John Lurie is a polyglot like few others — a musician in the acerbic avant-garde jazz group The Lounge Lizards, a prolific and distinctive painter, an actor in films by the likes of Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch, and the creator of the ironically calming faux-public-television program Fishing With John. With guest appearances by iconic personalities like Tom Waits and Willem Dafoe, the short-lived Fishing With John became a cult classic because of its ambient, droll texture. In 2021, Lurie has returned with a new show that’s just as lo-fi, just as esoteric, and just as unexpectedly Zen. Another riff on public-television form, Painting With John positions itself as the anti-The Joy of Painting, a study of Lurie at work in his studio as he delights us with odd musings and poignant childhood reflections, tending to his garden on an unnamed Caribbean island, communing with nature as much as he retreats to the isolation of his visual work. I have to imagine that it might be one of the cheapest shows HBO has ever produced; it’s a quiet diary, dryly funny and slyly profound, a pale blue dot of a television show. Painting With John knows how small it is, and that’s what gives it weight and meaning. Watch it now via HBO Max. NATHAN SMITH
Watch Painting With John on HBO
