Synopsis:
An aimless young man (Chris Parker) with an institutionalized mother (Ruth Bolton) says goodbye to his girlfriend (Leila Gastil) and wanders the streets of New York, encountering a variety of diverse individuals while contemplating his life.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Jim Jarmusch Films
• Misfits
• New York City

Review:
Jim Jarmusch’s feature debut was this 75-minute cinema verité film made on a budget of just $12K. Courtesy of Wikipedia, here is some background on how it came to be:

In his final year at New York University, Jarmusch worked as an assistant to the film noir director Nicholas Ray, who was at that time teaching in the department. In an anecdote, Jarmusch recounted the formative experience of showing his mentor his first script; Ray disapproved of its lack of action, to which Jarmusch responded after meditating on the critique by reworking the script to be even less eventful. On Jarmusch’s return with the revised script, Ray reacted favourably to his student’s dissent, citing approvingly the young student’s obstinate independence. Jarmusch was the only person Ray brought to work — as his personal assistant — on Lightning Over Water, a documentary about his dying years on which he was collaborating with Wim Wenders. Ray died in 1979 after a long fight with cancer. A few days afterwards, having been encouraged by Ray and New York underground filmmaker Amos Poe and using scholarship funds given by the Louis B. Mayer Foundation to pay for his school tuition, Jarmusch started work on a film for his final project. The university was unimpressed with Jarmusch’s use of his funding as well as the project itself and refused to award him a degree.

That final project was Permanent Vacation — and this helpful overview clarifies why Jarmusch chooses to have his protagonist stop by a screening of one of Ray’s films, The Savage Innocents (1960):

… though the man he’s seated next to in the lobby (Frankie Faison) is actually discussing the Doppler Effect, not the movie.

At any rate, to round out this review, I’ll go ahead and describe a few more things that “happen” in the script, described by Allie (Parker) thusly:

“This is my story — or part of it. I don’t expect it to explain all that much, but what’s a story, anyway, except one of those connect-the-dots drawings that in the end forms a picture of something? That’s really all this is.”

SPOILERS AHEAD

– Allie reads out loud to his girlfriend from the surrealist poetic novel “Maldoror and Poems” (1978) by Lautreamont: “I was not present at the event of which my daughter’s death was the result. If I had been, I would have defended that angel at the cost of my blood.”

– Allie tours the blown-up remains of the home where he was born, encountering a veteran (Richard Boes) while there.

– Allie visits his mother (Bolton) in a mental institution while an older woman (Evelyn Smith) in the nearby bed bursts repeatedly into laughter.

– Allie walks by a crying Latina (Maria Duval) in her slip on a back porch stoop, and can’t understand what she’s saying.

– Allie encounters a saxophonist (John Lurie) who plays a song for him.

– Allie is offended when a young woman (Suzanne Fletcher) asks him to drop her letter in a mailbox, and shows his annoyance by quickly stealing and driving away in her car when she gets out to do so herself.

– Allie sells his “new” car to a Budweiser-drinking dealer for $800.

– Allie encounters a similarly-dressed hipster near a ship bound for Paris:

… and heads off on a cross-Atlantic adventure. The End.

Jarmusch’s next major film was Stranger Than Paradise (1984), beloved by many but not me. Suffice it to say his work is simply not to my tastes. To be fair, however, I certainly remember the days when dialogue like Jarmusch’s felt much more profound and relevant. As Allie puts it:

“I’m just not the kind of person that settles into anything. I don’t think I ever will be. There isn’t really anything left to explain that can be — and that’s what I was trying to explain in the first place, just not like that. I don’t want a job, or a house, or taxes although I wouldn’t mind a car, but… I don’t know. Now that I’m away, I wish I was back there more than even when I was there. Let’s just say I’m a certain kind of tourist… A tourist that’s on a… permanent vacation.”

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Tom DiCillo’s cinematography
  

Must See?
No, unless you’re a Jarmusch fan. Listed as a Cult Movie in the back of Peary’s book, which makes sense for the time.

Links:

• IMDb entry
• NY Times Review
• Time Out Capsule Review