Stranger than Paradise was based on a short film, and almost since then, as he has made feature films, Jarmusch has continued making short films, often using actors at work on his feature films. He has collected those films, which share some common themes, and released them, nicely shaped together, as Coffee and Cigarettes. Jarmusch calls them “a series of short films disguised as a feature or maybe vice-versa.”

In Stranger than Paradise a young Hungarian woman goes on a road trip with her strange American cousin and his equally strange buddy. Eszter Balint played that woman. This Saturday night Balint will perform live in downtown Fort Wayne as part of Pop Filter, a multi-arts event that is part of a four-day celebration of arts and technology called City Prototype. Coffee and Cigarettes is Fort Wayne Cinema Center’s contribution to this unique set of events. You can see the film throughout the week beginning on Friday, but if you attend Pop Filter on Saturday night, you could leave the show a little early and stop by Cinema Center for the free midnight screening of Coffee and Cigarettes.

In several of the shorts in Coffee and Cigarettes the characters mention the inventor Nikola Tesla. Jack and Meg White of the White Stripes demonstrate a Tesla coil. Tesla, the inventor of the alternating electrical current system that runs all our technology, once conducted an experiment in his lab in New York City that set up such extreme vibrations; the whole neighborhoods of Manhattan vibrated as if an earthquake was in progress. The cops came and shut down his lab. Though I hope the party doesn’t shake the city quite so literally, Pop Filter is not an event to be missed.

Tesla also believed the wonderfully poetic notion that everything on earth exists to conduct vibrations, and those vibrations are a part of all that we do and help hold us together. Jack and Meg White aren’t interesting as actors. They kind of mumble through this idea, in the least interesting short in the film. But one of the pleasures of Coffee and Cigarettes is seeing the variety of celebs and their performances.

Two other musicians, Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, prove that they could find work as actors as well as musicians. Ego is another theme that runs through Coffee and Cigarettes, and these two veteran icons of different breeds of pop music are hilarious dancing around each other’s egos. They are also in the short that gives fullest voice to the joys of coffee and cigarettes and how sharing those two together is no longer the socially acceptable pastime it once was. As Iggy Pop tries to be generous and admiring to Waits, Waits keeps taunting him. Both claim they have stopped smoking but Waits keeps coming up with reasons why one more cigarette isn’t really smoking.

Coffee and Cigarettes opens with the earliest of the shorts, shot in 1986. In it comedians Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni play a kind of “who’s on first” routine. Benigni is bouncing in and out of his chair on too much caffeine and nictoine and using the language barrier to crack jokes. Benigni delivered my favorite speech in any Jarmusch film, when in Down By Law he is in jail and trying to learn English and provoke some action from the guards by chanting, “I scream-ah, you scream-ah. We all scream-ah for ice cream-ah” over and over again. Wright never breaks a sweat, as is his style.

Cate Blanchett plays a successful movie star on the promotional junket for her latest film. She also plays the less successful cousin of that movie star opposite herself. Ego comes in to play here, as the movie star finds it easy to remain modest about her life, and her cousin becomes slightly unhinged with jealousy. Blanchett is funny and believable in both roles.

Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina play themselves in their outing together. Molina is a big fan of Coogan and, through extensive research into his ancestors, has found out that they are distantly related. Coogan has taken this meeting for coffee out of politeness. He is in Los Angeles trying to make his fame extend beyond the U.K., and he plays a kind of preening jerk. But a phone call turns the table on who is really closer to Hollywood power.

Steve Buscemi plays a waiter in Memphis who has an elaborate theory about Elvis and his twin. As he serves coffee to Joie and Cinque Lee, he puzzles out his bizarre reasoning, and no matter what arguments are offered in response, he just keeps talking.

Perhaps the strangest combination of personalities is RZA and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan being served coffee by Bill Murray. He’s supposedly working in the restaurant where they are meeting, but he seems to be hiding out from someone in the kitchen. Conversation between these three is very definitely strange. Sometimes they barely seem to be speaking to each other at all. But for me, the single funniest lines in Coffee and Cigarettes” are RZA and GZA saying over and over with hilarious intonation, “You’re Bill Murray. You’re Bill Murray,” which happens more than once.

Coffee and Cigarettes has a leisurely pace and is a rambling pleasure. I can’t say it made me want to go out for a smoke, and the coffee being served doesn’t look that appealing either. But, the movie does give you a strong jolt of how sitting with someone over a cup of coffee does change the rhythm of the day. Coffee breaks are a little oasis in the middle of whatever daily nonsense has a hold of us. Coffee and Cigarettes has that same relaxing and entertaining effect.