CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM (10)
By:
November 4, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… creators switching art forms and/or careers! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
JOHN LURIE, DISRUPTOR
When I first heard about John Lurie, I was living in a college dorm where we spoke Italian 24/7. One of my roommates had spent the prior year as an exchange student in a small town in Sardinia, where, aside from learning the local dialect, she took in movies, one of which had been retitled Daunbailò, and starred one of Italy’s most prized possessions, Roberto Benigni. I got to watch Down by Law not long after hearing about it. It’s Jim Jarmusch’s swamp prison break film, starring Benigni and two American musicians, Tom Waits and John Lurie.
I paid close attention to John Lurie from that point on — his presence made it hard not to. This meant finding recordings from his band, The Lounge Lizards, and eventually going to hear them play their “fake” jazz live. The show they performed on the opening night of The Bowery Ballroom in 1998 made me feel like I had finally attained New York City citizenship.
Like a new word, John was seemingly everywhere in the 1990s — including film scores like Get Shorty. Early in the decade he created a spoof travel show, Fishing with John. Each episode was a fishing expedition with a famous FOJ — Willem Dafoe and Dennis Hopper among them. The voiceovers are off-topic and unrelated to the action onscreen. Very little fishing prowess is on display, which made the show compelling to me. John closed out the ’90s by perpetrating a wee hoax: creating the musical persona of Marvin Pontiac, an African Jew raised in Detroit and Mali, who was supposedly killed by a bus in 1977. The album was blurbed by no less than David Bowie and Lurie confidant, Flea.
I hadn’t known that painting was something John had been doing since the 1970s, but I was locked in as soon as I heard about it. At Fredericks & Freiser in 2009, I saw a show of John’s visual art for the first time. There was a new way to be a supporter of his artistic endeavors. John’s visual art shares a common thread with his song titles – they’re often funny as hell. I was thrilled to eventually purchase a print from John, loving how it looked as much as its title: The other side of The Great Wall of Fuck.
John’s memoir, The History of Bones, was published in 2021. It’s the kind of book you can’t put down except when you’re struggling to catch your breath from laughing too hard, but also gives the distinct sense that John might be difficult to live with. Good thing we have so many of his cultural products to live with, instead.
John’s struggles with advanced Lyme disease curtailed his music career, so he channeled his genius into yet another television vehicle, the series Painting with John. Filmed at his home on a Caribbean island, the show follows a skeleton plot in each episode, but includes plenty of digressions, either animations from John’s paintings, or else footage of John painting set to his music.
It is the latter that makes the show absolutely fascinating for me. Watching his careful botanical brushwork, seeing the controlled way the watercolors seep just so, you can hear yourself breathe, and you stop needing to be amused. I didn’t anticipate that an artist who has contributed so much to my life over the years might also provide a mindfulness practice — but then, I have stopped trying to predict what John might do next.
CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | James Scott Maloy on DAVID LEE ROTH, EMT | Lynn Peril on HEDY LAMARR AND GEORGE ANTHEIL, INVENTORS | Crockett Doob on LARS ULRICH, TENNIS ACE | Mimi Lipson on DANIEL DAY-LEWIS, COBBLER | Mariane Cara on BRIAN MAY, ASTROPHYSICIST | Carlo Rotella on CURTIS COKES, FIGHTING ACTOR | Josh Glenn on GEORGE HARRISON, FILM PRODUCER | Crystal Durant on SKUNK BAXTER, DEFENSE CONSULTANT | Adrienne Crew on HENRY ROLLINS, PUNK POLYMATH | Deborah Wassertzug on JOHN LURIE, DISRUPTOR | Heather Quinlan on HARRY NILSSON, COMPUTER GENIUS | Adam McGovern on JOSEPHINE BAKER, SPY | Douglas Wolk on RICHARD McGUIRE, GRAPHIC-LIT INNOVATOR | Jake Zucker on SYDNEY POLLACK, CHARACTER ACTOR | Rani Som on RACHEL POLLACK, SEEKER | Jeff Lewonczyk on ANDY WARHOL, FORMER ANDY WARHOL | Nikhil Singh on ADOLF HITLER, FORMER PAINTER | Holly Interlandi on ADAM JONES, DIRECTOR | Jonathan Pinchera on PETER CAINE, CONSPIRACY STAR | Miranda Mellis on EVE KOSOVSKY SEDGWICK, ACADEMIC WEAVER | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on BRENT SPINER, SINGING NOVELIST | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on QUENTIN TARANTINO, CRITIC | Sangamithra Iyer on MADHUR ANAND, LITERARY ECOLOGIST | Marlon Stern Lopez on GREG GRAFFIN, HARDCORE ZOOLOGIST | Pichchenda Bao on WENDELL BERRY, FARMING POET.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!