John Sayles Interview
Summary
An interview with the Honeydripper director-writer-editor-actor
Article
One of America’s pioneering independent filmmakers John Sayles possesses a list of independent and studio writing credits dating back to the late 1970s. The independent and studio credits go hand in hand with each other as Sayles supports his filmmaking independence by taking on studio assignments which will bankroll those screenplays of his he wants to direct.
Born Sept. 28, 1950 in Schenectady, New York, Sayles showed an appreciation for the written word at an early age. After graduating from Williams College, Sayles took on various jobs while writing stories for magazines, along with novels and screenplays.
A young man with a plan, after saving up enough money Sayles shot the 1980 film, Return of Secaucus Seven, on a $40,000 budget in less than four weeks. A film about the reunion of 1960s activists, Return of Secaucus Seven received a national release, announcing a new voice in American independent cinema that remains with us up until this day. Often focusing on a specific milieu of a troubled America, Sayles has directed 18 films including such outstanding films as Matewan, Eight Men Out, City of Hope, Lone Star, Sunshine State and Silver City.
In his latest film, Honeydripper, Sayles takes a look at the way music plays a specific role in the lives of an African-American community. The year is 1950. The setting is a rural place called Harmony, Alabama. There, oppressed African Americans spend their time picking cotton, picking guitars and sometimes even picking fights with each other while the racist Sheriff (Stacey Keach) picks on them. At night the locals let loose at two clubs: the jukebox-ing Touissant and the more soulful Honeydripper Lounge. Heading the Honeydripper is Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover) who suddenly finds himself faced with eviction. Without any perceivable alternative, Tyrone breaks an enduring personal policy of his, thus changing the nature of his game and strain.
In this exclusive interview Sayles spoke to us about the film, politics and what independent cinema means today.
Los Angeles Journal: Why did you want to make this film?
John Sayles: It comes out of my relationship with the music. Growing up in the ‘50s and listening to rock ‘n’ roll on some Top 40 radio, eventually you start to think about it a little bit more and that leads you to other kinds of music. This lead me to gospel and blues and that kind of naturally took me back into the past. What was it like for those musicians to hear that solid, electric guitar for the first time and realize everything is going to change? “We better get on board this new thing or get left behind.” “What’s this going to do our lives?” Then I started looking into that moment and what else was happening – not just musically. It seemed like a really interesting era, especially in the Deep South.
LAJ: Which of the characters do you identify with the most?
JS: Probably, at my age, Tyrone. You could certainly make some case he’s a guy like an independent filmmaker. Most people I know who are trying to make independent films are building a house of cards that can fall apart all of a sudden. Jeff Bridges falls through, or your financier decides to buy a soccer team instead of being in the movie business, or the weather changes; any number of things can make the whole thing collapse. Also he’s trying to survive in a world that’s not really set up to help him survive.
LAJ: What are your political intentions with this film?
JS: I always say our movies are not political as they are politically conscious as opposed to being politically unconscious. No matter what era I set something, I’m not going to avoid what was going on. You can’t really think about blues music without the racial situation it came out of. You can’t really think about 1950 in the Deep South without saying, “Here’s a community of people who always know that there’s this low ceiling on who they’re suppose to be and what they’re suppose to be able to become.” That’s fairy oppressive. If a white man addresses you, you take your hat off whether he’s the sheriff or not. You just can’t ignore that. Some of the violence and anger that is Tyrone – in his past, always a potential – comes out of that oppression. Those Saturday nights were often the only time when people got to cut loose and when they cut loose a lot of the frustration of their lives cut loose as well.
LAJ: Did you in any way feel in anyway self-conscious that you were a white director directing a largely African-American cast?
JS: No. I made Brother from Another Planet in 1983. You’re talking about American culture. I grew up in American culture. Very few filmmakers are autobiographic. What’s Ang Lee doing directing a thing about gay, American cowboys (Brokeback Mountain)? Half of our great directors were European immigrants fleeing the Nazis and they made movies about all kinds of people. That doesn’t even come into the conversation with me.
LAJ: Another driving theme in your film is the relationship between music and the oppressed. Do you think music has a different meaning and context for those who are oppressed?
JS: Music is available to everybody. You can make music with a harmonica. At the beginning of the movie there are two little boys and their making music in their heads. They don’t even have instruments yet. One’s got piano keys painted on a 2X4 and the other’s got a diddly bow, which is something you make pulling the wire off of a broom and stretching it on a nail and then bottlenecking on that. You could make music on what used to be a $4.00 guitar from Sears & Roebuck. Almost every famous blues musician who plays the guitar -- that was their first guitar. People, no matter if it’s a personal oppression or a political oppression or a racial oppression, express themselves in that music and it doesn’t cost you an arm or a leg. It’s very different than filmmaking in that way, I might say. Filmmaking is still more democratic than it ever was, but it’s still pretty much the middle class and up who are the people who get into it because they can afford to be poor for a couple of years after they get out of school and suffer a little bit and make their movie; whereas if you’re working class or poorer you got to go get a job right away.
LAJ: When people talk about you and your films, the subject of independent filmmaking arises. In light of the ways studios have incorporated independent filmmaking does independent filmmaking still exist?
JS: Economically it’s different than it use to be, which is that corporatization has really crept into what use to be an independent world in the sense that corporations didn’t think that money was worth bothering with and so they didn’t have their own little kind of specialty arms and stuff like that. Now with movies like Blair Witch Project or Sideways or whatever that wind up making a lot of money, they think, “That could happen to us,” but also some “big actor has this depressing art movie they want to make and we want a relationship with them.” We can tell him, “Okay, we can let you make it for $8 million dollars” instead of $28-58 million dollars that it would cost them if they made it at the studio instead of their specialty division. So they keep that actor happy and make up their losses. That has changed but always my definition of an independent movie is someone who started with a story they wanted to tell and they told it. They didn’t change the casting if that was going to hurt the story. They didn’t change the end of it if that was going to hurt the story. They somehow prevailed to tell that story. Every once in a while that happens and the studio system and every once in a while that happens outside of the studio system. It has nothing to do with how you’re financed.
LAJ: Perhaps psychologically when one thinks he or she is a filmmaker as opposed to years ago?
JS: It’s more of a creation of the media. Certainly at the beginning of the wave we kind of created – there were people making independent movies before us – Robert Young, Melvin Van Peebles, John Cassavetes – but it wasn’t called “a movement” until the press got a hold of the idea that, “There are more and more of these things, what do we do with them”? In the early ‘80s there was an idea that independence meant alternative subjects, and ways of dealing with those subjects were going to be made. Now I would say most independent movies are genre movies made for a low budget by people who haven’t been discovered by the studio yet. The purpose of the movie is to be a good movie but also to get the attention of Hollywood and get them a bigger budget next time out. Which is totally fine. There’s always been that world of low budget horror movie guys, low budget western guys, and people who make one or two movies a year. It just hadn’t been labeled yet as “The Independent Movement.” For me it’s always been, “What’s the next movie I want to make? How can I make it the way I want to make it and have it resemble the original story once it gets finished?”
LAJ: Lastly, what do you think about these interviews where you discuss your work and yourself? Does it serve the work? Should the work speak for itself?
JS: The work should speak for itself with the audience, but to get the audience interested you got to get them to know the movie exists. It’s always been a part of the job. When I talk to young filmmakers now I say, “Some of you, not many of you, might be lucky enough just to be able to be artists and make your creations and have somebody else pick them up and sell them for you, but it usually doesn’t happen that way. Part of what you’re going to have to learn is how to sell your stuff. You’re going to have to sell it to get it financed and then when you’re done with it you’re still got to sell it to get people to come and see the movie. Once the projector starts then you can shut up and let the movie do its business, but until then you’re a showman.”
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