Jim Jamusch: "I Love Ghostface;" PLUS: RZA and His Colloidal Silver

From Filmmaker, Spring 2004:

Filmmaker: What about the Bill Murray piece (in Coffee and Cigarettes) -- how did that come about, the idea of him playing an actor on the lam as a waiter?

Jim Jarmusch: Oh, man, I don't know, because I wrote that one literally the day night before. I wanted to have RZA, GZA and Ghostface Killa from the Wu Tang. I love Ghostface and I thought he'd be a great actor to play with. And then I found out that Ghost was in Miami but GZA and RZA were definitely coming. So I called Bill and he's like, 'Jim, how long will this take?" 'One day.' 'Well, can we do it in half a day?' 'I'll try.' 'Oh, you'll try ... just tell me where to be, when to be there and what to wear.' Now, you can't give Bill's number to anyone on the crew -- his agent doesn't even have it. (On the day of the shoot) Bill walks right in, parked his own car and was there for the whole day, took RZA and GZA out to a Japanese restaurant for lunch. But I wrote that script real fast, and they followed it to a large degree. The thing about RZA being a doctor was a real funny thing.

Filmmaker: It was real?

Jarmusch: Yeah, one night I was with RZA in the studio and he gets a call from the wife of our friend Sifu Wahnam, the Shaolin Master. RZA is the god father of his kids. The kids are sick, its like 1:00 in the morning, and we go to their place. (Sifu's) wife Sophia's all freaked out -- one kid has a fever, one's sweating. And RZA's like, 'Okay, here's what you do, man. You take them off the dairy, you take them off the citrus, you give them this mineral, you give them one aspirin each -- no more!-- one aspirin each and you call me in the morning.' We're leaving and I said, 'What the fuck, are you a doctor now or what?' And he's like, 'Hell ya! You know, I started reading that shit, I've been reading alternative medicine for three years. So I put that in the script ...

Okay, how much do you want to bet that that mineral is RZA and his crazy obsession with colloidal silver. I swear to god, RZA is going to turn half the population blue with this fixation!

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