Jim Jarmusch could be called the father of American Independent Film -- if it didn't seem uncouth to bestow such a grandiose title on a man still so relatively young, and to declare the paternity of such a squirming and bastard art form. Jarmusch moved to New York from his hometown of Akron, Ohio, to

Absurd, Death, Dystopic, Fantastic, Melancholy, Witty

Joel and Ethan Coen cut their teeth on relatively low budget, fringe films. The black-humored brothers' deviant reinterpretations of Hollywood formulas laugh in the face of the studio system. Influenced more by cartoons, B-movies, and exploitation flicks than by pretentious prestige productions, the

Absurd, Bombast, Cartoonish, Grotesque, Playful, Smart, Witty

While pursuing his goal to make mass-producible, low-cost, high-quality building available and attractive to all classes, Richard Neutra came to rely on simpler, lighter, more modular means than any of his Modernist contemporaries. His work is distinguished by the way it embraces nature, felicitously

Clean, Egalitarian, Euphoric, Grand, International style, Modernist architecture, Witty

In his heyday, Robert Venturi was more theorist than architect. With a grasp of subtle architectural concepts, Venturi sought to define a Pop architecture for an American society that he claimed was bored by orthodox Modernist architecture. His building designs during the 1960s and 1970s exhibited a

Absurd, Deconstructive, Pioneering, Postmodern architecture, Wise assy, Witty