"I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'." -- John Sayles
John Thomas Sayles (born September 28, 1950) is an American independent film director and screenwriter.
"And it was out in the theaters in two weeks. This is not, 'We're going to develop twenty-five and maybe one's going to get made,' so the first three things I wrote got up on the screen and, good, bad or indifferent, I got to see them on their feet.""Basically, if you could get a good trailer out of the script, Roger had no objection to you making a really good movie. He liked it if you did. He liked the more cleverness and ingenuity you could bring to it. He just wasn't going to give you any more money.""But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them.""Fahrenheit 9/11 took public domain information that should have been on the news every night and put it in a film that a lot of people went to see. But still Bush has never had to answer those charges.""For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.""I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.""I certainly grew up seeing more movies and television than I read books, but when it came time to do the thing itself you don't have to hire a lot of people to sit down and write a book, so that was the story-telling medium that was available to me.""I figured somebody wrote a story who had a typewriter and I thought that movies were made by the cowboys and that they just said, 'Okay, you fall off the horse this time.'""I like to act. I work for scale. I don't have an acting agent. I'm in the book.""I made it about a three-day weekend so people wouldn't have to change their clothes a lot. We didn't have an art department; we didn't have a make-up department.""I never thought about being a writer as I grew up. A writer wasn't something I wanted to be. An outfielder was something to be. Most of what I know about style I learned from Roberto Clemente.""I probably wouldn't have done as many as I did in one year, which I did when I was trying to raise money.""I remember being out here at the Sunset Marquis, and whoever knocked on the door, I would take that picture that I was writing and I would put that in the typewriter, so when I had the meeting, they would say: 'Oh, you're working on it right now?'""I take more jobs when I need more money, if I'm investing in films. I take fewer when I don't. Or if something really good comes along, I usually find a way to do a good job on it in the time that I've got.""I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.""I've always felt like I was on the margins. Once upon a time that's what independent used to mean.""If you write a movie for Roger Corman, it's going to get made. You saw it almost the next day.""In a movie you have all these logistical problems; all these practical problems. But you're also going to have people come who can do things that you can't do, and you get to direct their talents.""Michael Moore, whether you like him or hate him, has done something very important.""My argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.""Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.""The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you're playing a character who changes within the movie, you've got to do that, but you've got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that's really, really tough.""The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.""There are genres I don't care for, and I've never worked in those genres, and then sometimes there are people that I haven't liked and I haven't worked for those people. But if I feel like there's a movie that I would like to go see, I'll jump into it.""There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, 'How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives?' To which my response was, 'Well, I hope so.'""There were not fifteen people in the story department and twenty-five producers and stuff. And Roger had produced 1,000 movies and directed a couple of hundred, and their comments were always very, very specific.""Those are fun, especially if they're going to shoot them in four weeks, because you know they're not going to mess with anything you do, so it can be very imaginative.""To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: 'We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,' and when you ask what's left, they say: 'Well, the typing is very good.'""We just said, 'Okay, you're in the movie. Bring what you would bring for a three-day weekend and I hope you like the way you look in it because once you're on camera, that's your wardrobe.' But it worked; it worked and we were very surprised.""Well, acting is cheap; I knew all these actors who weren't in the Screen Actors Guild yet, and it happened that they were all just about thirty years old.""When I was really young I didn't know that there was such a thing as a screenwriter. I wrote stories.""You get to say, 'Here's my philosophical idea about what the costume should like,' and the costume designer comes and gives you choices and sometimes they're all good, and I say, 'What do you think?' and they pick the right thing."
Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary (née Rausch), a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator. John Sayles Biography (1950-) from filmreference.com He was raised Catholic and took to labeling himself "a Catholic atheist". Both of Sayles's parents were of half-Irish descent. John Sayles Interview
He attended Williams College, where a small incident provided an inkling as to his future career. In 1972, while participating in the school's semiannual trivia contest, Sayles's team was tied with another after eight hours, forcing the game's first sudden death overtime. Sayles was able to cite a particular line of dialogue from the 1960 film The Time Machine to clinch the championship.
Like Martin Scorsese and James Cameron, among others, Sayles began his film career working with Roger Corman. Sayles went on to fund his first film, Return of the Secaucus 7, with $30,000 he had in the bank from writing scripts for Corman. He set the film in a large house so that he did not have to travel to or get permits for different locations, set it over a three-day weekend to limit costume changes, and wrote about people his age so that he could have his friends act in it.
In 1983, after the films Baby It's You (starring Rosanna Arquette) and Lianna (a sympathetic story in which a married woman becomes discontented with her marriage and falls in love with another woman), Sayles received a MacArthur Fellowship. Sayles used the money to partially fund the fantasy The Brother from Another Planet, a film about a black, three-toed slave who escapes from another planet and finds himself at home among the people of Harlem in New York City, largely because he is incapable of speaking.
In 1989, he created and wrote the pilot episode for the short-lived television show Shannon's Deal about a down-and-out Philadelphia lawyer played by Jamey Sheridan. Sayles received a 1990 Edgar Award for his teleplay for the pilot. The show ran for only 16 episodes before being cancelled in 1991.
Sayles has funded most of his films by writing genre scripts such as Piranha, Alligator, The Howling and The Challenge. Having collaborated with Joe Dante on Piranha and The Howling, Sayles acted in Dante's movie Matinee. In deciding whether to take a job, Sayles reports that he mostly is interested in whether there is the germ of an idea for a movie which he would want to watch. Sayles gets the rest of his funding by working as a script doctor; he did rewrites for Apollo 13, The Fugitive, and Mimic.
One such genre script, for an unproduced film called Night Skies, inspired the project that would eventually become the highly successful and moneymaking film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. That film's director, Steven Spielberg, later commissioned Sayles to write the script for Jurassic Park IV.
He has written and directed his own films, including Lone Star, Passion Fish, Eight Men Out, The Secret of Roan Inish, and Matewan. His films tend to be politically aware; social concerns are a theme running through most of his work. He serves on the advisory board for the Austin Film Society.
In November 1997, the National Film Preservation Board of the United States announced that Return of the Secaucus 7 would be one of the 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.
Sayles works with a regular repertory of actors, most notably Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, and Gordon Clapp, each of whom has appeared in at least four of his films.
In early 2003, Sayles signed the Not In Our Name "Statement of Conscience" (along with individuals such as Noam Chomsky, Steve Earle, Brian Eno, Jesse Jackson, Viggo Mortensen, Bonnie Raitt, Oliver Stone, Marisa Tomei and Susan Sarandon) which opposed the invasion of Iraq.
In February 2009, Sayles was reported to be writing an upcoming HBO series based on the early life of Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The drama, tentatively titled Scar Tissue, centers on the rocker's early years living in West Hollywood with his father. At that time, Kiedis's father, known as Spider, sold drugs (according to legend, his clients included The Who and Led Zeppelin) and mingled with rock stars on the Sunset Strip, all while aspiring to get into showbiz.
In February 2010, Sayles begins shooting his 17th feature film, the historical war drama, Amigo (aka Baryo), in the Philippines. The film is a fictional account of events during the Philippine-American War, with a cast that includes Joel Torre, Chris Cooper and Garret Dillahunt.
His novel A Moment in the Sun (formerly called Some Time in the Sun), set during the same period as Amigo, in the Philippines, Cuba, and the US, will be released in 2011 by Dave Egger’s publishing house, McSweeney’s.
Outstanding Independent or Foreign Film (Win) — 2008 NAACP Image Awards
Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Theatrical or Television) (Nominated) — John Sayles — 2008 NAACP Image Awards
Top 10 Independent Films of 2007 - National Board of Review
Best Screenplay (Win) — John Sayles - 2007 San Sebastián International Film Festival (Tied with Gracia Querejeta and David Planell for Siete mesas de billar francés (2007)
Award for SILVER CITY:
Golden Seashell Award for Best Film (Nominated) - John Sayles - 2004 San Sebastián International Film Festival
Awards for SUNSHINE STATE:
Golden Orange Award (Win) - John Sayles - 2003 Florida Film Critics Circle Awards
Special Mention For Excellence In Filmmaking (Win) - 2002 National Board of Review
Awards for LIMBO:
Best Director Golden Space Needle Award (Win) - John Sayles -1999 Seattle International Film Festival
Outstanding Indies (Win) - 1999 National Board of Review
Awards for MEN WITH GUNS/HOMBRES ARMADOS:
Best Foreign Independent Film (Nominated) - 1998 British Independent Film Awards
Best Foreign Film (Nominated) - 1999 Golden Globes
Peace Award (Nominated) - 1999 Political Film Society
FIPRESCI Prize (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival
OCIC Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival
Solidarity Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival
Golden Seashell Award for Best Film (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 San Sebastián International Film Festival
Awards for LONE STAR:
Best Original Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Academy Awards
Best Original Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 BAFTA Awards
Best Screenplay, Motion Picture (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Golden Globes
Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Writers Guild of America
Best Picture (Nominated) - 1997 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
Best Motion Picture Original Screenplay (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 Golden Satellite Awards
Best Motion Picture - Drama (Nominated) - Maggie Renzi & R. Paul Miller - 1997 Golden Satellite Awards
Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1997 Independent Spirit Awards
Best Film (Win) - Lone Star - 1996 Lone Star Film & Television Awards
Best Director (Win) - John Sayles - 1996 Lone Star Film & Television Awards
Best Screenplay (Win) - John Sayles - 1996 Lone Star Film & Television Awards
Special Achievement Award for Outstanding Feature Film (Win) - 1996 NCLR Bravo Awards
Best Director (Win) - John Sayles - 1997 Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards
Awards for THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH:
Best Genre Video Release (Nominated) - 1996 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films
International Critics Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1996 Gérardmer Film Festival
Best Director (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1996 Independent Spirit Awards
Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1996 Independent Spirit Awards
Awards for PASSION FISH:
Best Original Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1993 Academy Awards
Golden Spur Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1993 Flanders International Film Festival
Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1993 Writers Guild of America
Awards for CITY OF HOPE:
Critics Award (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1991 Deauville Film Festival
Special Award, Democracy Award (Win) - 1992 Political Film Society
Tokyo Grand Prix Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1991 Tokyo International Film Festival
Awards for MATEWAN:
Critics Award (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1987 Deauville Film Festival
Best Director (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1988 Independent Spirit Awards
Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1988 Independent Spirit Award
Human Rights Award (Win) - 1988 Political Film Society
Awards for THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET:
Best Screenplay Caixa de Catalunya Award (Win) - John Sayles - 1984 Catalonian International Film Festival, Sitges, Spain
Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1985 USA Film Festival (later became the Sundance Film Festival)
Awards for RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN:
Best Independent Film (Win) - 1981 Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
Best Screenplay (Win) - John Sayles - 1980 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
National Film Registry - 1997 Library of Congress, National Film Preservation Board
Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1981 Writers Guild of America
Best Screenplay (Nominated) - John Sayles - 1980 New York Film Critics Circle
Second Place - 1981 US Film Festival (later became the Sundance Film Festival)
Other recognition
Sayles'first published story, "I-80 Nebraska," won an O. Henry Award; his novel, Union Dues, was nominated for a National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award.
In 1985, Sayles received the John D. MacArthur Award, given to 20 Americans in diverse fields each year for their innovative work. He has also been the recipient of the Eugene V. Debs Award, The John Steinbeck Award and the John Cassavetes Award. He was honored with the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Writer’s Guild of America (1999).
