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Will the real John Sayles please stand up? Novelist, former Bmovie hack writer, studio rewrite ace (most recently, Apollo 13), bit-part actor-but mainly independent filmmaker. Meaning what exactly?
The first generation of independents (Cassavetes, Warhol, Shirley Clarke, Maurice Engel, Robert Young, Robert Kramer) represented a distinct break with the classical values of mainstream U.S. filmmaking. Sayles's generation, the second (including Jost, Burnett, and Nunez), withdrew from the avant-gardism and cinema verite of the first, towards sociopolitical engagement and naturalism. They were free of the selfconsciousness and mannered styles of the third generation (Jarmusch, the Coens, Van Sant, Soderberg), and almost old enough to be fathers to the fourth (Kevin Smith, Tarantino, Hartley).
Unlike his peers, Sayles has found an autonomous niche between the studio major leagues and the indie minors. For him, the term "independent" surely has a political significance largely lost on or taken for granted by the next two generations. In fact, many of his films have internalized it thematically-the social and/or personal struggles in Lian.na ('83) and Matewan ('87) are explicitly about gaining independence; his films ponder and problematize the relationships of individual/community and personal/social; and there's always an underlying dynamic between idealists seeking freedom and pragmatic realists who have attained a measure of independence. That last is worth noting because, as a filmmaker, Sayles himself is strikingly pragmatic, tailoring his screenplays and style to the resources available to him.
Indeed, Sayles's sensibility is, in the first place, a practical and organizing one (it's significant, I think, that he edits his films himself). Taken along with his flair for considered, critical reworking of narrative and social conventions, this may explain something: the curious dispassion and objectivity of his films. The risk-taking is discreet, embedded in the writing-there's rarely any nerviness in the directing, any feeling of a director getting carried away with the medium. Until recently, his films have been mainly prose, lacking in poetry. They can be compelling and moving, but for someone whose career began on the wild fringes of Corman exploitation flicks, Sayles is surprisingly respectful of filmic decorum and good taste. I miss the disreputable vitality and juicy, sardonic humor of his screenplays for Lewis Teague's Lady in Red ('79) and Alligator ('80) and Joe Dante's The Howling...