Stranger Than Paradise

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

1984

Jim Jarmusch had no costume designer and virtually no budget when he started production on his first film, in 1982. But he did have an innate sense of style, one that would help him emerge as the most iconic director from New York's downtown art scene of the early 1980s. And yet Stranger Than Paradise doesn't necessarily feel like New York or even the early '80s. You get the sense that it's cool, but you're not sure why. "We were definitely trying to not have the characters look punk rock or like East Village hipsters of that period," Jarmusch says. He collaborated with his three main actors to come up with the movie's cocky antifashion look.