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John Sayles: Filmmaker John Sayles
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John Sayles is one of the most respected American independent filmmakers. He has created a body of work as distinguished in its diversity as for its consistent quality and inspiring originality. He's never been one to march to the commercial beat, but chooses instead to follow his creative impulse wherever it leads him. Johns Sayles movies include The Return of the Secaucus Seven, The Brother from Another Planet, Matewan, Passion Fish, Lone Star, Men with Guns, Limbo, Sunshine State, Casa de los Babys and his most recent, Silver City.
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Independent filmmaker John Sayles had strong words for the American press and the Hollywood establishment at a Lunch on Deadline at the Denver Press Club on Sept. 10. During a pointed interview with public television cameras rolling, Sayles and his longtime collaborator Maggie Renzi held forth on the making of their new movie, Silver City. The film is murder/mystery political parable about an inept candidate's run for political office set in Colorado.
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John Sayles has spent the better part of the last three decades making such iconic films as Eight Men Out, Lone Star, and Passion Fish, and along the way, he's become one of America's best-known independent filmmakers. But what most people don't know is that before he joined that small pantheon of Oscar-nominated screenwriters, Sayles was a National Book Award-nominated novelist and short-story writer. And in a way, the revelation of Sayles' lesser-known writing life fits. His films are often thoughtful ensemble pieces where characters and sense of place are the thing—the very stuff of short-story writing. Now Sayles has released Dillinger in Hollywood—his first collection of short stories in 25 years—and mediabistro.com recently caught up with the auteur to talk about the new collection, the new (and timely) film Silver City, and the current climate in the news media.
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Filmmaker John Sayles began his career as a novelist and short story writer with the publication in 1975 of PRIME OF THE BIMBOS, followed in 1977 by UNION DUES, a National Critics' Circle and National Book Award nominee. A short story collection, THE ANARCHISTS' CONVENTION appeared in 1979, when he began working as a screenwriter for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Early screenwriting credits include PIRANHA, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, THE HOWLING, and ALLIGATOR.
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In a portfolio bulging with brilliant, important films, John Sayles' Lone Star is easily his best. It is among the best films of the nineties and the best independent features ever made in the United States, a product of an experienced filmmaker so rich in style and substance that it rejuvenates a sometimes-enervated medium. With the eloquent elegiac quality of a Cormac McCarthy novel and the obsession with the sins of the father and the story of place of a Faulkner, Lone Star begins with the unearthing of a skeleton wearing a tin star in the Texas desert and ends with the new sheriff of the town uncovering familial secrets. It is an Oedipal detective story, a voyage of self-discovery about the high price of knowledge. Fascinatingly, Sayles' old concerns of tribalism and class surface renewed in the discussion of how centuries of misdeed create an almost insurmountable legacy of division. The decision that sheriff Sam Deeds (a magnificent Chris Cooper) makes in wooing a Mexican woman, Pilar (the eternally underestimated Elizabeth Peña), takes on the heft of cathedral bells in a story that is so much more than the sum of its perfectly crafted parts.
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John Sayles is often referred to as the father of the modern indie cinema. His debut feature, Return of the Secaucus 7 began a directing career that has been notable for its adherence to artistic freedom, a goal many filmmakers strive for and rarely achieve. The pioneering spirit of his early films paved the way for auteurs like Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, and Quentin Tarantino.
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Filmmaker John Sayles