Sayles: unconventional, unpredictable storyteller
July 5, 1996
Web posted at: 8:15 a.m. EDTFrom Correspondent Michael Okwu
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Listen to director John Sayles muse upon the art of movie-making, and you might think he's talking about fighting a war. "The American revolution is unfinished," he claims, as are the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
As far as he is concerned, America is still a work in progress, and it is the job of all Americans to put together the uncompleted pieces in a humanistic way, so that everyone in the country of different cultures and classes can pursue liberty.
"An awful lot of the movies I've made are about that fight to finish the revolution and that tension between what the American dream is and what the American reality is," Sayles said.
"Lone Star" is Sayles' latest foray into the American psyche, a murder mystery in which characters in a dusty Texas town are compelled to unearth their buried pasts. It is an exploration of history, and the boundaries between people and cultures.
"These are the things that John Sayles does," said actor Joe Morton, who stars in the new movie. "You're not just going to be entertained, but you're going to be given something in the way that you're given something in a good novel."
If his movies are like good novels, what, then, drives Sayles to make films instead of writing books? "You can do anything in a book that you can do in a movie," he responded, "but it has to go through your head first. In a movie, it can be going through your head, but you can hit 'em right in the solar plexus."
He may not always hit you right in the solar plexus, but he is hitting. The uncompromising writer-director-editor-sometime actor has been delivering unconventional films for 16 years, often on shoe-string budgets funded by his earnings as a hired writer.
His credits range from "Return of the Secaucus 7" to the contemporary fantasy and cult classic "Brother from Another Planet." (He wrote, acted in, directed and edited both.) And Sayles' one-line descriptions of his own work -- even of past successes -- suggest that when they were pitched to the studios, the studios probably weren't bowled over with excitement.
Matewan: Sayles describes it as "a huge hunk of American history all boiled down to one showdown."
Passion Fish: "About turning 40 and realizing, not only isn't the world going to change the way you want it to, maybe your life isn't going to change."
The Secret of Roan Inish: "Oral tradition, and how story-telling used to mean something about who you were."
Sayles' movies rely on no formula. Rarely is there a recognizable genre: no straight Western, no monster flick. And you will not see John Sayles make "Jurassic Park."
"A genre movie is like a great ride in an amusement park," he said. "The better the ride, the more I like them, but to a certain extent, sometimes the complexities of character have to be hacked off."
In contrast, his characters fall somewhere between angelic and demonic. If you go looking for the bona-fide good guy or the downright bad, you will leave the theater disappointed.
Sayles doesn't mind that his movies rarely capture the interest of the mass audience. He does not yearn for a picture that will translate into guaranteed big box office earnings.
"The story comes first, and that's just the way I see it. Here's a story I want to tell," he said.
His actors, in return, are enchanted enough by his work to deliver the highest endorsements. Elizabeth Pena, who also appears in "Lone Star," called him "God." Sayles will settle, though, for being called a simple "story teller," "who after you saw the stories, you thought about them for more than 15 minutes."
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