The first feature film by Jim Jarmusch, Permanent Vacation lays out the blueprint for the kind of vibes-based practice he would return to through his decades-long career. Teenage Aloysious "Allie" Parker is alone in the world, living on the margins of a 1980s Manhattan where you and your chain-smoking girlfriend could still afford a lousy apartment on an income of $0.00. He wanders and dances along the backstreets, cinemas and rooftops looking for...something, anything. Allie encounters mostly-kind strangers, finding a zen-like peace in the pleasure of conversation and simply riding the currents of life.

Sometimes described as a "student film" this was actually made after Jarmusch dropped out of the New York University’s School of the Arts, financed by a scholarship mistakenly sent to him and a fraudulent car loan. For the central character Jim drew on his own experiences in New York and that of actor Chris Parker who was living a life very much like Allie, in the same locations. A bildungsroman for a kind of down-and-out masculinity that's only romantic at a distance, this is one for all the vagabonds and dreamers out there drifting through life, "a tourist that’s on permanent vacation.”