'Down By Law'

I expected absolutely nothing out of this film and was pleasantly surprised by what transpired. All this due to Stranger Than Paradise.

Expecting 90 minutes of pompous pointless dialogue and Tom Waits being Tom Waits, I was given a story with compelling characters and a plot that moved and remained animated.

I still think Waits was caught being Tom Waits, which can happen. It's not like he knows how to "act" in the strictest of senses. He was probably just playing a disc jockey turned set-up con as he would play a milk man, farmer or Wall Street day trader. John Lurie, another musician, although way less popular, fit as the more natural fight in front of the camera.

My favorite Jim Jarmusch appearance is in the HBO show, Bored to Death, starring Jason Schwartzman as a struggling writer, who takes to being a private detective not unlike Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler's mysteries.

In one episode, Schwartzman's agent, played by Ted Danson, gets Schwartzman an opportunity to write a screenplay for a Jarmusch film. When he belatedly goes to turn in his screenplay, Jarmusch is found inside a largely empty loft riding a bicycle in circles.

If he doesn't do this, he should.