The Search For One-Eye Jimmy is a largely forgotten indie gem from the 1990s that boasts a stellar ensemble full of acting greats. Back in the early to mid-1990s, a boom in indie filmmaking gave rise to a wave of successful, small budget movies that felt like a breath of fresh air following the blockbusters that dominated during the 1980s. Early Quentin Tarantino films like Reservoir Dogs, Kevin Smith’s directorial debut Clerks and Richard Linklater’s slice-of-life comedy Slackers proved huge budgets and major studios weren’t needed to produce quality films.
While those movies still enjoy popularity today, some films from the 1990s indie boom have fallen into relative obscurity. Case in point: the fantastic but largely forgotten indie gem The Search For One-Eye Jimmy, which was made in 1993 and written and directed by playwright-turned-filmmaker Sam Henry Kass, who went on to work as a writer on Seinfeld. This offbeat comedy was set and shot in Kass’ hometown of Red Hook, Brooklyn on a self-funded shoestring budget of $75,000 and – in a case of art imitating life – focuses on a fledgling filmmaker shooting his first feature in the place he grew up.
That filmmaker is Les (Holt McCallany, Mindhunter), a young graduate fresh out of film school who returns to his old neighborhood to make a documentary. After learning a local man – the titular One-Eye Jimmy (Sam Rockwell), so named because of his glass eye – has gone missing, Les decides to chronicle his search for him while interviewing the quirky characters that inhabit the pre-gentrified Red Hook along the way.
The colorful characters that make up the cast of The Search For One-Eye Jimmy are played by some of Hollywood’s most talented actors. There’s Steve Buscemi as Jimmy’s nonplussed brother Ed, Samuel L. Jackson as homeless Vietnam veteran Colonel Ron, Tony Sirico of The Sopranos fame as a local loan shark known as “The Snake” and John Turturro as Disco Bean – a man who spends his days practicing 1970s, Saturday Night Fever-style dance moves in an empty warehouse. Turturro’s brother Nick also appears as motor-mouthed car thief Lefty as does Michael Badalucco (The Practice) as Joe Head, a neighborhood ne'er-do-well reported to be Red Hook’s oldest virgin.
Despite its impressive cast, The Search For One-Eye Jimmy failed to get much attention, which wasn’t helped by the fact it took until 1996 for it to get a U.S. release. And while it didn’t achieve the heady heights of fame that the likes of Clerks did, The Search For One-Eye Jimmy still holds up as a charmingly offbeat product of the 1990s indie boom.