When people think independent filmmaker Im sure people like Quentin Tarantino or Kevin Smith pop into their head but I consider Miramax one of those mini-majors. But no one represents indie filmmaking like John Sayles. He started his career writing movies like Piranha and Alligator for Roger Corman, then segued into directing with Return of the Secaucus 7. Since then he has written and directed 15 films and been nominated for two screenwriting Oscars for Passion Fish and Lone Star.
His latest film is Silver City. The campaign for Colorado governor by Dickie Pillager [Chris Cooper] hits a literal snag when a corpse turns up on the end of the candidate's fishing rod. His political advisor [Richard Dreyfus] hires former reporter, now private investigator Danny O'Brien [Danny Huston] find out which one of his political "problems" is responsible for this "embarrassment". Instead, Danny discovers a ecological conspiracy that involves a large corporation that has been backing the candidate.
Check out the website for Silver City
Daniel Robert Epstein: News just broke about your Jurassic Park 4 script.
John Sayles: Did it? I hear from these webheads about these things. Two days after I started on that script I had people asking me if I was working on Jurassic Park 4. Most people ask me if there was a Jurassic Park 3. But I know there was because it was on TV last night.
DRE: Did you write a full script or just a rewrite?
JS: Ive done one draft of a rewrite and I actually just sent a second draft in. Its based on someone elses script. About half of my work is rewrites and the other half is people who have an idea and they set me loose on the idea or Ill adapt a book for someone.
DRE: Did that come right from Steven Spielberg?
JS: Yes Steven and [producer] Kathleen Kennedy. I had worked for them 18 eyras ago so it was nice to do again.
DRE: How personal is the Jurassic Park script to you?
JS: You try to do your best job and Ive been lucky in that Ive always gotten enough work that if it turns out well I could go to the movie theatre, buy popcorn and enjoy. Im not really interested in serial killers, vampires or hitmen but about 60 percent of movies arent about those three things. I like monster movies and Ive written a bunch of them. I think the last one I worked on was Mimic that Guillermo Del Toro directed.
DRE: What spurred the idea for Silver City?
JS: I started thinking about doing something specifically about electoral politics. I had done political movies before. When we were making Sunshine State in Northern Florida, right after the 2000 election and so many people on our crew and in the community asked what the deal was with the national media? Theyre not covering the real story down here, which is not these hanging chads, its how many African-Americans did not get to vote. It was not an accident from what we can tell. Were white people and we knew what was going on. So that started thinking me about what was going on. Since then, Ive just felt like our democracy was under attack from various sides, and it was important to get something out before the election. Only about a year ago we really knuckled down and said lets do something, and I started writing this. We got it together very quickly.
DRE: How did it turn into a detective story?
JS: Some of it is that in anything where you want people to connect dots, a detective is a great guide for an audience. What detectives do is look at places that other people dont look into sometimes, through the window in the back of the house instead the front door. Its their job to find things out and to make connections that other people arent making and that arent on the surface. As I started thinking about it, I started thinking about movies like Chinatown and classic film noir where who killed the dead guy may be the third or fourth most important thing in the movie, and the trip that you take in order to find it out and what you learn on that trip, both for the main character and for the audience, is the more important thing. Heres something where I need someone who is an investigator. Should I have him be a detective or have him be a reporter? I decided to have him be both, an ex-reporter who is now a pretty half-assed detective. I wouldnt hire this guy. Hes not very efficient. He does sleep with the clients sister, which is very unprofessional. He basically has to give away most of his fee to someone else, who can penetrate the Hispanic community, which he realizes he cant do.
DRE: This has strong very strong connections to your previous films. Was that intentional?
JS: I do think that it is an extension in some way of those, but thats what I see going on in the world and its really affecting communities. Theres certainly corporatization that is affecting us all, when there are multi-national corporations that have a GNP larger than most big countries and end up having more power than many countries. Where you have something like NAFTA, which overrides national laws the corporations have an awful lot of power, and sometimes our armed forces are working for them as security forces.
DRE: Would you ever do a documentary tying together all these things?
JS: Documentaries are so hard to do that my hat is off to anyone who does them. First of all, its a lot of work, second of all the people you interview just dont necessarily say what you want them to say. Whereas when I write fiction, theres not a whole lot of adlibbing going on. In my movies, I let the Hispanic actors work with me on their dialogue to make it a little more vernacular. I can write in Spanish, but Ill say that this is an uneducated guy from this part of Mexico, and theyll come up with something a little more accurate. But the English-speaking actors have to say it the way that its written, pretty much verbatim. What that means is that you have a lot more control. A true documentarian really doesnt know how the movies going to turn out when they start it, and that can be a long trip of seven years or so before you have your movie.
DRE: You seem to be strong on picking communities. How do you decide which community to do a movie about?
JS: Usually, theres something about the community that becomes a character in the story. With Alaska [for them movie Limbo], a lot of it was that where else in America is there where you walk out the door and you realize that nature is big and people are small and youre reminded of that. Even in the capitol of the state, you walk five minutes outside of town, and you can be eaten by a bear. There are not too many cities where that happens. Other bad things can happen to you in New York, but you probably wont be eaten by a bear.
In the case of Colorado, I was thinking about a place where there was a lot of subtext to the place and so, Colorado is a place where people move because its so beautiful. You have these mountains and streams lakes and all that, but because of this heritage of mining you have a lot of places where there are no trout in the stream because its poisoned. Where just under the surface there are big holes full of toxic stuff. We shot 15 miles from Denver where Rocky Flats is and its listed as a nature preserve, but its actually a place where we used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Human beings cant go there after thirty years of clean-up. There was a point where we could have had Chernobyl in Denver.
DRE: What made you think of Richard Dreyfuss and Kris Kristofferson for the main antagonists?
JS: One thing I said to Richard was that this guy can be working for either side, and Richard has that incredible energy and that intelligence and that driving force. My only direction for him when we started was, "Look, whenever youre on screen, Richard, you have to take over." He got this little smile on his face and said, "I can do that." I cast Kris Kristofferson in Lone Star for a somewhat similar part, a more vicious guy in some ways, but Kris is a really smart guy and hes got that Western thing. Hes comfortable in the cowboy boots. Hes got that great deep voice, and he just looks like hes chiseled out of granite. I wanted this guy to be one of those old robber baron types, kind of a throwback of a guy who probably really could lasso a calf, at the same time that hes into communications, all these techno industries, mining and cattle industries. Its fun for them to play people who are different from they are.
DRE: Was there a specific person that you based Dreyfuss character on?
JS: I started having it be one of these action freak guys who can work for either campaign who just takes no prisoners. Sometimes they even switch from Republicans to Democrats, depending on where the action is. Then as I started reading more about Karl Rove and felt like theres some of his background that is too good to pass up. So the stuff that Miguel Ferrers character, the radio host, talks about is based on Karl Roves activities when he was in the Young Republicans which is basically, student politics in the late 60s and early 70s. The other part of it is that hes very good at his job and he takes this Dickie Pillager character, who is very much based on George Bush when he was running for governor of Texas the first time, so hes a political neophyte from a famous political family, but he has no real experience. He is shaped during the course of the movie, so by the last time we see him, hes on the script and really focused, where at the beginning, hes trying to adlib and hes learning that hes not very good at this.
DRE: How did you pick the rest of the cast?
JS: Its a big cast and theres always a chemistry to these things. We had a very specific six-week period to shoot this movie so you ask people and sometimes theyre busy or they dont want to do it. The good thing is we have so many good actors in this country that you could usually come up with somebody youre thrilled with. Richard Dreyfuss was one of the first people we got. Chris Cooper, we were just talking and I originally had him in mind for the character that Kris Kristofferson plays, and then I decided that a good intense straight actor will be funnier than a comedic actor. I had worked with Daryl Hannah just before in Casa de Los Babys and some of her outlaw spirit in real life, I felt would be right. She also has that classy side where she could be a member of one of those families but wouldnt play by the rules. In Casa shes intimidating because shes perfect then you realize shes had a tough life. I think Daryl is a really good actress. I think shes been underused and badly used. I think a lot of producers and directors have been able to get beyond the blond and gorgeous. There is a really good actress and interesting person there.
Maria Bello was somebody Id seen in a couple things, and people on the crew had worked with her and really liked her. Once we cast Danny Huston as the lead and hes 40, we felt like we needed someone over 30 and so that chemistry worked out. A lot of it is that you have maybe five or six roles and you have to get them settled first and then the age range and the looks of the other people come together. Billy Zane was a great stroke of fortune in that we contacted him fairly late in the game and he just happened to have two little windows of opportunity from a Joel Silver movie he was shooting and he was willing to come in and do this thing.
DRE: You tend to go back to the same actors. Why is that?
JS: Its like juggling a lot of balls. Every time you can take one of those balls thats in the air and theyre a known quantity and put it on the floor, its just easier to deal with. Plus theyre good actors and a lot of them are my friends and its great to be able to work with them.
DRE: Did you have any of the actors in mind when you were writing?
JS: I had some ideas of who I might want for things but I didnt specifically. You try not to because this is our 15th movie, because even if they want to do it, you dont want to get fixed on any one actor. So what we tend to do is not make a list and go down it, but just think of the person, ask them and then if they say no, you dont want to get stuck with number two or even think what if we went in this direction?
DRE: What made you go with Danny?
JS: What is interesting with Danny is that I had known his work as a director, but I had only seen him in a couple of things. I saw him in this movie Ivans XTC which is this movie where he played this agent on the last week of his life, and he was really good in it. I thought, what if I have the detective be the least known of these actors, so the actors who are playing the politicians are more the celebrities and hes just this groundling. Also Danny has this very interesting 40s feel to him. There were times in the editing room where I said thats like young Orson Welles or Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. There was something I liked about that character who is kind of half dupe, half tough investigator. He doesnt seem like the guy who has seen it all. I wanted a little less of that world weary detective who is kind of burnt out and a guy who you feel like if you gave him half a chance, he might care again.
DRE: Does he come in with that head of hair?
JS: Richard Dreyfuss just looked across the table at him and said "Id give a half million dollars for that head of hair."
DRE: Any idea when the Bush camp gets to see this film and what do you think theyre going to say?
JS: I dont know. Im not on the radar the way that Michael Moore is. Hes a household dirty word. Im just not that well known. I imagine it will get lumped together with the documentaries that are coming out. Whats interesting is that this is not a Hollywood movie. Most of the documentaries were made very independently of each other. Its inevitable that this many movies are coming out and I think some of them may have delayed their release to come out closer to the election.
DRE: What kind of impact do you want this movie to have?
JS: The central metaphor in the movie is connecting dots and I would like people to connect dots and draw some lines from this movie to existing politicians, certainly to the presidential race. I would hope that it would make people think about races I know nothing about. That you can apply it to state and local politics and there is some indictment not just to politicians and journalists, but of the public in general. Voting is the least you can do. If you want to have a democracy, you have to do much more than vote. One thing you have to do is inform yourself. If you look at the range of journalists and responsibility and irresponsibility among them within this movie, you realize that you cant just rely on just one news source. You really have to almost be a detective yourself and do some digging before you go into the voting booth, and then beyond that just because your candidate gets in, doesnt mean theyre going to take care of everything.
DRE: You exemplify the indie filmmaker who has been able to make things in your own terms. Are you glad about that or are you waiting for that big ball of money to drop in your lap?
JS: In some ways, the upside is that you get to tell the truth the way you see it, the downside is like Tim Roths character, you get marginalized. Hes literally underground and that marginalization of somebody who really is basing things on the document, so like he says, you plant the seed of doubt, but youre not there to collect the Pulitzer. Youre not the mainstream guy. Thats the downside. If you get marginalized too much, you dont get to make another movie or its almost impossible. This movie we ended up self-financing it for five million dollars. Who knew we had that much? We didnt when we started it. We dont anymore. Not everybody writes as many screenplays as I do and has had other movies to come out, so for a lot of independent filmmakers, its just survival, and there are a lot of years in between their movies.
DRE: Who wouldnt want to put their money into a John Sayles movie, especially when you can get such a great cast?
JS: In this case, every distributor and financier we asked. My last movie had three Academy award winners in it and that didnt make much a difference at the box office. Its a really risk adverse world out there for filmmakers and the minute you go above these shot on video half a million dollar InDigEnt kind of movies, theres not that many people investing in them. Theres fewer and fewer, and thats kind of what the market will bear right now. Plus its almost a disadvantage to have made fifteen movies and none of them went platinum. I remember hearing Robert Altman look at a room full of college students and saying "Every one of you has a better chance at making your next movie then I have of making mine." Now, of course, it was after one of his movies that didnt do very well, but its true. The track record is in on Robert Altman. Hes made fifty movies or whatever hes made and after The Player, he was financeable for awhile and he made a couple that didnt do that well, and people didnt know about him because they thought he was old.
DRE: Your films are so smart, have you ever thought about not doing something so smart?
JS: Its a year of your life and you only get one life. Only so many years are you going to be able to direct something so you only have so many shots at the weapon. Do you really want to spend a year of your life on something you dont care that much about? I care a lot about the movies I write for other people in a technical way. I might work harder for them than I do for myself as a screenwriter. But finally youre not as emotionally involved in them. For me a lot of the interest in making movies is being emotionally involved in the story. Otherwise youll feel like a technician. Its engaging and interesting if you work with good people but ultimately youre not there heart and soul.
DRE: It seems like you do a movie a year. Is it for you the same as someone who goes to an office everyday except when youre shooting?
JS: Its more complicated than that. Maggie Renzi who I live with has produced 12 of the 15 movies Ive directed. Thats great because we get to spend that much more time together than we would ordinarily. Its a campaign to get a movie made. We have to campaign to get the money. Oftentimes Ive written a movie and not been able to get financing so I will come back to it years later. Eight Men Out was made 11 years after I wrote the first draft. Ive got two big historical epics Id love to make that we still havent been able to raise the money for. There are no regular hours to it. Actually the most regular the hours get is when we are shooting because then we are dealing with union rules. We know that when we make a movie, six hours after the start time lunch comes or we pay a meal penalty. I shot only four weeks on Casa De Los Babys and only six on Silver City. Shooting is an intense period but its relatively short compared to the rest of moviemaking which is the writing, the fundraising, the editing and doing the publicity. I spent a lot more time on publicity for this movie than I did on production.
DRE: Thats crazy.
JS: I end up doing about 300 interviews per movie including domestic and foreign.
DRE: I know when you make a movie you can get funding from various sources from all over the world. Have you ever thought about going right to your public for funding?
JS: Thats a hard thing to do. We funded our second movie Lianna with a public offering because we had failed to raise the money with a private offering. A public offering means anyone could put their money into. If we could figure out a great way to do it then we would. Maybe tell people to send us the eight or ten bucks now and well make sure they get a ticket. But I think musicians that do the same thing with records and arent successful. Maybe only Ani DiFranco and one or two others are successful at that. Every time out we are reinventing the wheel with raising money and the business changes especially independent movie business. Sources of money appear and disappear like supernovas or shooting stars.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
His latest film is Silver City. The campaign for Colorado governor by Dickie Pillager [Chris Cooper] hits a literal snag when a corpse turns up on the end of the candidate's fishing rod. His political advisor [Richard Dreyfus] hires former reporter, now private investigator Danny O'Brien [Danny Huston] find out which one of his political "problems" is responsible for this "embarrassment". Instead, Danny discovers a ecological conspiracy that involves a large corporation that has been backing the candidate.
Check out the website for Silver City
Daniel Robert Epstein: News just broke about your Jurassic Park 4 script.
John Sayles: Did it? I hear from these webheads about these things. Two days after I started on that script I had people asking me if I was working on Jurassic Park 4. Most people ask me if there was a Jurassic Park 3. But I know there was because it was on TV last night.
DRE: Did you write a full script or just a rewrite?
JS: Ive done one draft of a rewrite and I actually just sent a second draft in. Its based on someone elses script. About half of my work is rewrites and the other half is people who have an idea and they set me loose on the idea or Ill adapt a book for someone.
DRE: Did that come right from Steven Spielberg?
JS: Yes Steven and [producer] Kathleen Kennedy. I had worked for them 18 eyras ago so it was nice to do again.
DRE: How personal is the Jurassic Park script to you?
JS: You try to do your best job and Ive been lucky in that Ive always gotten enough work that if it turns out well I could go to the movie theatre, buy popcorn and enjoy. Im not really interested in serial killers, vampires or hitmen but about 60 percent of movies arent about those three things. I like monster movies and Ive written a bunch of them. I think the last one I worked on was Mimic that Guillermo Del Toro directed.
DRE: What spurred the idea for Silver City?
JS: I started thinking about doing something specifically about electoral politics. I had done political movies before. When we were making Sunshine State in Northern Florida, right after the 2000 election and so many people on our crew and in the community asked what the deal was with the national media? Theyre not covering the real story down here, which is not these hanging chads, its how many African-Americans did not get to vote. It was not an accident from what we can tell. Were white people and we knew what was going on. So that started thinking me about what was going on. Since then, Ive just felt like our democracy was under attack from various sides, and it was important to get something out before the election. Only about a year ago we really knuckled down and said lets do something, and I started writing this. We got it together very quickly.
DRE: How did it turn into a detective story?
JS: Some of it is that in anything where you want people to connect dots, a detective is a great guide for an audience. What detectives do is look at places that other people dont look into sometimes, through the window in the back of the house instead the front door. Its their job to find things out and to make connections that other people arent making and that arent on the surface. As I started thinking about it, I started thinking about movies like Chinatown and classic film noir where who killed the dead guy may be the third or fourth most important thing in the movie, and the trip that you take in order to find it out and what you learn on that trip, both for the main character and for the audience, is the more important thing. Heres something where I need someone who is an investigator. Should I have him be a detective or have him be a reporter? I decided to have him be both, an ex-reporter who is now a pretty half-assed detective. I wouldnt hire this guy. Hes not very efficient. He does sleep with the clients sister, which is very unprofessional. He basically has to give away most of his fee to someone else, who can penetrate the Hispanic community, which he realizes he cant do.
DRE: This has strong very strong connections to your previous films. Was that intentional?
JS: I do think that it is an extension in some way of those, but thats what I see going on in the world and its really affecting communities. Theres certainly corporatization that is affecting us all, when there are multi-national corporations that have a GNP larger than most big countries and end up having more power than many countries. Where you have something like NAFTA, which overrides national laws the corporations have an awful lot of power, and sometimes our armed forces are working for them as security forces.
DRE: Would you ever do a documentary tying together all these things?
JS: Documentaries are so hard to do that my hat is off to anyone who does them. First of all, its a lot of work, second of all the people you interview just dont necessarily say what you want them to say. Whereas when I write fiction, theres not a whole lot of adlibbing going on. In my movies, I let the Hispanic actors work with me on their dialogue to make it a little more vernacular. I can write in Spanish, but Ill say that this is an uneducated guy from this part of Mexico, and theyll come up with something a little more accurate. But the English-speaking actors have to say it the way that its written, pretty much verbatim. What that means is that you have a lot more control. A true documentarian really doesnt know how the movies going to turn out when they start it, and that can be a long trip of seven years or so before you have your movie.
DRE: You seem to be strong on picking communities. How do you decide which community to do a movie about?
JS: Usually, theres something about the community that becomes a character in the story. With Alaska [for them movie Limbo], a lot of it was that where else in America is there where you walk out the door and you realize that nature is big and people are small and youre reminded of that. Even in the capitol of the state, you walk five minutes outside of town, and you can be eaten by a bear. There are not too many cities where that happens. Other bad things can happen to you in New York, but you probably wont be eaten by a bear.
In the case of Colorado, I was thinking about a place where there was a lot of subtext to the place and so, Colorado is a place where people move because its so beautiful. You have these mountains and streams lakes and all that, but because of this heritage of mining you have a lot of places where there are no trout in the stream because its poisoned. Where just under the surface there are big holes full of toxic stuff. We shot 15 miles from Denver where Rocky Flats is and its listed as a nature preserve, but its actually a place where we used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Human beings cant go there after thirty years of clean-up. There was a point where we could have had Chernobyl in Denver.
DRE: What made you think of Richard Dreyfuss and Kris Kristofferson for the main antagonists?
JS: One thing I said to Richard was that this guy can be working for either side, and Richard has that incredible energy and that intelligence and that driving force. My only direction for him when we started was, "Look, whenever youre on screen, Richard, you have to take over." He got this little smile on his face and said, "I can do that." I cast Kris Kristofferson in Lone Star for a somewhat similar part, a more vicious guy in some ways, but Kris is a really smart guy and hes got that Western thing. Hes comfortable in the cowboy boots. Hes got that great deep voice, and he just looks like hes chiseled out of granite. I wanted this guy to be one of those old robber baron types, kind of a throwback of a guy who probably really could lasso a calf, at the same time that hes into communications, all these techno industries, mining and cattle industries. Its fun for them to play people who are different from they are.
DRE: Was there a specific person that you based Dreyfuss character on?
JS: I started having it be one of these action freak guys who can work for either campaign who just takes no prisoners. Sometimes they even switch from Republicans to Democrats, depending on where the action is. Then as I started reading more about Karl Rove and felt like theres some of his background that is too good to pass up. So the stuff that Miguel Ferrers character, the radio host, talks about is based on Karl Roves activities when he was in the Young Republicans which is basically, student politics in the late 60s and early 70s. The other part of it is that hes very good at his job and he takes this Dickie Pillager character, who is very much based on George Bush when he was running for governor of Texas the first time, so hes a political neophyte from a famous political family, but he has no real experience. He is shaped during the course of the movie, so by the last time we see him, hes on the script and really focused, where at the beginning, hes trying to adlib and hes learning that hes not very good at this.
DRE: How did you pick the rest of the cast?
JS: Its a big cast and theres always a chemistry to these things. We had a very specific six-week period to shoot this movie so you ask people and sometimes theyre busy or they dont want to do it. The good thing is we have so many good actors in this country that you could usually come up with somebody youre thrilled with. Richard Dreyfuss was one of the first people we got. Chris Cooper, we were just talking and I originally had him in mind for the character that Kris Kristofferson plays, and then I decided that a good intense straight actor will be funnier than a comedic actor. I had worked with Daryl Hannah just before in Casa de Los Babys and some of her outlaw spirit in real life, I felt would be right. She also has that classy side where she could be a member of one of those families but wouldnt play by the rules. In Casa shes intimidating because shes perfect then you realize shes had a tough life. I think Daryl is a really good actress. I think shes been underused and badly used. I think a lot of producers and directors have been able to get beyond the blond and gorgeous. There is a really good actress and interesting person there.
Maria Bello was somebody Id seen in a couple things, and people on the crew had worked with her and really liked her. Once we cast Danny Huston as the lead and hes 40, we felt like we needed someone over 30 and so that chemistry worked out. A lot of it is that you have maybe five or six roles and you have to get them settled first and then the age range and the looks of the other people come together. Billy Zane was a great stroke of fortune in that we contacted him fairly late in the game and he just happened to have two little windows of opportunity from a Joel Silver movie he was shooting and he was willing to come in and do this thing.
DRE: You tend to go back to the same actors. Why is that?
JS: Its like juggling a lot of balls. Every time you can take one of those balls thats in the air and theyre a known quantity and put it on the floor, its just easier to deal with. Plus theyre good actors and a lot of them are my friends and its great to be able to work with them.
DRE: Did you have any of the actors in mind when you were writing?
JS: I had some ideas of who I might want for things but I didnt specifically. You try not to because this is our 15th movie, because even if they want to do it, you dont want to get fixed on any one actor. So what we tend to do is not make a list and go down it, but just think of the person, ask them and then if they say no, you dont want to get stuck with number two or even think what if we went in this direction?
DRE: What made you go with Danny?
JS: What is interesting with Danny is that I had known his work as a director, but I had only seen him in a couple of things. I saw him in this movie Ivans XTC which is this movie where he played this agent on the last week of his life, and he was really good in it. I thought, what if I have the detective be the least known of these actors, so the actors who are playing the politicians are more the celebrities and hes just this groundling. Also Danny has this very interesting 40s feel to him. There were times in the editing room where I said thats like young Orson Welles or Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. There was something I liked about that character who is kind of half dupe, half tough investigator. He doesnt seem like the guy who has seen it all. I wanted a little less of that world weary detective who is kind of burnt out and a guy who you feel like if you gave him half a chance, he might care again.
DRE: Does he come in with that head of hair?
JS: Richard Dreyfuss just looked across the table at him and said "Id give a half million dollars for that head of hair."
DRE: Any idea when the Bush camp gets to see this film and what do you think theyre going to say?
JS: I dont know. Im not on the radar the way that Michael Moore is. Hes a household dirty word. Im just not that well known. I imagine it will get lumped together with the documentaries that are coming out. Whats interesting is that this is not a Hollywood movie. Most of the documentaries were made very independently of each other. Its inevitable that this many movies are coming out and I think some of them may have delayed their release to come out closer to the election.
DRE: What kind of impact do you want this movie to have?
JS: The central metaphor in the movie is connecting dots and I would like people to connect dots and draw some lines from this movie to existing politicians, certainly to the presidential race. I would hope that it would make people think about races I know nothing about. That you can apply it to state and local politics and there is some indictment not just to politicians and journalists, but of the public in general. Voting is the least you can do. If you want to have a democracy, you have to do much more than vote. One thing you have to do is inform yourself. If you look at the range of journalists and responsibility and irresponsibility among them within this movie, you realize that you cant just rely on just one news source. You really have to almost be a detective yourself and do some digging before you go into the voting booth, and then beyond that just because your candidate gets in, doesnt mean theyre going to take care of everything.
DRE: You exemplify the indie filmmaker who has been able to make things in your own terms. Are you glad about that or are you waiting for that big ball of money to drop in your lap?
JS: In some ways, the upside is that you get to tell the truth the way you see it, the downside is like Tim Roths character, you get marginalized. Hes literally underground and that marginalization of somebody who really is basing things on the document, so like he says, you plant the seed of doubt, but youre not there to collect the Pulitzer. Youre not the mainstream guy. Thats the downside. If you get marginalized too much, you dont get to make another movie or its almost impossible. This movie we ended up self-financing it for five million dollars. Who knew we had that much? We didnt when we started it. We dont anymore. Not everybody writes as many screenplays as I do and has had other movies to come out, so for a lot of independent filmmakers, its just survival, and there are a lot of years in between their movies.
DRE: Who wouldnt want to put their money into a John Sayles movie, especially when you can get such a great cast?
JS: In this case, every distributor and financier we asked. My last movie had three Academy award winners in it and that didnt make much a difference at the box office. Its a really risk adverse world out there for filmmakers and the minute you go above these shot on video half a million dollar InDigEnt kind of movies, theres not that many people investing in them. Theres fewer and fewer, and thats kind of what the market will bear right now. Plus its almost a disadvantage to have made fifteen movies and none of them went platinum. I remember hearing Robert Altman look at a room full of college students and saying "Every one of you has a better chance at making your next movie then I have of making mine." Now, of course, it was after one of his movies that didnt do very well, but its true. The track record is in on Robert Altman. Hes made fifty movies or whatever hes made and after The Player, he was financeable for awhile and he made a couple that didnt do that well, and people didnt know about him because they thought he was old.
DRE: Your films are so smart, have you ever thought about not doing something so smart?
JS: Its a year of your life and you only get one life. Only so many years are you going to be able to direct something so you only have so many shots at the weapon. Do you really want to spend a year of your life on something you dont care that much about? I care a lot about the movies I write for other people in a technical way. I might work harder for them than I do for myself as a screenwriter. But finally youre not as emotionally involved in them. For me a lot of the interest in making movies is being emotionally involved in the story. Otherwise youll feel like a technician. Its engaging and interesting if you work with good people but ultimately youre not there heart and soul.
DRE: It seems like you do a movie a year. Is it for you the same as someone who goes to an office everyday except when youre shooting?
JS: Its more complicated than that. Maggie Renzi who I live with has produced 12 of the 15 movies Ive directed. Thats great because we get to spend that much more time together than we would ordinarily. Its a campaign to get a movie made. We have to campaign to get the money. Oftentimes Ive written a movie and not been able to get financing so I will come back to it years later. Eight Men Out was made 11 years after I wrote the first draft. Ive got two big historical epics Id love to make that we still havent been able to raise the money for. There are no regular hours to it. Actually the most regular the hours get is when we are shooting because then we are dealing with union rules. We know that when we make a movie, six hours after the start time lunch comes or we pay a meal penalty. I shot only four weeks on Casa De Los Babys and only six on Silver City. Shooting is an intense period but its relatively short compared to the rest of moviemaking which is the writing, the fundraising, the editing and doing the publicity. I spent a lot more time on publicity for this movie than I did on production.
DRE: Thats crazy.
JS: I end up doing about 300 interviews per movie including domestic and foreign.
DRE: I know when you make a movie you can get funding from various sources from all over the world. Have you ever thought about going right to your public for funding?
JS: Thats a hard thing to do. We funded our second movie Lianna with a public offering because we had failed to raise the money with a private offering. A public offering means anyone could put their money into. If we could figure out a great way to do it then we would. Maybe tell people to send us the eight or ten bucks now and well make sure they get a ticket. But I think musicians that do the same thing with records and arent successful. Maybe only Ani DiFranco and one or two others are successful at that. Every time out we are reinventing the wheel with raising money and the business changes especially independent movie business. Sources of money appear and disappear like supernovas or shooting stars.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
There are few who write such terrific dialogue for such diverse characters as he presents in his films, and he seems to be one of the only directors left that is willing to actually sit back and allow actors to act.
Kind of a sad commentary that this interview has been up all these hours and has so few responses. Perhaps he should employ more jump cuts and mood lighting into his films, or just change his name to Fincher in order to earn some notice from people around here.
Thanks alot for this wonderful interview.
[Edited on Oct 05, 2004 by Westley]
Here's an assessment by a fellow liberal.