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""What
Hasn't Been Sanitized and Homogenized?": An Interview with John
Sayles and Maggie Renzi, Sunshine State
Cynthia
Fuchs
Writer/editor/director
John Sayles and producer/actor Maggie Renzi have been living their lives
and making films together for a long time. They approach their work
with a passion that encompasses lyrical and political, as well as narrative
elements. From their first feature, 1979's The Return of the Secaucus
7, produced for just $40,000, to the many movies that have followed,
including Lianna (1980), The Brother from Another Planet
(1985), Matewan (1986), City of Hope (1991), Passion
Fish (1992), Lone Star (1996), Limbo (1999), and now,
their 13th feature, Sunshine State, the filmmakers have not wavered
from their objective -- to make films that explore ideas and relationships,
between people and places.
Independent
film channeler. "My feeling is they're going to like or not
like the movie for other reasons than whether it explains their
history for them." |
Following
a recent retrospective tour of restored prints of four early films --
Secaucus, Lianna, Brother, and Matewan --
running in selected theaters through August, courtesy of Sayles' own
Anarchists' Convention Inc. and IFC Films, these will be released on
DVD and VHS (see www.johnsaylesretro.com). The
52-year-old Sayles was born in Schenectady, NY; as a child, he claims,
he was a "sub-verbal loner." He graduated with a B.S. in psychology
from Williams in 1972, published his first novel, Pride of the Bimbos
in 1975, and had his first screenplay, for Joe Dante's Piranha,
produced in 1978. He has financed these many projects variously, from
his McArthur Genius Grant back in 1983, to writing fiction (for instance,
the short story collection Union Dues) to screenplays and script
rewrites for mainstream horror movies (Alligator, The Howling),
as well as an upcoming Ron Howard film, Alamo (on which Sayles
is no longer working, so the finished product may look very different
from his script). At the moment, he's putting together Casa de Los Babys,
about U.S. women who go to Latin America to adopt children, featuring
Lili Taylor, Rita Moreno, and Daryl Hannah.
Sayles
has been praised for his independence and his enthusiasm for his work;
he is also, unusually, a white filmmaker who deals consistently and
repeatedly with race, as well as class, sex, and other issues. From
The Brother from Another Planet on, his movies feature complex black,
Hispanic, and Native characters, as their stories are specifically "American"
and make up "America."
Sayles
and Renzi today are talking about Sunshine State, which again
takes up these ideas. The film traces two central storylines emerging
from Plantation Island, Florida. After many years away, Desirée (Angela
Bassett), an actor, is returning, with her new husband (James McDaniel),
to see her mother (Mary Alice) and a young, troubled relative, Terrell
(Bernard Alexander Lewis), her mother has recently taken in. Marly (Edie
Falco) is coming to the realization that running her retired, blind
father's (Ralph Waite) restaurant is smothering her, and she needs to
leave town. Between these two strands, many others become visible, taking
place as tourists attend a four-day festival called "Buccaneer Days,"
and as developers and landscapers invade the area, buying up lots to
turn it into an upscale resort. Throughout the film, some characters
hold out against the seeming "wave of the future" -- in particular,
Dr. Lloyd (Bill Cobbs) and Marly's mother Delia (Jane Alexander) --
resist the invasion, but they must fight not only the wealthy corporation,
but also their neighbors' passivity, frustration, fear and rage.
Corporate
encroachment's gift of oppression. "As I was thinking of the
anger and disappointment in that kid, I wanted him to destroy something.
He's not just mad at any individual. He's kind of mad at the world."
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Cynthia
Fuchs: Sunshine State's first image, the pirate ship parade
float in flames, with Terrell, the young arsonist, watching in the darkness,
is so striking. What does that image mean for you?
John Sayles: As I was thinking of the story, and this iconic
stuff that was going on, and the anger and disappointment in that kid,
I wanted him to destroy something. He's not just mad at any individual.
He's kind of mad at the world. The focus of the world where he lives,
this little island, for the next week, will be this festival and parade,
so the film begins with that intersection.
CF:
That image also makes a connection between the past (however it's
remembered, forgotten, or made up) and the present.
JS: Right, in Lone Star, I kept doing it, going from the
past to the present. And in that moment at the beginning of Sunshine
State, when you see the ship burning, you're thinking, is this a
period piece? A flashback? And then you see this kid and he's in a parking
lot and there's a cop car behind him, and you don't really know what's
going on but you know you're not in the past. And I'm always trying
to glue the personal into the social. His personal problems somehow
impact on the community "festival." And, as [festival organizer Francine,
played by Mary Steenburgen] says later about that arson, "This is so
not in the spirit of Buccaneer Days." But he's this angry kid with very
personal, family problems. You can't tear these two things apart. Also,
when I'm doing one of these more amorphous, community movies, I look
for something to drive them forward: what makes you turn the page? In
the case of Lone Star it was the murder mystery. In this movie, it's
the structure of Buccaneer Days, that four day period. So you begin
with seeing this thing burned and then see the Mary Steenburgen character's
reaction to it, then the platforms going up and people coming into town,
some of the events during it, with her getting more and more frazzled,
and then finally you see everyone leaving town, including the guy who
brought the "man-eating alligator." So that gives it structure, even
though it's about a community and you could have dropped the needle
down at any point.
CF:
You call the films "amorphous," but they usually feel very tight.
JS: Yeah, you often start with a lot of strands that are parallel
to each other. And most often, when you're talking about an American
community, you're talking about parallel communities. They're divided
according to vocations, generations, classes, and race. What I try to
do is start weaving these communities together until you have this knot
or this basket and you realize, these people may think "I have nothing
to do with that other parallel reality," but the audience, who gets
to access all the stories, gets to see that these people actually have
quite a lot to do with each other. And in this I added one thing which
wasn't really in City of Hope, and that's the "chorus," the four
guys on the golf course. And Vice President Cheney doesn't happen to
be on the links that day, but he's usually there, and they're carving
something up and they've got the insider knowledge.
CF:
On some level, those golfers seem so self-knowing, but at the same time,
so willfully ignorant of effects they may have.
JS: Well, they have a vision. And it's not an inclusive vision,
but it's very powerful. In our history, we go through phases. Now, we've
gone through the entrepreneurial phase. There are a few guys like that
left, the Rupert Murdochs and the Forbeses. Generally, now, they're
the heads of corporations. And so, we're now in a corporate phase. Comiskey
Park becomes something like Continental Airlines Arena. And that vision
becomes a less human one, one more about statistics and market studies.
In the old days, the entrepreneurs did whatever they wanted to do, moved
neighborhoods or built railroads, and they'd profit from it. And then
they'd be Carnegie and give some of it back, because maybe they felt
bad about it or had a social vision. More often today, it's a corporation
doing these things. And a corporation is a big animal that needs to
be fed, and has no conscience and survives to become bigger. The Wal-Mart
model is probably the best known. They come into a town and run the
local pharmacists and 5-and-10 guys out of business and very knowingly
close all the local Wal-Marts and have everyone drive 30 minutes to
a bigger one. The idea of a free market in which competition will provide
the best for you, that's turned into -- to the winner go the spoils.
And it may be a worse product, worse service, but if they're big enough,
they drive smaller people out. That almost inhuman corporate thinking
is a tidal wave, and very few people can see it coming, because they're
usually careful about going in gently and creating a good image, and
buying things piecemeal, until they make the big move.
Next
Page --> "Certainly, the version of free market capitalism that
has been bandied about, starting sometime around Nixon and going through
Clinton and Bush, is that this absolute free market is necessary. I
mean, what's the NAFTA treaty? It asserts, 'We have your best interests
in mind. And you don't get to vote on it, as a matter of fact, and neither
does your representative.'"
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