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The John Sayles E-Z guide to filmmaking

Writer-director uses Florida as canvas in 'Sunshine State'

John Sayles
John Sayles offers direction on the set of "Sunshine State," his newest film.  


By Todd Leopold
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- John Sayles and Maggie Renzi have little tolerance for modern Hollywood blockbusters.

The pair, who have been together personally and professionally for more than 25 years, stick to the basics in making Sayles' award-winning independent films: Low budgets. Rich characters. Deep, intertwining storylines. And a determination to not talk down to the audience.

In some ways, they are throwbacks.

"I think what's happened over the years is that conventional movies are about fewer and fewer and fewer people now," says Renzi, sitting with her writer-director partner in a conference area in CNN Center.

"Pretty much it's the guy and the girl and they each have one friend, and maybe a landlady or something like that -- or there's a man against the world, and all he's got is his dog or his kid or whatever. What's happened is that John is just showing more of a whole town."

The John Sayles file
Age: 51

Born: Schenectady, New York

Early career: Worked blue-collar jobs after graduating from Williams College; wrote novels; went to work for low-budget king Roger Corman, for whom he wrote the screenplays "Piranha" (1978) and "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980)

Movie credits include: "The Return of the Secaucus 7" (1980); "The Brother from Another Planet" (1984); "Matewan" (1987); "Eight Men Out" (1988); "City of Hope" (1991); "Passion Fish" (1992); "Lone Star" (1996); "Limbo" (1999)

TV credits include: The series "Shannon's Deal" (1990)

Honors include: MacArthur Fellowship, 1983; Oscar nominations for original screenplay, for "Passion Fish" and "Lone Star"; O. Henry Award

Interesting facts:
  • Directed the videos for Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" and "Glory Days"
  • Played sportswriter Ring Lardner in "Eight Men Out." Cast himself because of surface similarities with Lardner, but resembled him so much Lardner's son, Ring Jr., "said it was a little scary."

  • MORE STORIES
    Mary Steenburgen brings a little 'Sunshine' 
     
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    Interview with John Sayles 
     

    For his part, Sayles says he lets the topic dictate the scope of the film.

    Many of his films, such as "Matewan" (1987) and "City of Hope" (1991), are sprawling canvases of movies, with characters moving in and out of each others' lives; others, such as "Passion Fish" (1992), are more closely observed character studies. His films are being celebrated with "The John Sayles Film Restoration Project," sponsored by IFC Films, which is touring the country this summer.

    "Sometimes the way you tell the story is more from one or two people's point of view, [and sometimes] I need a mosaic approach," he says. "For the audience to see what's going on they have to have access to an awful lot of characters."

    'I didn't recognize it anymore'

    In the case of their newest movie, "Sunshine State," those characters fill an island on the east coast of Florida. Two communities are grappling with the future: Plantation Island, a small-time beach town that's trying to attract more tourism, and Lincoln Beach, an African-American enclave next door that's being encroached upon.

    The characters include Marly (Edie Falco), who runs, unhappily, the small independent hotel her father (Ralph Waite) founded; Desiree (Angela Bassett), visiting her family in Lincoln Beach for the first time since she left home 25 years earlier; Francine Pinckney (Mary Steenburgen), the chamber of commerce booster who's trying to figure out how to make the island more marketable; and Jack (Timothy Hutton), a landscaper who works with developers but has compassion for the community as it is.

    There is also Francine's suicidal commissioner husband who has a terrible gambling problem, a black former football star who has moved back to Lincoln Beach, a troubled adolescent being cared for by Desiree's mother, and -- of course -- a host of developers, who hover on the edges of the movie like sharks in the Atlantic.

    Sayles says he has wanted to do a Florida-set movie for years, but the topic came to him when he went down to the state's Gulf Coast for the first time in 10 years.

    "I just didn't recognize it anymore," he says. After pondering the changes, he decided to write about the state's progression into sanitized tourism as a microcosm of America.

    "It's like the change from the town drugstore to Wal-Mart," he says. "And it's happening all over America, but especially on the coast of Florida."

    The Mary Steenburgen character illustrates the tug-of-war. She has a crisis of faith as she tries to pitch the town to outsiders by way of a festival, an island tradition that has been almost drained of whatever ersatz history it once had.

    "There's a great line where she says, 'Well, people hate history,' " says Renzi.

    "And [a developer] says, 'If we Disney-fy it enough, people will eat it up,' " adds Sayles.

    Lincoln Beach has its own important history. It was inspired by American Beach, a hamlet on Amelia Island north of Jacksonville -- where the movie was filmed -- which catered to African-Americans in the days when Florida was segregated.

    Mary Steenburgen
    In "Sunshine State," Mary Steenburgen plays a chamber of commerce booster who has a crisis of faith.  

    "I was surprised that it still existed," says Sayles, "that it hadn't, in fact ... been swallowed up by developers. And I went down, and there it still was, with two condo outfits on either side of this beautiful stretch of beach, but it was like they were moving one foot forward every day, and they were about to get it."

    A more balanced meal

    "Sunshine State's" cast of Oscar winners and nominees may seem like a bank-breaker, but Sayles and Renzi got around Hollywood salary games by paying everyone the same thing.

    It helps the actors' agents deal with the relatively small fees, Sayles says.

    "The next time [the studio] comes down the pike, they can't say, 'I hear your actor took half of what your quote usually is ... and we're going to be nice to you and offer three quarters of your quote,'" Sayles says. "The agent can say, no, they took 'most favored nations' -- very often scale -- and so did everybody else." The movie's budget was $6 million, and the pair use some of the script fees Sayles makes from the big studios to finance his films.

    In addition, Sayles' characters provide famous faces with new challenges. Falco, best known as Carmela Soprano on "The Sopranos," plays a working-class Southerner; James McDaniel, Lt. Fancy from "NYPD Blue," plays Desiree's husband, an anesthesiologist.

    It's no accident that Sayles enjoys giving older actresses and African-Americans -- two groups limited by Hollywood movies -- lots of work. The parts they usually get are full of sameness, he says.

    "Both James McDaniel ... and Tom Wright, who plays the former football player, have played the black lieutenant on TV shows, which is the kind of 'Oh, we've got it covered, at least it's an interracial cast, we don't know what to do with this guy' " attitude the actors often find, he says.

    In grappling with history and community, "Sunshine State" continues some favorite Sayles themes. The big cast of characters may be more than a big Hollywood movie can handle, but it's just right for what he wants to say.

    "What I wanted was a sense of this whole community," he says. "What I feel like what we often have in America is a bunch of parallel communities who may physically cross paths, but mentally they don't have much to do with each other."

    In a summer of high-tech blockbusters, that makes for a more balanced meal, adds Renzi.

    "I love to see different styles [of acting] together, I love to see different ages working together," she says. "It's like having more than one thing on your plate."



     
     
     
     



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