One of America's best known
independent filmmakers, John Sayles's work is primarily concerned with
personal and
political relationships. "My main interest is making films about people," he admits. "I'm not interested in cinematic art." Nonetheless, he has developed a distinctive personal style, utilizing
ensemble acting as well as his own performing skills. His films have recieved much
critical acclaim, but have met with little popular success. Sayles secures financing for, writes, directs,
and edits each of his films, thus assuring that he makes the movies he sets out to make.
Born on September 28, 1950 in
Schenectady,
NY, Sayles went to
Mont Pleasant High School followed by
Williams College, where he earned a
Bachelor's degree in
Psychology. He appeared in school plays and summer stock at Williams College, and, after he graduated, moved on to a career as a fiction writer, submitting stories to magazines and supporting himself as an
orderly, day
laborer, and
meat packer. He wrote two novels:
Pride of the Bimbos (1975) and
Union Dues (1977) - both of which did well critically, but not financially.
In the mid-1970s, Sayles joined
Roger Corman's stable of
B-movie scriptwriters, penning
Piranha (1978),
The Lady in Red (1979), and
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). He also wrote the scripts for a couple of low budget horror flicks,
The Howling and
Alligator. His early
genre writing is suprising and interesting in the light of his later work. His first film as director,
Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), was shot in four weeks during 1978 at a reported cost of $40,000. A witty story concerning a reunion of 1960s activists on the verge of adulthood. The film is considered to be a more authentic exploration of the same territory portrayed in the more commercially successful
The Big Chill (1983). It won the
Best Screenplay award from the
Los Angeles Film Critics and was Oscar-nominated in the same category.
In 1983, Sayles was awarded a prestigious
MacArthur Foundation "genius grant", which provided him with over $30,000 per year, tax-free, for five years. One of the results was
The Brother From Another Planet (1984), an unlikely story of a mute, black alien (
Joe Morton) adrift in
Harlem.
Sayles went on making ambitious, complex, and challenging films, including
Matewan (1987) (about West Virginia coal mines of the 1920s) and
Eight Men Out (1988) (an account of the 1919
Black Sox scandal told from the perspective of individual players). A change of pace was the heart-warming folk tale
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), which Sayles both wrote and directed. The story of a girl living with her grandparents in County Donegal, the story incorporated mystical and whimsical elements unusual for Sayles (not that he couldn't handle it or anything).
He followed that with a substantially darker film in 1996:
Lone Star (also written and directed by Sayles). The film is, once again, a brilliant character study that plays with the preconceptions of the
Western genre of film. Sayles was nominated for an
Oscar for his Lone Star
screenplay, but lost out to the
Coen Brothers'
Fargo.
His most recent works include
Men With Guns (1997) (aka Hombres Armados), a Spanish-language political road movie which garnered a Golden Globe nomination for
Best Foreign Language Film, and
Limbo (1999), which is perhaps most infamously known for its highly ambiguous ending.
Sayles' contributions to other media is less well-publicized. In addition to his novels, he wrote the plays "New Hope for the Dead" and "Turnbuckle." He directed three popular
Bruce Springsteen videos, and has been involved with TV since A Perfect Match (CBS, 1980), for which he wrote the screenplay. Sayles created the pilot and series Shannon's Deal (NBC, 1989-91), about a Philadelphia lawyer. He also wrote and acted in the Vietnam vet drama Unnatural Causes (NBC, 1986), played a baseball player on Mathnet: The Case of the Unnatural (PBS, 1992) and turned up on the documentaries Naked Hollywood (A&E,1991) and Baseball (PBS, 1994).
Sayles shares a home in
Hoboken, N.J., and a farm in upstate New York, with longtime companion
Maggie Renzi, an actress and producer on several of his films. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and continues work on his next film,
Sunshine State, which stars
Angela Bassett and
Edie Falco.
Filmography:
Info gleaned from various interviews, 1996 Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film, and the ever helpful IMDB