October 4, 1984 [Stranger Than Paradise]

I used to know guys like this: off to the track every other day, lounging against the storefront or wolfing down a slice of pizza in a corner spot, low-key Daddy-Os and accidental hipsters, the last men still wearing hats, their pongee shirts a little frayed.

John Lurie sure knows how to play cool cat—his combo "The Lounge Lizards" has been diggin' that fake jazz for a few years now, and his entire posture in the movie is lank and off-the-cuff, an act Willie's perfected—but it's shot to hell by his Hungarian cousin, an actual kool kitten with her matter-of-fact way of walking, smoking, sizing up the situation—all to the constant accompaniment of Screamin' Jay Hawkins puttin' a spell on you over and over from the tinny depths of a cheap little cassette player. Why? "He's a wild man so bug off." And to round out these hip Stooges is a perfect Larry Fine, long-faced Eddie, the little guy with the tentative manner, always on the verge of flinching, but following along all the same, waiting for something he can grin at.

Together they sit in the worn-out New York apartment—the city itself mostly busted up or blank walls and empty streets; it's as though they're waiting to go somewhere, the apartment a way-station with TV dinners and a ratty bed. And then Eva goes off to Cleveland—as run-down as NYC, except with the blank stare of a snow-blind lake—and the other two eventually, aimlessly, follow; and on a whim it's down to Florida, where the clouds roll by unnoticed and the weather seems as chilly as anywhere. And they have some trouble—madcap farce in any other picture, but here it's all oblique and offhand, barely worth worrying over—just another gambler's irony.

And not even the camera wants to get up off its lazy behind and do something about it, watching them blandly, occasionally nodding off—the screen black so long you think that's it, time to go home; then the next scene pops up. Maybe somebody nudged the camera just enough so that it pries its eye open again just to check things out. This goes on for a while until the movie's over. You don't like it, man? Then bug off.