Pandora Filmproduktion, JVC Entertainment Networks, Newmarket Capital Group
Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Mili Avital, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, Mark Bringleson, Gabriel Byrne, John Hurt, Alfred Molina, Robert Mitchum, Richard Boes, Billy Bob Thornton, Jared Harris, Steve Buscemi
Willam Blake (Johnny Depp) is from Cleveland. He’s got a letter in hand offering him a job as an accountant in a factory in the end of the line town of Machine. We meet William Blake (not the poet, but the accountant) on the train as he begins his journey, only to learn that the job has been filled. William Blake ends up murdering the owner’s son and flees. He runs into a poetry loving Native American who is named He who speaks loudly but says nothing (Gary Farmer) who prefers to be called Nobody. Nobody and William Blake set off on a journey more of confusing than the movie has been so far. Everybody in the west is trying to kill him, but some hired guns are in the lead if they don’t kill each other first.
This film is definitely a western, but it’s absolutely hysterical. I laughed out loud so many times my sides hurt. This is a very funny movie. The characters are really nuts! All of them, and it’s a great cast. This is kind of on the order of what Monty Python and the Holy Grail did to King Arthur’s. Now I’m not saying it’s a good as that film, as the Holy Grail is one of my favorite movies of all time. But this is the same style of movie, absurd and simply hysterical, right up to the very last scene. There are so many parts that cracked me up, but I hate to go into it in too much detail as it would give away the surprises in the film. But if you’re fans of ironic and sarcastic slapstick humor, things like Rat Race, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and the TV shows Laugh In or You Can’t Do That on Television, you’re going to find this “western” a real hoot. Even now, a week later, I think of some of the lines in this movie and still crack up. I don’t know where it came from or where it’s been hiding since 1995, but it was a great hidden gem that really blew my mind! Now if I had a bunch of friends and a couple beers……….This would have been a hoot. The kind of stuff we used to watch late night in the dorms when I was in college. This matched up with the old W.C. Fields classics like “Never Give A Sucker an Even Break” or “My Little Chickadee”. Not as over the top as the Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers, but more subtle yet with humor that catches you by surprise which is the best kind of humor. Great movie no one has ever seen before I suspect! I gotta give my daughter the credit for finding this one for me! If you need more reasons, it was Robert Mitchum’s last role, and the likes of Alfred Molina, Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop, Steve Buscemi, and Crispin Glover. What a cast!
This is an interview with director Jim Jarmusch, the director concerning the filming of this movie.
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