John Sayles è un attore statunitense, regista, produttore, produttore esecutivo, scrittore, sceneggiatore, montatore, è nato il 28 settembre 1950 a Schenectady, New York (USA). John Sayles ha oggi 73 anni ed è del segno zodiacale Bilancia.
Approda alla regia dopo avere sperimentato mille mestieri. Considerato uno dei più interessanti esponenti del cinema indipendente americano, spesso finanziatore dei suoi stessi lavori, Sayles, autore anche di romanzi e racconti, debutta nel cinema come sceneggiatore, per alcune opere di Joe Dante, di storie horror venate di humour (Piraña, 1978; L'ululato, 1981), prima di debuttare nella regia con un intimistico e amaro ritratto generazionale, The Return of the Seacausus Seven(1980), girato con i pochi dollari guadagnati dai due film precedenti. Nel panorama della sua produzione si segnalano Lianna, un amore diverso (su una relazione tutta al femminile), Promesse, promesse (commedia sentimentale tra un operaio e una ebrea borghese), Fratello di un altro pianeta (le avventure di un extraterrestre negro) e Matewan (su un episodio di protesta operaia nell'America degli anni '20).
A sorpresa, nel 1997, Sayles ha anche ricevuto una nomination per la sua sceneggiatura di Stella solitaria (1996), un anti-western che, a sorpresa, si è rivelato anche un buon successo al botteghino.
WHAT she’d really like, said the film producer Maggie Renzi, is “a big check and a lot of help.” So far, getting the help hasn’t been a problem. The big check, however, may depend on how well she and her longtime companion, the director John Sayles, can counter all the changes in the independent film business, effect a few of their own and reinvigorate an audience that most movie distributors write off as AARP, if not R.I.P.
Twenty-seven years and 16 features after they began their mutual career with “Return of the Secaucus Seven” in 1980, Mr. Sayles and Ms. Renzi — still enthusiastic despite the demanding life of independent filmmakers — are prepping for the public consumption of “Honeydripper,” which features a virtually all-black cast and is set around an Alabama juke joint (in about 1950) that Danny Glover’s character tries to keep in business. While the movie takes place in the past, its marketing campaign involves a forward-looking synthesis of digital projection, colleges, blues bars, underserved movie houses and the Internet.
The entire approach is a grass-roots response to a cinema landscape that is attracting more and more filmmakers, crowded into an area that remains curiously static in one major way: Distributors’ perpetual emphasis on youth can push proven quantities like Mr. Sayles, whose filmography includes “Matewan,” “Eight Men Out,” “Lone Star” and the Spanish-language “Men With Guns,” to the sidelines. Still, Mr. Sayles and Ms. Renzi say their audiences are out there. “They just need to be invited back into the theaters,” Ms. Renzi said.
“My challenge to them,” she said of the distributors, “is, ‘Can you come up to the new mark?’ Because the old mark isn’t working anymore.”
Independent cinema is often thought of as a young person’s medium, by reason of low budgets, often naïve subject matter and an “alternative” cachet. But many of the better-known people working in it are no longer kids. They are, however, being forced to remain alternative. Gus van Sant’s new “Paranoid Park” will be distributed by IFC First Take, through which films are available on pay-per-view cable the same day they are released theatrically. (Most theater owners refuse to show such movies, worried that television will cannibalize ticket sales.) Another indie veteran, David Lynch, is self-distributing, largely through his Web site.
“The good thing,” Mr. Sayles said, “is it’s a lot easier to make a movie than it is used to be. When we started, there was no high-def video, for instance. We made our movie and nobody had ever heard of that: ‘You just made a movie? How can anyone just make a movie?’ If your film simply had sprocket holes, the four companies that were not studios — there were four at the time — would come and look.”
“Now,” he continued, “Sundance gets 5,000 feature films every year, and there are 5,000 filmmakers from the last year who are still trying to make films. Every distributor in America could show a different movie every day for a year, and there are only so many screens that show non-Hollywood stuff, and only 52 weeks a year, so the mathematical equation is — there’s a huge amount of competition.”
Although they went to the Toronto International Film Festival in September ostensibly looking for a buyer, Mr. Sayles and Ms. Renzi’s efforts seemed halfhearted at best: they were happy, Ms. Renzi said, with the marketing plan that was in place between them and Emerging Pictures, the Manhattan company run by the distribution veteran Ira Deutchman, which has been using unorthodox methods to get specialized film to audiences.
In the case of “Honeydripper,” those things include taking musicians from the movie, a so-called Honeydripper All-Star Band, to a recent blues festival in Long Beach, Calif. “Was it worth it?” Ms. Renzi asked rhetorically. “I looked out at this crowd of maybe 600 people rocking out in 110-degree weather, and I thought, ‘Yes.’ Because we had asked every one of these people, who are blues fans, to go to the movie. And they’ll go.” Six hundred people may not be much by Hollywood standards, but the strategy is about talking to people who will talk to the right people.
William Packer, the producer of “Stomp the Yard,” has also joined the “Honeydripper” team, helping to forge an alliance with Clark Atlanta University, which, in conjunction with the film, is starting a marketing and distribution course for African-American college students nationwide.
“John Sayles has his audience,” a mostly white, older, art-house crowd, Mr. Packer said. “But I think this is a film I really think can penetrate the African-American audience.” He plans to reach them through churches and the school alliance, and by sharing profits with the colleges whose students are involved. “Honeydripper” stars Mr. Glover as the owner of a bar in financial trouble, who decides to book a regional blues star for the one big Saturday-night payday. Things go awry, in various comedic ways. Character, however, is the film’s calling card, as is the cast, which features veterans like Charles S. Dutton.
“I was definitely a fan,” Mr. Dutton said, explaining how he got involved with Mr. Sayles. “Always have been. Every time I would hear about a Sayles movie, I’d say, ‘Damn, I never get a call from this guy.’ And I’ve known Danny for 27, 28 years, and he and I have never worked together. So when this one came around, it was a chance to work with Sayles and Danny.”
Not, however, for the big check. “I guess you eventually get spoiled after a couple of decades in the business, and it took some getting used to,” Mr. Dutton said, referring to the low-budget Sayles operation. “Because they’re not the greatest trailers, and all that stuff. You go in those tiny cubicles and say, ‘Lord, what have I gotten myself into?’ But there’s a great camaraderie.”
Mr. Sayles may not be thrilled with the constant scrambling, but he has come to terms with it. “You get to the point,” he said, “where you say, ‘How much money do we have, and can we shoot it in five weeks?’ Rather than wait another year and see if we can raise money, we go ahead. You just have to learn to multitask. For instance, I wrote 10 pages of a screenplay for somebody yesterday morning, so I’m almost always, unless I’m shooting, writing something, which is how I make a living. And how I financed the last couple of films. But it’s just part of the job and always has been.
“About 80 percent of the job is publicity and fund-raising. It’s not my interest, but if you want to make another film, you have to deal with it.”
Da The The New York Times, 2 Dicembre, 2007
