[1980] PERMANENT VACATION: This one would be of most interest to the Jarmuschophiles, I think. I am not, but only because I haven't seen much by him, not even Broken Flowers yet--so I'm not in the strongly anti-Jarmusch camp that I understand does exist. It's his first film, shot right after film school, and it's basically this kid (Chris Parker) wandering through New York and getting into muted encounters with various crazies and eccentrics (it's kind of a muted low-budget version of Mike Leigh's Naked, or that's what this reminded me of.) I guess it's the poetry of living life without any plan at all, and being very strongly committed to not having a plan. Yeah. The reviews I read all sort of placed this in terms of the greater context of Jarmusch's work and not as something that necessarily was great on its own. (On it's own it's a very student project-looking extended riff on destitute-by-choice urban living.) So maybe I'll understand this a little better when I get to Stranger Than Paradise in 1984. It's sort of a hard film for me to really love, though.