vampire after she was, possibly by her...
JJ: I'm not sure. In earlier versions of the script we did identify their ages, and she was a 2000-year-old druid from a matriarchal tribe, and he was only 500 or 600 years old. The reason I took it out is because, while editing the film and editing the script, I started removing anything that seemed like it was delivered for the audience. They know how old each other is, why would they talk about it? So it was false, and there were quite a few things that were false that I removed. But it's still ingrained in there, really only in that one section.
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