Interviewed at San Sebastian Film Festival

Innovative filmmaker John Sayles reveals his process in conversation with Stephen Ashton

Innovative filmmaker John Sayles reveals his process in conversation with Stephen Ashton

John Sayles: It’s nice to be in San Sebastian again.  This is the perfect size film festival.

Stephen Ashton: Yes, this is absolutely one of my favorites. I am very taken by your film.
The other day Wayne Wang said, “American Independent cinema is dead in the US.” What do you think about that?

JS:  Well, it is certainly in trouble. And I would say that the trouble is two things: one is that an awful lot of people who come out of film schools are making movies right away and the ability to do so is there because the technology today makes it easier and cheaper than it used to be.

But the biggest problem is that ALL they know are movies, so their movies are based on other movies they have seen. Sometimes they are very well made, but they are just not that interesting. The people have not been out in the world and lived, so their references are all movie references.

And I think the other thing is something we are running into. It used to be that an independent movie could get into a theater in one city, hang around a few weeks and build up an audience. And now we are in the same boat as the studios are in, which is the FIRST WEEKEND is make or break. There are a lot of films out there and there are only 52 weeks in a year. Plus there are only a limited number of screens that show non-Hollywood films. So it is very tough. There are 200 movies chasing a limited number of play-dates.

So if the theater wants to, they can change the movie every week. Or even half way through the week. Well that may be good for the audiences, because they get to have a quick turnover to see more films.

But for the filmmaker, the problem is making the next film. How do you get money back from the first one that you made? And so you see people like Wayne Wang, or Jim Jarmusch or others who have been around as long as we have who are having a hard time just making another film, just because it has become so difficult making any money back from a film you have just made. The fact that it gets seen a lot doesn’t even guarantee that money comes back to you. Many times people say “Oh, I saw your movie on TV,” or on a DVD and I ask “So why didn’t you see it in the theater?” and they say, “Well, it was gone before I had a chance.”

Most of our audience is busy. They can’t get to the first week of a film… but need two weeks usually, and by then it is gone.

I don’t know if the American Independent film is ‘dead.’ People are still trying to make movies outside the system. But certainly there are many great films that don’t even get distribution. It doesn’t have t be an obscure film or filmmaker you have never heard of to not get distribution.

I think you can still get to make a movie of some sort, but it is harder than ever to get it seen… and it was always hard, but it has never been this hard.

SEA CHANGES

SA: What about this film? Was it hard to get made?

JS: “Honeydripper” is a story I have wanted to make for a long time. I have always loved the music from this era. What interests me always is the moment that is a “turning point” of change… when there is a huge Sea Change in anything, no matter what it is, whether it is sports or what happened with actors when we went from silent movies to talkies, or when films went from black and white to color. I remember seeing Ingmar Bergman’s first color film… it was pretty awful, in spite of being shot by Sven Nykvist. It took a couple or films for him to really exploit the change. By “Cries and Whispers” he really started to use it in creative ways. They could have just said, “No, our movies should be in Black and White… let’s stay there.” But no. They welcomed the Sea Change and took advantage of it.

SA: Yeah, Sven Nykvist went won the Oscar for Cinematography for it.

JS: Right. He pushed the scenes into crimson. Very beautiful and outrageous. That is a good example of someone not resisting the change and jumping into something new.

So I have always been interested in that moment when it wasn’t called Rock ‘n’ Roll yet, Now we just, “Oh yes, That’s Rock ‘n Roll.” What made for that change?

Well, part of it is technological. In 1950 there were only a few electric guitars in the world. Les Paul was developing one. Merle Travis had a different guy make one for him. You could read in Popular Electronics about how to make one. That is the idea of this kid who fixed radios in the Army. He plays the guitar and says to himself “Oh, that would be cool.” So he made his own.

Really what that meant was with electrification and the guitar that went with it, the guitar could be the lead instrument. The piano started receding and receding. The piano kind of disappeared from Rock ‘n Roll for quite a while and then came back as electronic keyboards. It was very awkward. Groups were traveling and you had to carry that big thing around or rely on the venue t have one. Talking to those old guys who played in those clubs… and we talked to all that we could… they said they had to usually stand up and play. There just wasn’t enough room in those small clubs for them to sit and have the piano… so they STOOD.

THE MAKING OF…

JS: We had about a year to raise the money for it and it just wasn’t happening. So once again, just like in SILVER CITY, it is our own money… money I made writing screenplays, lots of screenplays. Some of them get made; most of them don’t, which is kind of the way it works in Hollywood.

SA: What screenplays did you work on?

JS: Oh, a huge range. You know I worked on THE ALAMO when Ron Howard was going to direct it. I did a movie about a tank battalion in WWII; I just did a rewrite on a movie about Salvador Dali, you know … a huge range of subjects. I was one three writers out of 9 that are going to get credit on THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES, a kids’ movie.

I write fairly fast… just constantly doing that so that I can finance my films.

SA: What kind of budget is it?

JS: This is just about $5 million and with that we could afford five weeks of shooting… not very much for an ambitious project like this. Music rights, locations and a period piece like this shoots the budget up quickly.

Now you can make a movie with Union actors for a minimum of 2 1/2 million dollars. If you don’t have a Union crew and actors you can obviously go under that, but five weeks with Union crew and actors is about 2 1/2 million.

We do what’s called “Most Favored Nations” with the actors where they all get scale and everybody gets the same, depending on how much they work. I always give Harvey Keitel credit for this; he was one of the first actors who was known for saying, “This is a good part! I don’t care if its a little movie, I’m gonna do this.” And then it became more and more accepted, not just by the actors, but also by the agents. They said, “Oh, this is a chance for my actor to be seen in a part he would never have a chance to do (in Hollywood),” or in a bigger part. It would be some aspect of his work that hasn’t been seen before. It could be great to have to show to casting directors or directors to reveal more depth to the actor’s repertoire.

We have been very successful in getting well-known actors to do this for us. I think also, when Nick Cage won the Academy Award for LEAVING LAS VEGAS, which was a $3 million dollar movie shot on 16mm, about a guy who vomits through the whole movie, the message went our: “You should take a chance on a part that is out of the ordinary.

ON REFLECTIONS…

SA: When looking at your collection of work, it seems to me you have a lot of interest in ‘historic perspective,’ even going back to THE RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN, it wasn’t “The Secaucus Seven” it was the RETURN of…
So on the theme of ‘Reflection,” how important do think that is in our psyche?

JS: It is important. I think that people in the United States like to think we were born yesterday, that we all started from scratch. They really don’t like to look at where they come from culturally. They like to make up their own history and revamp it a little, but truly, none of us are born yesterday. We come into the world and a lot of what we think and how we think and how we see the world, is based on the community we came up in and that’s based on our history.

Here we are in Spain… I was saying to the Spanish reporters earlier, that our Civil Rights Movement just a few decades ago was the end of the Civil War. They are not done with theirs yet. They are still working it out. Their Civil War was in the 1930’s: ours was in 1860. It took until the 1960s to finish off some of those things that had been started by our Civil War.

Spain is still working on many of those things.

So the way you see the world today is dependent on what came before. I was saying to both Gary and Yaya (the actors) you can’t just go into this the way you would today. That scene where Stacy Keach’s character, the Sheriff, says, “Take off your hat.” is a really important scene to me. In that time and in that place, the kid reacts “Oh Jesus, how stupid of me, I didn’t take off my hat. Will you forgive me?” It didn’t have to be a Sheriff… with any white man you would take off your hat and get off the sidewalk in 1950.  Well, that really affects the way you think.

And Danny Glover’s character, the club owner, is kind of mystery to the Sheriff. A guy like this could exist today, but then he was unique.

I just think that too many American movies are made in this timeless vacuum, where nothing precedes it. That’s why so many movies can be made in Toronto, which can stand for different places… but kind of a ‘nowheresville.’ They don’t use Toronto for Toronto. They could make great movies about Toronto in Toronto, but they just shoot there because it is cheap. And then the movie kind of has no feel of a place so it is kind of ‘Movieland.’

PERSONALITY & PLACE

SA: Can you talk more about that? It seems to me you go to great lengths to have authenticity of place.

JS: One thing we look for is places that still have some personality, that haven’t been homogenized, that haven’t been all made the same. WalMartization if you will.  When I was I kid I traveled from town to town and noticed the accents of the news reporters were different. If you went to Atlanta, they had thick Southern accents. Now most of the news reporters on the big stations in the South have kind of a neutral accent. It is interesting because it is the opposite in Britain. It used to be everyone had this Oxford thing and now you hear Welshmen and Scotsmen and it is actually fun to listen to the different voices representing places. In the US it has gone to this kind of Neutral-Speak.

So I am interested in places that have retained their personality, for better or for worse. Sometimes it is not always positive. What is that personality? For instance, the movie we made in Alaska. There are less than a million people in our largest state. You walk out the door and you realize ‘Nature is Big and I am Small.’ You can’t forget that. When ever we go back there we hear about 2 or 3 people we have known who died in Nature-caused accidents: snow slides, drowning in boat accidents, and the like. They are a little closer to Nature there, so that has its personality. Cajun Country has its personality: Zaidico and also a kind of ethnic history there.

The Cajun people were forced to speak English there for a long time; it was forbidden to speak French there. Kind of like here in Basque Country and Catalunya, it was forbidden to speak native languages until Franco died. Well, that happened in Cajun Country. Kids were literally slapped by their teachers for speaking in Cajun French. So a whole generation doesn’t know any French, and now their grandchildren are learning it again. Once there was a sense of inferiority there if you were Cajun. They were called ‘coonass’ as an ethnic slur. And now there is great pride in being Cajun.

Well, that stuff changes the people.

“Honeydripper” and the Diddley Bow

SA: Where does the name “Honeydripper” come from?

JS: The name actually came when we were making SUNSHINE STATE. We would pass this defunct club on Amelia Island in Florida with a sign falling down. “Man,” I said, “I bet that place has a story or two.”  A there were a couple of musicians – Roosevelt Sykes called himself “Honeydripper” and a guy named Joe Liggins had a big band hit called Honeydripper, and also Robert Plant had a group called The Honeydrippers. But clubs like that were very important.

There was always this little undercurrent of violence in that world. And I think it came out of the guys that had been picking cotton for almost no money all week, being pushed around, being almost slaves and Saturday night was when you went out to party, to get drunk or to fight … or both. Most of the old blues men I have spoken with have seen people knifed, and even a couple have performed behind chicken wire because they didn’t want to get hit by flying bottles.

SA: You hear it in the music, too. But in this film you seem to stay away from that.

JS:  Well, what it is is Tyrone and who he is. Early on there is nearly a fight and someone says, “You know, Tyrone doesn’t allow this in here.” The Sheriff comes in and says, “There is this rumor that you killed somebody,” and he doesn’t deny it. We find out that it is true. But also he doesn’t brag about it. The reputation takes care of itself and people respect him. That’s one of the reasons I cast Danny Glover. He is about my height and a big guy. To control a club like that you would have to be a commanding person. And he’s got Maceo Charles Dutton) who is 6 foot 2… 6′2″ in both directions… coming up behind you and you realize you’ve go to behave yourself in this club.

SA: You talk about these characters as if they really exist, not just having sprung from your pen.

JS: Yeah but the reading that I have done dictates that. These clubs are called “Bucket of Blood” where you go to see the fights or to be in them. And then there are clubs where you just don’t mess around in there. If you fool around you wind up in the back being beaten to a pulp by the owners of the club. They just don’t take any crap. One of the musicians was telling me about a club where the owner was this 350-pound woman who took the money at the door and you just did not mess with her. She would just as soon hit you with a bottle and throw you out the back, and then you were off limits for a month. It was the only club in town, so you behaved yourself.

SA: So your work is really steeped in factual details?

JS: As much as possible. For this one I did a lot of reading about the early blues guys and the Robert Johnson era guy. Danny’s (Glover) character would have been in WWI. He would have played in Storyville in New Orleans. I write a bio for every character so at least musically Danny knew where he was coming from, and where he learned how to play.

SA: When you referred to the ‘crossroads’ I thought about Robert Johnson right away…

JS: Right, and also there is the technology of the guitar. I had to be exact about where we were historically. Somebody might have seen a solid body electric guitar. But more likely they would have seen a hollow body with a pickup. Something that T-Bone Walker would play. But a solid body guitar in Alabama at that time would have been like it came from outer space. “What is this? This guy has got to be crazy.”

The legend of Guitar Slim… Guitar Slim was a real guy who was famous for missing his gigs. There were not a lot of album covers back then. Nobody knew what these guys looked like outside of a small area. He was a New Orleans area guy. So when he went out and do these gigs in Mississippi or Alabama, nobody knew what he really looked like. Ray Charles would be Charles Brown sometimes. If he got caught he would say he was blind and they wouldn’t beat him up!

Also Guitar Slim was famous in New Orleans for having this very long extension cord and they put the amp outside. He would go up to the doorway of other clubs and he would be the pied piper and lead people into his club.

SA: That was a nice scene! And the scene at the very end with the kid who is playing with the rope tied to the porch.

JS: That scene is where the kid is playing … that thing is called a “Diddley Bow.” You actually would take the wire off a broom, which holds the broom straw in place, and stretch it tight between nails, and slide notes on it. That’s how Bo Diddley got his name. I think it was Memphis Slim who plays that nice song during a funeral… he was fascinated by the piano when he was a kid. He didn’t have one, so he drew the keys. He would practice with just the board and drawn keys.

Musicians will find a way, no matter what. And if there is just a single wire then that’s what they will play!

SA: Just like filmmakers… some how they too will find a way.

JS: Right!
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Note:
“The diddley bow is an American string instrument of African origin. It is typically homemade, consisting usually of a wooden board and a single wire string stretched between two screws, and played by plucking while varying the pitch with a metal or glass slide held in the other hand.

The diddley bow is significant to blues music in that many blues guitarists got their start playing it as children, as well as the fact that, like the slide guitar, it is played with a slide.

A notable performer of the instrument was the Mississippi blues musician Lonnie Pitchford, who used to demonstrate the instrument by stretching a wire between two nails hammered into the wood of a vertical beam making up part of the front porch of his home.” (Wikipedia)

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Story and Photography By Stephen Ashton

Stephen Ashton lives in Northern California and writes about cinema, culture and cuisine. He can be reached at film@wcff.us