Our own Nick Schager has already weighed in on the latest Jim Jarmusch film, The Limits of Control, finding it more a test of patience than an exciting genre piece, and it doesn’t sound like Jarmusch himself would disagree. “This film is about the trip,” Jarmusch tells Logan Hill of Vulture. “I’m more interested in the plate of pears on the table than the plot payoff. Neruda, he wrote all these odes to ordinary objects, like ‘Ode to an Artichoke.’ And they are incredibly beautiful poems.”

Neruda isn’t the first name Jarmusch drops in the interview, and it’s not the last. His movie’s title is taken from a William S. Burroughs essay (“It’s about language being used as a mechanism of control, but I like the double meaning. Does that mean the limits of our own self-control, or the limits to which people control us?”), it begins with a quote from Rimbaud (“The poem, “The Drunken Boat,” is about the derangement of the senses. He’s starting a very strange adventure of his consciousness, and the film does that, too.”) and was inspired by John Boorman’s Point Blank (“I’m a huge fan of Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, and it’s one of John Boorman’s strongest films—a masterpiece, I think.”)

But that’s not all! Jarmusch also finds the time to mention Oscar Wilde, Charles Willeford, James Cain and Isaach De Bankolé. I don’t even know who that is, but he apparently owns a cool iridescent gangster suit, so he must be worthy. I’m not sure if Jarmusch intends to come off like a Quentin Tarantino who went to grad school, but I won’t hold it against him. At least, not until I see The Limits of Control.

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