Permanent Vacation (12A)

We follow lanky teenage jazz fiend Allie (Chris Parker) as he hangs out in his scuzzy tenement flat with girlfriend Leila (Leila Gastil), and drifts through a crumbling Lower East Side landscape that’s half war zone, half deserted playground. Along the way, he reads some French poetry, catches a Nicolas Ray film, steals a car… and bumps into a variety of morbid eccentrics and glamorous psychotics. John Lurie also stars and provides the soundtrack. 

Famously, when Jarmusch was filming in a flat on East Third Street, the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat took to using the set as a crash-pad. 'Every time we did a reverse angle, I’d have to drag Jean-Michel in his sleeping bag under the camera so he’d be out of the shot,' reported the director. 'He’d grunt and go back to sleep.'