"Acting scares me"
About this Quote
John Lurie came to cinema sidelong, as a musician, bandleader, and downtown impresario whose presence fascinated filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch. His screen persona in Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law is laconic, watchful, dryly comic, the opposite of actorly display. Saying acting scares him opens a window onto both his temperament and the tensions in his career. It points to the vulnerability of being directed, lit, and watched while trying to inhabit something that is not quite you.
As a saxophonist and composer with the Lounge Lizards, Lurie built art from improvisation and control of his own timing. He could bend a phrase, stop, leave space, or refuse a crescendo. On a film set the rhythms belong to a machine: marks to hit, lines to repeat, angles to match, a crew waiting while you try to feel something truthful on command. For someone who prizes a sense of the real, the apparatus can feel like pressure toward falseness. The fear is not just stage fright; it is the worry of being turned into a product, of losing the sly authenticity that made his presence interesting in the first place.
His best performances lean into that discomfort. Jarmuschs minimalist frames allow Lurie to be himself almost to the point of non-acting, turning hesitancy into a style. Later projects complicate the line between acting and being. Fishing with John stages reality so dryly it becomes a joke about performance. Painting with John abandons pretense: he paints, tells stories, and lets awkward pauses breathe. The avoidance of character becomes a philosophy.
Saying it out loud also challenges the romance of the fearless performer. Artists are not always nourished by the spotlight. Fear can be an instrument of taste, a way to keep from slipping into roles that betray ones sense of truth. Luries admission is less a confession of weakness than a guardrail for a life spent chasing the genuine.
As a saxophonist and composer with the Lounge Lizards, Lurie built art from improvisation and control of his own timing. He could bend a phrase, stop, leave space, or refuse a crescendo. On a film set the rhythms belong to a machine: marks to hit, lines to repeat, angles to match, a crew waiting while you try to feel something truthful on command. For someone who prizes a sense of the real, the apparatus can feel like pressure toward falseness. The fear is not just stage fright; it is the worry of being turned into a product, of losing the sly authenticity that made his presence interesting in the first place.
His best performances lean into that discomfort. Jarmuschs minimalist frames allow Lurie to be himself almost to the point of non-acting, turning hesitancy into a style. Later projects complicate the line between acting and being. Fishing with John stages reality so dryly it becomes a joke about performance. Painting with John abandons pretense: he paints, tells stories, and lets awkward pauses breathe. The avoidance of character becomes a philosophy.
Saying it out loud also challenges the romance of the fearless performer. Artists are not always nourished by the spotlight. Fear can be an instrument of taste, a way to keep from slipping into roles that betray ones sense of truth. Luries admission is less a confession of weakness than a guardrail for a life spent chasing the genuine.
Quote Details
| Topic | Fear |
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