The Jim Jarmusch Resource Page

Jim Jarmusch's contribution, starring Chloë Sevigny, to the compilation film 'Ten Minutes Older' ("The Trumpet"). 

Ten Minutes Older was a 2002 film project resulting in two compilations called The Trumpet and The Cello, short films dealing with the basic topic of "Time". The short films were shot by 15 famous directors. Each of them was given exactly ten minutes on the screen for their vision. The project is an homage to a short film shot by Herz Frank in the USSR in 1978, Ten minutes older. 

Ten Minutes Older: The Cello  - Bernardo Bertolucci ("Histoire d'eaux"); Mike Figgis ("About Time 2") - Jirí Menzel ("One Moment"); István Szabó ("Ten Minutes After"); Claire Denis ("Vers Nancy"); Volker Schlöndorff ("The Enlightenment"); Michael Radford ("Addicted to the Stars"); and  Jean-Luc Godard ("Dans le noir du temps")

Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet - Aki Kaurismäki ("Dogs Have No Hell"); Víctor Erice ("Lifeline"); Werner Herzog ("Ten Thousand Years Older"); Jim Jarmusch ("Int. Trailer. Night."); Wim Wenders ("Twelve Miles to Trona"); Spike Lee ("We Wuz Robbed"); and Chen Kaige ("100 Flowers Hidden Deep").

In an interview for Cinema Gotham ("A Sad and Beautiful World", Nov 22 2002) , Jim Jarmusch had this to say abut it:

"Ten Minutes Older is a project, they made two feature length films that are compilations of ten minute films by a whole lot of different directors. I did one, Spike Lee and Werner Herzog and Victor Erice and Wim Wenders and Chen Kaige and Claire Denis and Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard... Nick McClintock, an English guy, had this idea to ask different people to make films that were exactly ten minutes long and had something to do with the nature of time. I liked the idea of something so vague and so precise. So I made one with Chloe Sevigny that's called Int. Trailer Night and it's black-and-white. It's an actress that has a ten minute break and is taken off the set and is put in her trailer for ten minutes, so really not a whole lot happens. I tried to make it mean nothing really and I like it a lot. It was really fun working with Chloe and Fred Elmes photographed it really beautifully. I was partly inspired by, because she's on a cell phone a lot of the time and I really loved when Andy Warhol used to transcribe really mundane phone conversations that don't mean anything at all. Also, there's a beautiful Pasolini film, La Ricotta. Oh man, it's a guy who's playing an extra in a film. It's the crucifixion of Christ and he's one of the other guys crucified, a petty criminal. He's just an extra in the film, sort of a thug-type guy. They let him down off the cross at lunch-time. They give him this ricotta cheese and he runs all the way home to give it to his family and comes back. Anyway, it's the premise of an actor working when not working. [La Ricotta is part of a similar multi-director compilation film, 1962's RoGoPaG.] So, those were kind of inspirations for me. But it was an interesting project. I think they show the films as shorts on Showtime and actually I prefer seeing them alone than as a compilation. 

/---/

I love short films. I was happy to do that just to have the chance to do another one. And the idea of having to make a film that was exactly ten minutes long to the frame I really loved. I like limitations like that, too. I don't know why there isn't a bigger outlet for short film especially with the reduction in attention spans. Seems to be, you know, endemic to the world."