 Jarmusch wrote the script for the film under the working title " One Night in Memphis " , without ever having been to the southern city . The idea for " Far From Yokohama " , the first segment , he took from a one @-@ act play he had been writing before filming Down by Law ( 1986 ) . The play – unrelated to Elvis or Memphis – concerned a constantly argumentative young couple , one of whom gradually comes to realize that their fighting is a unifying force in the relationship . The interconnected stories were inspired by Jarmusch 's dwelling on literary forms , and specifically the work of Chaucer , Italian episodic films and Japanese ghost story cinema . As with his other films , Jarmusch 's starting point for writing Mystery Train was the actors and characters he had foremost in mind . The great number of these collaborators contributed to it being " the most complicated film to write and execute " according to the director . 
