John Sayles
John Sayles
John Thomas Saylesis an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Passion Fishand Lone Star. His film Men with Gunshas been nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. His directorial debut, Return of the Secaucus 7, has been added to the National Film Registry...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth28 September 1950
CountryUnited States of America
The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.
The hardest thing about movies is doing take 12, 13, and 14, and finding new ways to do the same lines. So the early takes are actually easier and I think there's more surprises in them.
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 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.
The election helped me focus ideas that I had been thinking about for a long time, ... Sunshine State.
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.
And is there a movie, whatever the genre here, that I would like to go see? If I can see the germ of that there, I'll usually take the job.
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.