John Sayles is an American writer and director. His career began as a novelist and short story writer with the publication of Pride of the Bimbos in 1975, followed by Union Dues in 1977, a National Critics’ Circle and National Book Award nominee. He wrote the short story collection, The Anarchists’ Convention, in 1979, when he began working as a screenwriter of B movies for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. His early screenwriting credits include Piranha (1978), Battle Beyond The Stars (1980), Alligator (1980) and The Howling (1981).
Using the money he earned writing ‘creature features’, he financed his first feature as writer/director/editor, The Return Of The Secaucus Seven (1980), a bittersweet look at a reunion of 1960s political activists. The film, with a production budget of only $40,000, gained a national theatrical release, won the L.A. Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay and helped launch the ‘American independent’ film movement. His second film, Lianna (1983), was one of the first American movies to deal with a lesbian relationship in a non-exploitative manner, and set several house records in theatres around the U.S.
His first studio movie, Baby It’s You, a mid -1960’s coming of age drama, was released in 1983, and featured newcomers Rosanna Arquette, Vincent Spano, Matthew Modine and Robert Downey Jr. Next was the very low-budget The Brother From Another Planet (1984), an African-American sci-fi allegory starring Joe Morton as a black extra-terrestrial who crashes to earth in Harlem.
Running into financing difficulties, Sayles filled a three-year filmmaking hiatus by acting in a critically acclaimed theatre production of The Glass Menagerie with Joanne Woodward and Karen Allen and directing three rock videos for Bruce Springsteen—Born In The USA, I’m On Fire and Glory Days. He also won a Writers’ Guild Award for best TV movie screenplay for Unnatural Causes (1986), which dealt with the legacy of exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and starred John Ritter and Alfre Woodard.
He was then able to film Matewan (1987) and Eight Men Out (1988), projects he had written several years earlier. Sayles wrote a textbook about the screenplay and the experience of producing Matewan entitled Thinking In Pictures, which is used in film courses to this day. It was also his first collaboration with cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who received an Academy Award nomination for his photography.
Sayles third novel, Los Gusanos, a multi-generational tale set in Cuba and Miami’s Little Havana, was published in 1991, and since has been translated into several languages. Next was Passion Fish (1992), a film about the healing relationship between a home-care nurse coming out of rehab and a paraplegic former soap opera star. Alfred Woodard was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, Mary McDonnell for an Academy Award for Best Actress and Sayles received his first Academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay, for this film.
Moving to the Mexico/Texas border a few years later, Sayles directed Lone Star (1996), a tale of race and history that proved to be his most commercially successful picture and garnered a second Academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Men With Guns (1997), a road movie set in a strife-torn Latin American country, was shot on a very low budget in three different states in Mexico, with dialogue principally in Spanish and several indigenous languages. It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign-Language Film.
Throughout his career Sayles has continued to function as a screenwriter for hire, working with a “who’s who” of American and international directors and writing over fifty scripts. He received the John D. MacArthur Award in 1983, given to 20 Americans each year for their innovative work in diverse fields. He has acted in dozens of films, written songs for his own features, and served as executive producer on Alejandro Springall’s Santitos (1999) and the Sundance Best Picture winner Girlfight (2000), written and directed by Karyn Kusama.
Sayles was recently honored with the 2005 Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Writer’s Guild of America. Honeydripper is his 16th feature film.
