Dead Man (1995) on Netflix
An accountant, William Blake, comes to Machine for a job already taken and is driven off at gunpoint. Fleeing, he meets Nobody, who takes him for the poet William Blake.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.5/10109,906 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes70%
Trailer
Plot summary
William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, travels by train to the frontier town of Machine, where a job has been promised him at the metal works. Word comes that the position is already filled, and John Dickinson, the owner of the works, drives him off at gunpoint. Penniless, Blake goes home with Thel Russell, a former prostitute who now sells paper flowers. Her ex-boyfriend Charlie bursts in and fires; Blake is wounded and Thel is killed. Blake shoots Charlie and flees town on Charlie's horse. Dickinson, Charlie's father, hires three men, Cole Wilson, Conway Twill and Johnny 'The Kid' Pickett, to bring Blake in dead or alive. A Native man named Nobody finds Blake, judges the bullet too close to his heart to remove, and decides Blake is the poet William Blake reborn.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dead Man (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Neil Young recorded the score by improvising on electric guitar, acoustic guitar, piano and organ while watching the newly edited film alone on VHS in a recording studio; Jim Jarmusch encouraged the improvisation as it added to the film's spontaneous narrative.
- Dead Man deliberately leaves its Cree and Blackfoot dialogue untranslated and without subtitles so that only members of those nations understand it, including several in-jokes aimed at Native American viewers.
- Jim Jarmusch's film grew out of an unproduced screenplay called Zebulon by Rudy Wurlitzer, who years later rewrote it as the novel The Drop Edge of Yonder in 2008.
