Focusing on the first six of the director’s thirteen fiction features, On the Road showcases the punk sensibility, droll sense of humor and poetic visual style that have made Jarmusch a beloved favorite of multiple generations of movie lovers. The retrospective screens over six afternoons and evenings, March 12-14 and March 19-21, exclusively in the Samuel Roberts Noble Theater.
The series begins with Permanent Vacation (1980), the director’s micro-low-budget NYU project made illicitly with scholarship funds. From this personal, gritty-Manhattan-era point of departure, we witness the director’s extremely quick assent, first with his critical breakthrough Stranger Than Paradise (1984), which won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; and then his formally experimental comedic neo-noir, Down by Law (1986), which co-stars John Lurie, Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni. Both are now widely regarded as contemporary American classics.
Weekend two leans into the series’ “road movie” theme with Mystery Train (1989), a film structured around three Memphis-based stories featuring a Japanese couple on a Graceland pilgrimage and a newly single Joe Strummer (co-founder of iconic British punk band The Clash); and Night on Earth (1991), a film built around a series of cab rides, with Winona Ryder and Gena Rowlands among those who make cameos. On the Road closes with another road movie of a kind—albeit one lacking asphalt and automobiles—the director’s 1995 neo-Western masterpiece, Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp and Robert Mitchum, in his last role.
OKCMOA is extremely excited to bring these six newly restored, indie landmarks to the Oklahoma City public in the comfort of the Museum’s safe and socially distanced Noble Theater!
Museum members receive discounted tickets to every film in our On the Road series, and all other Museum Films screenings in the Noble Theater. For more information about joining OKCMOA, visit: https://www.okcmoa.com/membership/
Series Lineup:
Permanent Vacation (1980)
Friday, March 12 | 8 pm
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Saturday, March 13 | 8 pm
Down by Law (1986)
Sunday, March 14 | 3 pm
Mystery Train (1989)
Friday, March 19 | 8 pm
Night on Earth (1991)
Saturday, March 20 | 8 pm
Dead Man (1995)
Sunday, March 21 | 3 pm
