"What I did was I completed the half-hour film, but before really showing it, I wrote two more sections for a potential feature film which I didn't think would really happen, but at least I had it in case. I was very lucky and eventually showed the film, got some good responses, and some people helped to make the longer version of the film.

Wim Wenders gave me some unexposed film material that was left over from - that was actually for the half-hour version - The State of Things - and in the longer version the black sections in-between had to be a certain type of exposed negative to get a true black, and I got a roll of black negative film from Jean-Marie Straub, so I had some help from some pretty amazing people. I don't know why they helped me butƒ (Laughter)

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it. I was interested formally from literature and musical structures. I don't remember exactly where it came from. At that time, I was also inspired by very formally pure films, films by Carl Dreyer or Bresson.

Those things were very moving to me, especially at a time when MTV was just starting, and there was this barrage of images that was not so interesting to me at the time. It seemed like film-making was starting to imitate advertising. It was something that wasn't my aesthetic at the time. It came from those things."

Jim Jarmusch