John Lurie

John Lurie is an American musician, actor and painter associated with New York’s independent cultural scene. He formed the Lounge Lizards in 1978, bringing jazz into contact with the city’s punk-era experimentation, and acted in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law.

Lurie composed music for numerous films, including Get Shorty, and created the television series Fishing with John. His visual art has been exhibited at institutions including P.S.1, with drawings and paintings that give animals and imagined figures an often strange, narrative presence. He later returned to television as the writer, director and subject of HBO’s Painting with John.