runnin' round - John Lurie

John Lurie (born December 14, 1952) is an American actor, musician, painter and producer.

Lurie was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, moved to New Orleans at the age of 6, then moved again to Worcester, Massachusetts.
In 1978 he formed The Lounge Lizards, initially a "fake jazz" combo, with his brother Evan Lurie. The Lounge Lizards exhibited the talent of artists such as Calvin Weston, Billy Martin, Oren Bloedow, Steve Bernstein, and Marc Ribot, among others. The band continued to make music for 20 years. During this time, Lurie recorded 22 albums and composed scores for over 20 movies, the most notable being Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train, Clay Pigeons, Animal Factory, and Get Shorty, which earned him a Grammy nomination.
During the 1980s he starred in three films directed by Jim Jarmusch, Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, and Permanent Vacation. He went on to have roles in other notable films including Paris, Texas and The Last Temptation of Christ. Lurie also starred, during 2001-2003, on the HBO prison series Oz as inmate Greg Penders.
His 1991 TV series Fishing with John, which he wrote, directed and starred in, was a cult success.[citation needed] The critically acclaimed series aired on IFC and Bravo. Episodes included guests Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon, Jim Jarmusch, and Dennis Hopper. It has since been released on DVD by Criterion.
In 1993 Lurie, with Howard Shore, composed the theme to Late Night with Conan O'Brien which was also used as the theme to The Tonight Show when O'Brien hosted.
In 1999 Lurie released the album The Legendary Marvin Pontiac - Greatest Hits, which was purportedly a posthumous collection of the work of an insane African-Jewish musician named Marvin Pontiac (1932-1977). Pontiac, however, was a fictional character, [1] and the music was actually written by Lurie, and performed by Lurie, John Medeski, Billy Martin, G. Calvin Weston, Marc Ribot, and Tony Scherr.[2] The album included praise from David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, and others, who were in on the joke, and a fictional "biography" was published by Allmusic[3]
In a 2006 interview, Lurie said that he had been in ill health since the mid- to late 1990s, with a number of neurological symptoms, "sort of like malaria", but that he is "90% certain that it is advanced Lyme disease. [4] Lurie said that his illness has kept him from acting or performing music, and that he spends most of his time in his apartment, painting.