Jarmusch and his interviewer really warm up after the first 5 or so minutes. Plenty of references for future viewing. There’s a longer (no-video) Q&A on the Criternion channel.
Jarmusch and his interviewer really warm up after the first 5 or so minutes. Plenty of references for future viewing. There’s a longer (no-video) Q&A on the Criternion channel.
Here is a list of the films and books I screened and read this semester.
Egg Shen’s (Victor Wong) tour bus spiel:
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
I am Mr Egg Shen, with this wonderful tour.
Sit back and enjoy yourselves, see?
Long time ago, Chinese men with
gold-rush fever flooded into California.
We call Gam Saan – Mountain of Gold, see?
Leaving behind their wives and children.
Working for years to complete
the transcontinental railroad,
saving all their pennies.
And then they sent for their families
to help build this beautiful Chinatown
you see outside your window
this fine warm day.
Madonna’s 1990 music video:
An excerpt from the transcript:
James Rawls, Historian: In Gold Rush California, men from the United States who had lived lives presumably as upright citizens, came to California with great avarice. They were coming here to get rich quick. And they were frustrated men, because they were not getting rich quick, and they’re looking for someone to blame. What is the cause of my own failure? It’s not me. It’s someone else’s fault.
Narrator: Ever since the first American miners had arrived in California, they had been trying to expel foreigners from the gold fields. But for every one driven out, it seemed, another had come to seek his fortune.
Now, in 1850, there were more than 80,000 Anglo American miners in California, competition was at a fever pitch and anti-foreign sentiment was on the rise.
Taken from the script by Ben Hecht:
There they are at last, Miss Rutledge.
The will-o’-the-wisp lights of fortune.
San Francisco,
the latest newborn of a great republic.