Biography for
John Sayles More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

28 September 1950, Schenectady, New York, USA

Height

6' 4" (1.93 m)

Mini Biography

A bright child, John Sayles began reading novels before age 9. A Williams grad in 1972, he shunned a corporate career to work various blue-collar jobs, moving to east Boston to take a factory job. He wrote stories and submitted them to various magazines, and the Atlantic Monthly gave him the idea of publishing them in a novel--thus "Pride of the Bimbos" (1975) was born.

In the late 1970s he worked for renowned low-budget producer Roger Corman as a screenwriter. He saved much of the money he earned from that job, got some friends together and made Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979) in 25 days. Altough it was a hit, he had trouble obtaining financing for the films he wanted to make because he would not give up his right of final cut. Baby It's You (1983) was Sayles' only film made under studio control.

In 1983 the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship granted him a tax-free income of $32,000 a year for 5 years. That stipend and money he earned for writing such films as The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1983) and Breaking In (1989) enabled him to make the kinds of films he wanted to make. Lone Star (1996) placed Sayles in the ranks of top American filmmakers. In it and his other films, a broadly appealing social consciousness emerges, showing Sayles to be concerned with what's going on with regional cultures, national values and what living in the US is like today. Sayles and Maggie Renzi, whom he met during college, have lived together since the 1970s, splitting their time between a Hoboken, NJ, house and a farm in upstate New York. They have no plans to marry.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Bob Shields <rshields@igc.apc.org>

Trade Mark

Frequently casts 'Mary McDonnell', Chris Cooper, Angela Bassett, 'Tom Wright', 'Gordon Clapp', Joe Morton,Vincent Spano, and David Strathairn.

Trivia

Drafted in 1968, but rejected by US Army because of missing vertebra.

His films are often more based on character than plot.

Speaks fluent Spanish

Was classmates at Williams College with actor David Strathairn, whom Sayles regularly casts in his films.

Did uncredited rewrites for Apollo 13 and Mimic

While staying in Greenville, Alabama, during the Honeydripper (2007) shoot, Maggie Renzi and Sayles called in a contribution during the fund drive for the National Public Radio affiliate WUAL-FM in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

In his hometown of Schenectady, New York, there is the Sayles School of Fine Arts Black Box Theatre at the high school.

In the 2008 Empire Magazine movie poll, Sayles listed his ten favorite films as: Yojimbo (1961), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Two Women (1960), The Organizer (1963), The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), Seven Samurai (1954), Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), Raging Bull (1980), The Wages of Fear (1953), Port of Shadows (1938).

Personal Quotes

[on making Baby It's You (1983)] I got the cut I wanted, but I was thrown out of the editing room.

Oh, I've always felt like I was on the margins. Once upon a time that's what independent used to mean.

I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.

I want to direct films that no one else is going to make. I know if I don't make them, I'm never going to see them. Of course, I hope some people will want to see my movies as well, but I won't pander to the public. I won't try to second guess what a Hollywood studio would like to see in a low-budget film, so that they will hire me the next time around. I know I will always do better work if I do projects in which I really believe. And if I never get to direct again, I will have made some movies I can feel proud of.

Being a screenwriter is a good job. I can make a good amount of money to put back into my own films.

The scariest movie I ever saw was John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) with special effects by Rob Bottin. The theater was full, and I had to sit in the front row.

There's a basic structure to movies. It's rigid and reductive. In a movie you only deal with core relationships: a protagonist, an antagonist. But in a novel you can do whatever you want. You can introduce characters that disappear for a hundred pages. You can have a dozen plot lines that interweave and overlap. In a novel, you get to be God. That doesn't happen in the movies.

Salary

Piranha (1978)

$10,000

Where Are They Now

(September 2006) In Greenville, Alabama, with partner Maggie Renzi, filming Honeydripper (starring Danny Glover)

(June 2010) In the Philippines filming Amigo.