From "Down By Law: Story and screenplay" (script):
GENERAL NOTES:
This story will be shot in black & white, 35mm, very fine-grain (Eastman Plus-X). The story falls into no genre (other than my own : post-neo-social-realist-semi-comedy in black & white).
The story takes place in and around NEW ORLEANS, and is, in part, a 'prison film'. These elements sugest certain clichés to me, which I intend the film to evoke without directly employing . the smoldering Louisianna sun, run-down hotels and bordellos, the Zydeco blues of Clifton Chenier, etc., landscapes punctuated by the sad shapes of cypress trees dripping with Spanish moss, chain gangs, swampland, Cajun French, the wrong-iron balconies of New Orleans, etc.
I would like the soundtrack music for the film to consist of minimally and untraditionally constructed ACCORDION and HARMONICA duets.
-JIM JARMUSCH
From the press release booklet:
In DOWN BY LAW an unemployed disc-jockey (Tom Waits), a small-time pimp (John Lurie), and a strong-willed Italian tourist (Roberto Benigni) meet in the confined space of a prison cell.
Avoding a specific time period, the story is set, abtractly, in New Orleans and the dense, surrounding swamps of Louisiana (places I had never visited until after completing the screenplay).
I would call the style of the film 'neo-beat-noir-comedy', with a story-line that openly accepts conventions, and an atmosphere that is part nightmare and part fairy-tale ("it's a sad and beautiful world").
JIM JARMUSCH
April 1986 NYC