Dead Man[Widescreen] - DVD

Version Details

Cast

• Mark Bringelson - Lee, Younger Marshall
• Richard Boes - Man with Wrench
• Eugene Byrd - Johnny "The Kid" Pickett
• Gabriel Byrne - Charlie Dickinson
• Michael McCarty - Makah Villager
• Alfred Molina - Trading Post Missionary
• Robert Mitchum - John Dickinson
• John Ringling North - Mr. Olafsen
• Iggy Pop - Salvatore "Sally" Jenko
• Pete Schrum - Drunk
• Mili Avital - Thel Russell
• Mickey McGee - Bartender (Uncredited)
• John C. Pattison - Trading Post Man No. 1
• Gibby Haines - Man with Gun in Alley
• George Duckworth - Man at End of Street
• Thomas Bettles - Young Nobody
• Daniel Chas Stacy - Young Nobody
• Leonard Bowechop - Makah Villager
• Cecil Cheeka - Makah Villager
• Johnny Depp - William Blake
• Michelle Thrush - Nobody's Girlfriend
• Billy Bob Thornton - Big George Drakoulious
• Michael Wincott - Conway Twill
• Jimmie Ray Weeks - Marvin, Older Marshall
• Mike Dawson - Old Man with Wanted Posters
• Todd Pfeiffer - Trading Post Man No. 2
• Johnny Pfeiffer - Man at Trading Post
• Gary Farmer - Nobody
• Crispin Glover - Fireman
• Jared Harris - Benmont Tench
• Lance Henriksen - Cole Wilson
• John Hurt - John Scholfield
• Crispin Glover - Train fireman
• John North - Mr. Olafsen
• Pete Shrum - Drunk

Crew

• Director: Jim Jarmusch
• Screenwriter: Jim Jarmusch
• Set Designer: Dayna Lee
• Co-producer: Karen Koch
• Makeup: Neal Martz
• Cinematographer: Robby Müller
• Editor: Jay Rabinowitz
• Production Designer: Bob Ziembicki
• Songwriter: Neil Young
• Musical Direction/Supervision: Neil Young
• Composer (Music Score): Neil Young
• Casting: Ellen Lewis ,Laura Rosenthal
• First Assistant Director: Todd Pfeiffer
• Costume Designer: Marit Allen
• Producer: Francis Ford Coppola
• Special Effects: Lou Carlucci
• Second Unit Director Of Photography: Cris Lombardi
• Foley Supervisor: Bruce Pross
• Re-Recording Mixer: Keith Culbertson ,Hextro
• Music Producer: L.A. Johnson

Dead Man: AMG Review
Lucia Bozzola , AMG

Brutally beautiful, ironically philosophical, and humorous yet utterly bleak, Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995) is an outstanding 1990s Western. Shot in spectral black and white by Robby Müller, dandified accountant Bill Blake's journey westward to grimy frontier town Machine and beyond becomes an idiosyncratic meditation on the corruption of innocence by imperialist experience. A harsh view of the most sacred American myths, Blake's odyssey is a prolonged, hallucinatory death-march through a vicious industrial society and a landscape littered with bizarrely malevolent bounty hunters and loony trappers (including a cross-dressing Iggy Pop); only the British-educated Native American outcast Nobody is willing to help the hapless dead man. Devoid of patronizing "noble savage" clichés, Nobody's morality and ability to interweave Native American wisdom with the poetry of William Blake allude to the regenerative power the West may have had before baser colonial concerns prevailed. Johnny Depp's Buster Keaton-esque impassivity makes Blake the ultimate blank slate, while Gary Farmer lends Nobody easy-going charm; the eclectic ensemble cast, including Crispin Glover, Lance Henriksen, and an iconic Robert Mitchum in his last film, makes Blake's travels all the more evocatively strange. Though it puzzled most mainstream critics and audiences, Dead Man's defenders deemed it a visionary entry in the 1990s' revival of the genre. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Dead Man: AMG Review
Dan Friedman , AMG

The interesting thing about Western movies is that they are the oldest genre in the cinema and yet, because of that status, every couple of years there seems to be a reinvention or new take on what is, by definition, the most American of stories. Dead Man, putting it mildly, ain't your grandfather's Western. In fact, it breaks the Western stereotype in so many ways, maybe Westerns should be defined by more than just their setting. To begin with, the director is indie darling Jim Jarmusch, who would be associated with Westerns in much the same way that Jerry Lewis would be associated with Holocaust dramas. This is, after all, the same man who gave us such classics as the Elvis homage Mystery Train and Down by Law, which introduced Roberto Benigni to American audiences. Add to that the character of William Blake, a bookish accountant played by Johnny Depp, who is most decidedly not your typical Western hero. In fact, Blake is the type of character who would most likely have been comedy relief to John Wayne not too many years ago. Briefly, Blake is hired by a corrupt industrialist (Robert Mitchum, in his last screen role) to serve as his company's accountant. Upon spending everything he has to reach the West, he is told his job has been given to another, thus sending into motion a series of events where Blake is wounded and on the run from a gang of bounty hunters, including Lance Henriksen. While there are bits of adventurism, the film is really a much quieter character study of a man forced to survive in an unfamiliar place by unfamiliar means and how it changes him as a human being. As a consequence, the film applies layer upon layer of subtext, some of which is as meaningless as the rest is meaningful. Blake encounters a loner Indian named, appropriately enough, Nobody, who believes Blake to be the great English poet William Blake and attempts to save his soul before Blake can expire from his wounds (not to give anything away, but the title of the film says it all). The film does follow some classic Western traits, in that it is gorgeously shot; the black-and-white cinematography is excellent, particularly in the opening sequence that chronicles Blake's journey west. Dead Man can be a little slow-moving at times, but it definitely engages both the senses and the philosophical portions of the brain that sometimes need a good, swift kick. ~ Dan Friedman, All Movie Guide