John Lurie
John Lurie was a musician first. He co-founded the Lounge Lizards, a jazz group out of downtown New York, and the acting happened because he was in the right rooms with the right face at the moment American independent cinema started shooting on those streets.
Two of his credits here are literally "Saxophone player" and "Neighbor Saxophonist", in Blue in the Face and Desperately Seeking Susan, which tells you how he was often used. The real work is the two Jim Jarmusch films: Willie in Stranger Than Paradise in 1984 and Jack in Down by Law in 1986. Lurie is not a trained actor and that is the point. He plays men too cool to be seen trying, and Jarmusch's long static takes give him nothing to hide behind, so what registers is timing, posture and an unhurried refusal to fill a silence. Very few performers can be that still on camera without going dead.
Other directors used him as texture: Wim Wenders in Paris, Texas in 1984, Martin Scorsese casting him as the apostle James in The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988, David Lynch in Wild at Heart in 1990. He also composed for film and television, and his soundtrack for Get Shorty was nominated for a Grammy in 1996. He created, directed and starred in Fishing with John, a series nominally about fishing trips with famous friends and actually about boredom, which is not among the credits listed here.
The screen credits thin out after the 1990s. The last one here is a 2021 documentary about Anthony Bourdain, in which he appears as himself, a friend.
Movies (10)
Where to start with John Lurie
Stranger Than Paradise first. It made a certain kind of American independent cinema possible, it is funny in a register almost nobody else attempts, and Lurie's Willie sets the entire tone: a man performing indifference so thoroughly that the performance becomes the character.
Down by Law next, warmer and more comic, pairing him with Tom Waits and Roberto Benigni in a New Orleans jail. It is the better-made film. Stranger Than Paradise is the more important one.
After that his parts get small. Paris, Texas and The Last Temptation of Christ are major films that he passes through, and Wild at Heart gives him a small, memorably grubby role in a David Lynch picture. Desperately Seeking Susan and Blue in the Face use him as himself with an instrument in his hands. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is the one to end on: he speaks about a friend, and it is the most exposed he has ever been on camera.