Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Independent Film
of or at least found a new home on the margins of the
studio mainstream. This remained an accurate description
of the Hollywood/indie divide throughout the
subsequent twenty-five years even as the independent
landscape slowly changed.
JOHN SAYLES
b. Schenectady, New York, 28 September 1950
John Sayles is one of the most important [of] contemporary
independent filmmakers. Because his loyal fan base shares
his politics, Sayles has consistently been able to provide an
alternative to the big bang of the often politically
conservative Hollywood blockbuster. Making movies that
depend on meaningful conversation and tackle significant
moral issues, Sayles has produced films of ideas at a time
when they seem sadly lacking in mainstream cinema.
Like his fellow cineastes Francis Coppola and Martin
Scorsese, John Sayles got his first big break from
exploitation impresario Roger Corman, for whom he
wrote a screenplay for the tongue-in-cheek gore-fest
Piranha (1978). A year later, Sayles earned legitimate
success, winning a Los Angeles Film Critics Award for his
more personal screenplay, The Return of the Secaucas Seven
(1980), his debut as a writer-director. The Return of the
Secaucas Seven, the story of a handful of twentysomethings
trying to make sense of contemporary America, established
something of a template for Sayles with its emphasis on
dialogue and multiple intersecting narratives.
With the money earned for his screenplays for the
Corman-produced sci-fi quickie Battle Beyond the Stars
(1980) and the excellent werewolf film The Howling
(1981), Sayles wrote and directed Lianna (1983), a film
about a young woman struggling with her sexual
preference. At a time when Hollywood dealt with
lesbianism as either kinky or aberrant, Sayles handled the
issue with an admirable matter-of-fact realism.
Sayles took on another hot-button issue, labor
relations, with his subsequent film Matewan (1987), a
historical reconstruction of an ill-fated West Virginia
coalminers’ strike in the 1920s. And in his next film Eight
Men Out (1988), about the infamous ‘‘Black Sox Scandal’’
of the 1919 World Series, Sayles delivered a similarly
heartfelt pro-union message—noteworthy because at the
time the anti-union sentiments of Reaganomics held sway
in America. While the story pivots on a moral transgression,
Sayles focused instead on the exploitation of the players by
team owner Charles Comiskey. Though what the players do
is wrong, Sayles renders the story in terms that make one
crime an inevitable response to another.
Sayles cemented his reputation as a political
filmmaker by focusing his attention on race issues. The
Brother from Another Planet (1984) told the story of a
black alien who lands in the inner city and gets hooked on
drugs. The ironically titled City of Hope (1991) focused on
the thorny issue of affirmative action in a small
metropolis. Lone Star (1996), for which Sayles received an
Academy AwardÒ nomination for Best Screenplay,
examined Mexican-American relations in a border town
and Sunshine State (2002) took a long look at the human
cost of gentrification at an old Florida beachfront town
abutting the one beach where African Americans could
swim during segregation.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980), Brother from Another
Planet (1984), Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988),
Lone Star (1996), Sunshine State (2002)
FURTHER READING
Carson, Diane, ed. John Sayles: Interviews. Jackson: University
Press of Mississippi, 1999.
———, and Heidi Kenaga, eds. Sayles Talk: New Perspectives
on Independent Filmmaker John Sayles. Detroit, MI:
Wayne State University Press, 2006.
Molyneaux, Gerard. John Sayles: An Unauthorized Biography
of the Pioneering Indie Filmmaker. Los Angeles:
Renaissance Books, 2000.
Sayles, John. Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie
Matewan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
———, and Gavin Smith. Sayles on Sayles. Boston and
London: Faber and Faber, 1998.
Jon Lewis
In the 1990s, in an effort to cash in on the ‘‘alternative
market,’’ several of the big studios added boutique,
so-called indie-labels to their vast entertainment industry
holdings. For example, Sony spun-off Sony Classics and
Fox added Fox Searchlight. Disney expanded its holdings
10 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM