Limited Control

Jim Jarmusch has never been very candid about his personal life, and for good reason - from the perspective of his audience, what does it really matter who he is, beyond his work, his aesthetic sensibilities, and possibly what he chooses to tell interviewers about his own craft. As he says to Homer Simpson, who runs up to him asking "Who are you?", in the episode guest starring Jim Jarmusch earlier this year: "I try to answer that question in my films."

Still, a number of basic questions, and misconceptions, concerning his biography seem to crop up every once in a while. Some of them are plain silly, while others somehow don't feel totally irrelevant. So I thought: why not go over them, once and for all. (Please note, however, that I don't know him personally, and so rely only on things he's said in interviews, I can only hope I have my facts straight - please drop a line in the comments if you find any errors.)

When and where was he born?
James R Jarmusch was born on January 22, 1953, in Cuyahoga Falls near Akron, Ohio, USA. Both sides of Jim Jarmusch's family originally came from Europe (Irish/German on his mother's side, Czech/German on his father's). His father, having worked at B.F. Goodrich for a few years, eventually became president of a small manufacturing company in Cleveland. His mother was the Akron Beacon-Journal's film and theater critic. He has one brother, Tom (who also works in film and video); and one sister, Ann (who is the architecture critic for San Diego Union-Tribune).

Where does he live?
He divides his time between downtown New York City and a house in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York.

Is he married? Kids?
This snippet from an interview in The Guardian (UK), in 2004, sums it up nicely:
Jarmusch rarely refers to his personal life. I ask him if he has any family. 'You mean kids? I don't.' He has lived with his girlfriend, the film-maker Sara Driver, for 20 years. 'She's the best. Her only flaw is her taste in men, I guess, because I can't find anything else wrong with her.' Driver produced Jarmusch's early movies. 'We stopped working together after we split up at one point, because all we did was work and we weren't lovers any more, so we were like, this is no good, and then we came back and said, OK, we're not working together, then ever since, well, anyway ... I wish I had kids, especially with Sara,' he says. 'Still could, y'know ...'

I haven't come across him saying anything more about the issue of kids, but I recently stumbled upon this photo, at Photobucket.com, of what appears to be Sara Driver and Jim Jarmusch with a baby carriage (!); the photo is credited to David Lowe, dated August 3, 2008. Make of it what you will...

What's the origin of the name Jarmusch?
Czech, I think. For anybody who really wants to know, there's a book called "The Jarmusch Name in History" that probably answers everything you ever wanted to know about it...

What's up with the white hair?
In that same Guardian interview, by Simon Hattenstone:
The hair runs in the family: his mother and her twin brother were totally white by their early 20s. It's funny, he says, how people used to look at him and dismiss him as a pseud. "They thought, 'Oh well, he dresses in black, and he dyes his hair white and he makes black-and-white films - how pretentious is he!' " Did he like his hair? "No, I didn't, but after people started saying he dyes his hair white, I thought, if I dye it black, they'll say, 'Oh, see how pretentious he is,' you know, so I thought fuck it, I don't care."

Homer Simpson: "What else?"
Jim Jarmusch: "I can eat a raw onion without crying."

The Guardian interview, "A Talk on the Wild Side" – in which he also, among other things, reveals that he has given up coffee and meat – is still available online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/nov/13/features.weekend