In the early eighties Jim Jarmusch was part of a wave of filmmakers inspired by punk rock. With its minimalist non-plot and stark, noir-ish texture, his first feature film, "Stranger Than Paradise," was emblematic of the same DIY qualities as the corresponding indie music movement.

His first foray into rock filmmaking, "Year of the Horse," which followed Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour, might have seemed a bit incongruous for a street-punk like Jarmusch with its prairie-wide embrace of Young’s — and particularly Horseman Poncho Sampredo’s — unadorned qualities, but it corresponded with a certain reckoning amongst the underground at that time with rustic tradition (think Wilco, etc.)