Roberto is sitting at the table in the very run down looking cafe. He is smoking a cigarette, and there are five cups of coffee in front of him. When he drinks, it looks like he had five cups already. Steven arrives, they shake hands. Steven sits down (Roberto keeps calling him Steve, and Steven keeps correcting him). They mainly talk about coffee and cigarettes. Steven comes up with an idea about coffee popsicles for children. Their conversation is so random, their relationship is bizarre and awkward, yet there is definite chemistry between them. It feels like the two great comedians just sat down and started to improvise without fully understanding each other. Suddenly Jim Jarmusch arrived together with his cinematographer Tom DiCillo, and the scene was set.
'Strange to Meet You' was the first one in Jim Jarmusch's 'Coffee and Cigarettes' movies (all three were incorporated into 2003 feature film) that was originally commissioned for the Saturday Night Live. The film doesn't have any laugh out loud moments, but it stays amusing throughout. The script seems pretty loose, allowing the actors to play with each other, and simply being creative as their conversation moves seemingly nowhere. The camera never pans, but it keeps changing shots. The film is just six minutes long (or short), and it is over soon after you start to get more interested. But I guess if it would have been longer, then it would have started to bore.
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