director saw her performance in Sōgo Ishii's The Crazy Family (1984) while promoting Down by Law in Japan. Repeat Jarmusch collaborators who worked on the film included John Lurie who provided the original music, cinematographer Robby Müller, and singer Tom Waits, who in a voice appearance reprised his role of radio DJ Lee Baby Sims from Down by Law. Other cameos include Jarmusch's long-time girlfriend Sara Driver as an airport clerk, Rufus Thomas as the man in the train station who greets the Japanese couple, Rockets Redglare as the clerk of the liquor store, Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ed, Sy Richardson as the news vendor, and Richard Boes and Tom Noonan as diner patrons. Filming Mystery Train was filmed in Memphis in the summer of 1988. After arriving in the city during a snowstorm to scout for shooting locations, Jarmusch drove around without direction before coming to the intersection of a disused train station, the Arcade Luncheonette diner, and the dilapidated Arcade Hotel that would become the film's core setting. He would later recount the experience in a March 1990 interview in Spin: "Man, ... this crossroad is filled with so many ghosts. You know Robert Johnson walked down that street, you know Muddy Waters was in that train station." The locale of the intersection was one of the film's primary formal elements; the effect of Jarmusch returning to the setting with different characters under different circumstances was one of the variations on a theme. The film was shot in bright, primary colors rather than the black-and-white of the director's previous features, but it retained his usual languid pacing. Jarmusch characterized the color choice as "intuitive". He deliberately chose a cool color palette, eschewing yellows and oranges and using only sporadic dashes of red (as in the Japanese couple's ubiquitous suitcase). This motif of flashes of red was later described by Suzanne Scott of Reverse Shot as "giving the impression of a failed attempt to grab a bit of Elvis's glamor and try it on for size, only to inevitably discover that it looks cartoonish out of context". Stills from the film as well as on-location shots of the actors and the film crew by photographer Masayoshi Sukita were published to accompany the film as the photo collection Mystery Train: A Film by Jim Jarmusch. Mystery Train was the first American independent film to be financed by Japanese conglomerate JVC, and