Note sull'episodio
Jim Jarmusch's 2003 anthology Coffee and Cigarettes is 11 standalone black and white vignettes shot over 17 years, tied together only by caffeine, nicotine, and a black and white checkerboard pattern that appears on a tabletop or floor in every scene. It began in 1986 with Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright, who pitches caffeine popsicles for kids and drinks coffee before bed so his dreams run at the speed of the Indianapolis 500, before Benigni offers to go to Wright's dentist appointment for him. In 1989 came the Memphis segment, with Steve Buscemi as a waiter unloading an Elvis evil twin theory on Joey and Cinqué Lee. The 1993 segment with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, who celebrate quitting smoking by lighting up, won the short film Palme d'Or at Cannes.
The celebrity scenes turn fame into awkwardness. In Cousins, Alfred Molina tells a dismissive Steve Coogan they are related, and Coogan warms up only after learning Molina is friends with Spike Jonze. Cate Blanchett plays herself and her envious cousin Shelley. The scenes also echo each other: GZA and RZA drink herbal tea while Bill Murray waits tables, and a Nikola Tesla line about the Earth as a conductor of acoustical resonance passes from Jack White to Meg White to the closing Champagne segment.
- Iggy Pop and Tom Waits trade snide remarks about whose music is missing from the bar's jukebox.
- Molina walks out on Coogan and leaves him with the bill.
- In Blanchett's scene, the waiter enforces the no-smoking rule on Shelley only after Cate has left, and Cate gets Shelley's boyfriend's name wrong.
- GZA repeats Steven Wright's Indy 500 dream idea 17 years after the first segment.
- The film holds 63 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, while Roger Ebert praised its tempo and editing.