Coffee And Cigaretts

Coffee and Cigarettes is a film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch in 2003. It consists of “a series of vignettes that all have coffee and cigarettes in common”.

We watch Iggy Pop and Tom Waits sit down together to share coffee and cigarettes in a small café, in a scene from the film called ‘Somewhere in California’. In this scene we start by witnessing Iggy waiting anxiously in a café for the arrival of Tom. He walks around the table area and looks at the song selection on the juke box before ordering coffee and taking a seat to drink a cup. Next we see Tom enter and they uncomfortably exchange a few words. The film progresses with Tom repeatedly misunderstanding Iggy’s comments (taking them all as insults) and the ending again uncomfortably as they both part slightly annoyed with one another.

 The theme that Lim was trying to create was one discovery into ‘just how absorbing the obsessions, joys and addictions of life can be, if truly observed’.

What I liked about this scene was how awkward it seemed between Iggy and Tom. It made the scene very ordinary like. Because everyday people will have this awkward kind or meeting, it just shows you the comic side of these scenarios.

It was also funny how throughout the scene Tom seemed as if he was being quite mean to Iggy and it connected the audience to the characters, most of them feeling sympathy for Iggy. As Neil said – quote “You just want to go feed him a sugar cube don’t you, like cheer him up a bit”. This is a perfect example of the connection drawn to Iggy through Jim’s clever film making.

In connection to this, it is also said that Tom himself was in a very bad mood of the day of the shoot and was being snarly and uncooperative with the production team. However, instead of Jim trying to better his mood or postponing the shoot, he instead incorporated Tom’s behaviour into the shoot and very cleverly gave the scene this quality.  It also worked really well in the script, how Iggy and Tom disagreed on all subjects of their conservation, other than when they started excusing themselves for wanting a cigarette. I thought that was really comical how they made up this stuff about being allowed the occasional one after you’ve quit.

I enjoyed watching this scene. I found it dry, witty, entertaining, comical and very realistic. It left me wanting to watch the rest of the film, and intrigued into what other films etc.: Jim has made.

I've Included a short clip of the scene "Somewhere In California".