It makes all the sense in the world that Tom Waits has good taste in movies. The legendary singer/songwriter is on the record as being a fan of everything from Federico Fellini to Babe: Pig In The City. Largely on the basis of his inimitable cultural persona, Waits has become a fixture in movies, often playing, if not a version of himself, then a kind of winking compliment to his popular songwriting alter ego. He’s worked repeatedly with certain directors, including Francis Ford Coppola (as early as One From The Heart and The Outsiders), Jim Jarmusch, and Terry Gilliam. Indeed, Waits played the devil for Gilliam in the director’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and who better to embody a smooth-talking version of Satan himself than the guy who wrote a song called “God’s Away On Business”?
Of course, there has always been something inherently cinematic about the music of Tom Waits. Maybe it’s that the greatest Waits songs contain a film director’s eye for detail. Maybe it’s that Waits is and has always been a born storyteller. Waits’ greatest records feels like immersive audio film experiences: you close your eyes and disappear into an evocative, make-believe world of drifters, drinkers, born losers, and surreal, otherworldly Americana.
In other words, Tom Waits is not just some musical genius who occasionally acts: he’s a genuine cinematic staple. Without further ado, then… here are nine of our favorite film performances from the one, the only, the great Tom Waits.
Benny in Rumble Fish (1983)
The Waits that makes an appearance in Francis Ford Coppola’s oddball beatnik-punk tone poem Rumble Fish is pretty much the same salty barfly that Waits fans know and love from early records like “The Heart Of Saturday Night.” As Benny, a sardonic bar proprietor whose bemused off-and-on voiceover occasionally sounds like one of the spoken-word interludes you might hear on a mid-career Waits record, the singer projects an affectless cool that no amount of acting school experience can fake. While Waits is far from a main character in Coppola’s cult classic, he’s certainly the kind of indelible supporting weirdo you want to see more of.
Zack in Down By Law (1986)
Even if Tom Waits isn’t exactly playing himself in Jim Jarmusch’s bluesy swamp-noir masterpiece Down By Law, his unforgettable and unmovable protagonist – Zack, a sozzled, down-on-his-luck DJ who lands in a New Orleans slammer after a bad night turns rotten – certainly feels like he could have stepped out of a Tom Waits song. Zack reacts to everyone and everything with the surly, seen-it-all sneer that defines Waits’ songwriting persona, and watching the “Martha” crooner playfully bounce off his co-stars – the famously laconic John Lurie and a joyously wound-up Roberto Benigni – makes for a piquant cinematic gumbo.
R.M. Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
Reactions to Francis Ford Coppola’s utterly insane take on the Dracula myth tend to run the gamut from love to hate and everything in between, but we know one thing for sure: Waits, as the nefarious inmate R.M. Renfield, is indisputably a standout of The Godfather director’s rococo monster-movie re-imagining. Given just the right amount of screen time, Waits effortlessly captures the disturbing depths of Renfield’s maniacal delusions, though he also makes the character a most charismatic ghoul. Rarely has a rock-star-turned-screen-icon looked so at ease whilst snacking on insects.
Earl Piggot in Short Cuts (1993)
Each narrative thread of Robert Altman’s dizzying, L.A.-set ensemble classic Short Cuts feels textured and lived-in enough to support its own feature, though none of the film’s characters jump off the screen with quite the same pungent intensity as Earl Piggot, Waits’ boozy, yet affable wreck of a limousine driver. True to the Waits ethos, Earl can be seen drowning his sorrows in bacon grease at L.A. diners when he’s not bickering with his similarly tempestuous wife Doreen (Lily Tomlin), and the fact that the actor/singer allows us to see through to the broken heart of this vulnerable, unquestionably damaged man means his performance ends up being something of a miracle.
Himself in Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
Waits hadn’t so much as contributed music to a Jim Jarmusch picture for over a decade when he featured in a memorable chapter from the director’s breezy, lo-fi anthology comedy, a collection of tartly observant shorts tangentially centered around the addictive substances alluded to in the title. Here, the “Goin’ Out West” singer plays a version of himself who’s into roadside surgery, decidedly not into Taco Bell, and mixed on the subject of Iggy Pop’s company. Self-effacing hipster winking aside, Waits’ grizzled, Dangerfield-esque deadpan proves that, for all his consummate musical genius, the guy was born with killer comic instincts.
Zachariah Rigby in Seven Psychopaths (2012)
True to its B-movie title, Martin McDonagh’s pitch-black satire Seven Psychopaths tends to juggle several violently unbalanced characters onscreen at any given time. Still, even by the scum-bum standards generally reserved for the rancid bottom-feeders who populate movies like this, Waits’ Zachariah Rigby is a special kind of psycho. More than many other characters that Waits has played, Rigby is at least trying to seem normal (even if he harbors a disquieting affinity for rabbits), and the 72-year old legend has no shortage of devious fun peeling back the layers of his character’s twisted, brutal backstory.
Prospector in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Critical response to Joel and Ethan Coen’s morbid omnibus Western was somewhat mixed upon release, but one thing that many could agree on was that the film’s fourth chapter – “All Gold Canyon,” which showcased some of Waits’ finest acting to date, as a bearded, resourceful, nearly feral trapper who meets a gruesomely ignominious end – was also its best. You absolutely buy Waits as this doomed, salt-of-the-earth hill-dweller from the moment you see him; it certainly doesn’t hurt that the Coen’s shaggy characterization feels as though it could have been at least partly inspired by Waits records like “Swordfishtrombones” and “Real Gone.”
Waller in The Old Man & The Gun (2018)
As charming career thief Forrest Tucker, Robert Redford capably commands nearly every scene in The Old Man & The Gun, but it’s difficult to come away from David Lowery’s genial old-dude caper without wanting to see an entire movie about Forrest’s over-the-hill criminal pals, Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Waits). Waits and Glover share the loving, bickering rapport of an old married couple, with Waits as the cranky hangdog foil to his more leisurely, relaxed co-star. If nothing else, Wait’s brief, boozy monologue about why his character hates Christmas is reason enough to watch the rest of the film.
Rex Blau in Licorice Pizza (2021)
Tom Waits’ involvement in Licorice Pizza – and this applies to so many of the other cast members in Paul Thomas Anderson’s freewheeling ode to youth and young love in the sunny San Fernando Valley of the 1970s – doesn’t amount to much more of a glorified cameo. Yet, what a cameo it is: as larger-than-life raconteur/fictional film director Rex Blau, Waits imbues the soul of this crusty Southland codger with his signature, devilish mischief, and to watch him preside over the denizens of the former Valley haunt known as the Tail O’ The Cock is, like so much else in Licorice Pizza, its own kind of cockeyed joy.