Teen Movie Critic
John Sayles
July 15, 1996
Probably the most well-known independant filmaker of all time, John Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York on September 28, 1950. He is known for making films that are always consistantly differant from the last one. He is known as a director, screenwriter, producer and occasionally an actor in his films. In the 70's, he worked in summer stock at Williams college. Then, he went on to write two critically acclaimed novels, Pride of the Bimbos (1975) and Union Dues (1977), and a short-story anthology, The Anarchist's Convention (1979). He joined Roger Corman's B-movie company in the mid-seventies as a screenwriter, penning such screenplays as the camp classics Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981). He debuted as a director with Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), a cult classic and a prelude to the more commercially succesful The Big Chill (1983).
The film earned Sayles praise from the critics, and started Sayles on the road to making films with authentic stories, characters and dialect. He followed it up with Lianna (1983), a daring controversial story of the changes a married woman goes through when she finds out she's a lesbian. This still gained praise from film critics, and may have been influential in Sayles receiving the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, which set him up with $34,000 per year, for five years. The films that came out of this period were most certainly his masterworks:
- The Brother From Another Planet (1984), a brilliantly acted-scripted sci-fi satire.
- Matewan (1987), a complex multi-character study of a small mining town in the 1920's.
- Eight Men Out (1988), Sayles' most ambitious, about the famed Black Box scandal of 1919.
He's started off the 90's quite well, with the somber but creative City of Hope (1991) and the appealing drama Passion Fish (1992). Sayles is a true force to be reckoned with, and will remain so long into the beginning of the next millenium.
My rating on a scale of 1 to 10: 10
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