In a TV landscape littered with dark, gritty dramas and cornball comedies, it’s refreshing to find a show as funny, soothing, surprising and downright idiosyncratic as Painting with John, and credit for that triumph goes almost completely to its creator and host, John Lurie.
Initially rising to fame as the founder and frontman for the Lounge Lizards jazz ensemble, the 69-year-old musician has also dabbled in both the movies (acting in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law, and doing the soundtrack for Get Shorty) and on television (with the short-lived, but now cult-classic Fishing with John, in which he traveled the world with friends like Willem Dafoe and Dennis Hopper). Moreover, in the wake of becoming afflicted with chronic Lyme disease, he’s become a dedicated and accomplished painter of eclectic works with titles like, Bobo didn’t believe in evolution so God turned him into a flower., and Why has Godzilla’s acting not improved over 47 movies?
Lurie re-introduced himself to small-screen viewers last year by announcing that Bob Ross was wrong because everyone can’t paint, and despite its intense focus on Lurie’s brush and canvas, Painting with John refuses to be an overt instructional endeavor. Rather, it’s a quirky and ruminative peek inside its creator’s mind. Mixing anecdotes about Lurie’s upbringing and early artistic days in New York City with stories about his current life on the Caribbean island that he now calls home—alongside long-time employees and compatriots Nesrin Wolf and Ann Mary Gludd-James—it’s a freeform venture in which anything might happen at any moment, whether it be Lurie trying to trap a fearsome insect in his kitchen, crashing a drone in the lush jungle that encircles his property, or dancing like nobody is watching on a backyard platform.
Given the show’s upcoming Feb. 18 return, it’s clear that many tuned into its maiden run, and those fans will be thrilled to hear that its sophomore engagement is another unpredictable and charming success. As a result, it was our supreme honor to spend some time with Lurie, who a week before Painting with John’s Season 2 premiere spoke with us about the joyous ethos that drives the series, his intuitive creativity, his hands-off partnership with HBO, and the personal grooming demanded by TV.
You begin Season 2 by welcoming viewers to “the show where I do not teach you how to paint.” When will you teach us how to paint? Why won’t you teach us how to paint?
Well actually, I think that I am. But I’m not saying, “Now take the brush and do this.” By just doing it, then people are more likely to try. “Oh, I could do this, or I could do something else.” It’s more of a gentle thing than, “Now get this bowl, and put it over here.” If you see somebody doing it, it’s more likely to lead people to try. Even with the Olympics—I’ve been watching the Olympics, and it just leads you to move around a little bit more, you know what I mean?
It’s funny you bring up the Olympics, because I was just watching the games, and after about 10 minutes, I said, “I think I could do that.” Which I obviously can’t. But there’s something inspiring about watching people do great things.
Some of it is just unbelievable. Everybody should try to do each one of those events one time.
The one I was watching was the men’s freestyle skiing big air event, where they ski backwards off a jump and then do about 18 rotations in the air, and I definitely am not up for that.
Do the judges watch it in slow-motion or something? [laughs] No, seriously. Maybe it’s just a really trained eye—“Oh, his heel hit there at the wrong point, so we’ll take a half point off.” But the snowboarding—it’s like, damn, man. And what else did I see? I even started getting into curling a little bit in a way, which kind of shocked me. And the Russian skater, did you see her?
John Lurie in Painting with John Season 2
HBOKamila Valieva, the one who tested positive for a banned substance?
She’s positive? The thing I saw was perfect. She was perfect! I don’t like the skating stuff, but it was like seeing perfection.
Let me ask you about the show…
The show is not perfect.
One of my favorite moments in the second season is your story about greeting people in French Polynesia, and then being rebuffed by two French bikers, who don’t seem to realize that, “Life is this incredibly wonderful thing.” Is that the guiding ethos of the show—to make people notice life’s wondrousness a little bit more?
That’s what I’m hoping for, but are you going to make me say that out loud? But that is what I’m hoping for. That situation, it actually wasn’t me who started saying hello to people. It was commonplace. They did it with each other. There are dolphins jumping on either side of you, there’s these crashing waves so the negative ions are just filling the air, and the sun’s going down, and you can’t be in a bad mood. And I mean really, big dolphins, jumping on either side, and there’s just no way. Then the French people who didn’t say good evening back that I chased—I guess my technique has matured a little bit.
You punctuate one hilarious Season 2 bit with, “Thank you for the money, HBO!” Do you get any feedback from them?
I was wondering how that was going to play with them, but they’ve been great, actually. HBO—do they have a reputation for being great?
As far as I know, people love working with the network.
At first, I was insecure. I wrote this book called The History of Bones, and everything is as honest as I can be. Then the Barcelona lecture thing, where I give this lecture that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and the thing with quarters coming out of my nose is a curse from God [both of which are stories told in Season 2], both of those were in the same episode at one point, and I was worried. I thought, shit, is this going to come off like this guy is a liar, and he’s not blatantly honest all the time? I asked a really high-up person from HBO, and she was like, “It’s your vision, you do what you want.” Wow. That’s almost too much responsibility, because usually you want to be fighting against the powers-that-be a little bit. So actually, when HBO gave me this money to do this thing, and I could do anything I want, I feel like I should have made something even better, you know what I mean? [laughs] I can’t blame anybody for it not being better. It’s all my fault.
Do you almost feel like you’re getting away with something, with HBO? Can you believe they’re giving you this much freedom?
No, I can’t. But it’s too bad I’m getting it at 69 with my health falling apart, because it’s what I wanted my whole life—the creative freedom and, also, a venue. Because you can have creative freedom, but often there’s nowhere to put the thing. It turned my life around, too. It was really a nice thing.
Do you feel like Fishing with John helped the new show come about in some way? They’re very different in many respects, but they do have a similar energy, since both are steeped in your personality.
A little bit, but it almost goes back to the East Village in the early 1980s, making these Super 8 movies that were almost home movies. It’s got almost an East Village 1980s atmosphere around it. But what happened to me, because I was sick and out of everything for 20 years—everything is done differently now. How you edit, every technical thing. So, I was a novice all of a sudden, whereas I actually knew what I was doing at one time. Now that shit’s all like, okay grandpa, we don’t do it like that anymore. Camera angles and sound and light, I do have some director abilities. But I never even thought about Fishing with John when I was doing it, except for the title. I didn’t really think about it, because now I’m talking into the camera, and with Fishing with John, I’ve got my back to the camera. But I read your thing right before we did this, and you saying it was a “spiritual companion,” and it is, because it’s me.
Was there something you wanted to do differently in Season 2?
Not quite. When we were editing the first season, it was too much of this old man just sitting at a table talking. It’s going to be boring to the eye. So, we added the elephant thing, and we had things where we could get away from the table. And this time, the “Cowboy Beckett” and the synchronized swimming and a few other things—I thought it made it a different show. Because all these people were saying [about Season 1], “Oh, it was so calming, and soothing and meditative,” and now it’s a little jolting in a way, because it jumps from thing to thing. So, I wasn’t sure how that was going to hit people. But I can’t tell—I’m so in the middle of it, I really cannot tell. I was shocked at the reaction to the first season. I knew some people would like it, but 100% on Rotten Tomatoes was not what I was expecting! We were just doing this thing. Me and [cinematographer and editor] Erik Mockus, we weren’t really making a show. We were just like kids in a living room making a fort, and he was so good at everything, and then it just blossomed into this thing. Then Adam McKay sent some of it to HBO, and they wanted it, and I was like, really? So now we got a Season 2.
But then you’ve got a schedule to meet, and I kind of fucked up a little bit, because the paintings should be the most important things to me, but the show became more important than the paintings at that time. So, there’s one painting that I’m really not happy with in the show, but there just wasn’t time to do better. Whereas in Season 1, we were pretty far along before Erik started filming me. I kind of hypnotize myself when I’m creating, and I don’t like myself being filmed during that part of the process. But he can film me doing a background, or if I’ve got a bunch of squares to color in, that’s great.
In the first season, you said you had hoped the show would be educational with regards to painting, but then you realized that you mostly did your work from intuition. Is that how you make this show too, by intuition?
Absolutely. And it’s also, we’ve got all these sections, and one of the most painful things was the sequencing of it—what goes in episode one, what goes in episode two—and it wasn’t coming. I just knew that eventually, my intuition would present it to me. I just knew that. I had confidence that it would be like a puzzle that had prearranged for me, like a Wordle, and eventually it would fall into place. Also, me and Erik, we’re always saying we have to take what we’re given, rather than trying to make something happen that didn’t quite happen.
I really like this idea of doing these 20-minute pieces of music. If we do a Season 3—and I don’t know if we can pull this off—but I want to have 20-minute pieces of music, and then I’ve got earphones in, and I’ll tell a Marvin Pontiac story, or do like the small car thing [from Season 2]—we’ll actually talk about what I’m painting while I’m painting, with these African-y kind of grooves going underneath me, which I’ll hear in my ear. So, I’m painting a cow and a tree, and it’ll go with the music. I wonder if I can pull it off—it’ll be like an opera. Twenty minutes of music for each show, and then I’ll plug it in. That’s what I’m hoping to do for the next one.
Have you mapped out ideas for a potential third season, or do you allow it to happen spontaneously?
I jot down ideas, like what story am I going to tell now, because I’ve got to have something prepared; it doesn’t just pop into your head. If you rehearse them a few times, but don’t let them get stale, it’s important, because of how you structure the story, and the rhythm of the story. There’s a reason [Dave] Chappelle is so good—he rehearses those! He runs it, he runs it. Spalding Gray, he wasn’t great, but you have to rehearse that, even though it’s just you telling a story. So, it has to be both: that an idea comes into your head now, and the audience can see that as you’re thinking about it right at that second, but you also have to have that structure, because I would otherwise tell that story and be like, fuck, I left this part out and now we have to reshoot that thing, and now maybe the light doesn’t match or something.
In the new season, you recall noticing your ear hair in a Season 1 episode—which prompts you to pay more attention to your grooming. Have you gotten additional notes about your style since that episode? And is it tough to watch yourself in this way?
God, I’m so sick of myself, especially after the book and the audiobook and now watching myself. When we edit it, I don’t even see it as me. But no, HBO doesn’t say anything. My voiceover guy, when I was about to go off to HBO, and we’d already shot it, he says, you really have to shave the hair in your ears. And I’m like, it’s already shot, Steven! I’ve been with him for 30 years, he’s great. But we’re not going to reshoot it to groom me. But I’d look in the mirror before, and cut the hair out of my ears and nose, and we changed the light a little bit. It looked pretty bad at first. I hadn’t been sleeping, so I had these gigantic circles under my eyes, and I would put on this make-up that Nesrin had left out for me to cover those.
football if my life by John Lurie
HBOYou’ve talked about the sociopathic mindset required to speak into the camera. Have you gotten more comfortable with that as you’ve done more episodes? We’re doing it now [via Zoom]…
Yeah, but it’s about the same as this. You don’t feel 100% comfortable right now, right? I mean, I don’t. I’m on camera for you, you’re on camera for me, and it’s a little bit like that. Also, we can just throw away whatever comes out terrible. But just sitting there and talking into the camera doesn’t bother me that much. Actually, what was hard was, I wasn’t feeling good—I had worked too hard—and I had to do the audiobook for The History of Bones, which was daunting because it’s long. Then I did the music, and those two things overlapped, so I was exhausted by the time it was time to shoot. Physically, I was not well. So, while it doesn’t take a lot of effort to sit there and be charming in my curmudgeonly way, to not be struggling just sitting there and doing it, that was difficult. Because it’s no good even if I’m hiding it; it can’t be that. I saw that you tweeted that you had the honor of speaking with Steven Soderbergh…
You said honored at least twice, so I want more than honored. Whenever you retweet this, I want more than honored.
Like super-honored?
Whatever is more than honored. [laughs]
