Sayles' 'Sunshine' is all about conflicting views of small-town America
John Sayles, one of America's few truly independent filmmakers, sits in the elegant conference room of a chain hotel in downtown Seattle, talking about ambiance. Is there a place in America, he wonders, where there isn't a Starbucks? Where the locals really feel like they own the place? Why are we drawn to small-town life, and yet want to run from it?
His new movie, "Sunshine State" (opening today at the Harvard Exit), explores a community in transition: Plantation Island, Fla., where developers are rapidly changing a sea-blown beach community. The film's roots came in a shelved screenplay for another movie, based on a short story he'd written years ago, called "Treasure" and set in a town on the west coast of Florida.
"I went back to scout there before I wrote it," he said, "and it wasn't there anymore. So many of these little towns, at least the commercial part of them, had been taken over by corporate chains. There weren't mom-and-pop restaurants or motels or amusement parks anymore, they were all part of some bigger thing found throughout the coast and throughout the country. And that changes things, especially when it's a tourist place, anyway — you're just an employee of this giant theme park."
Sayles, in town for the world premiere of "Sunshine State" at the Seattle International Film Festival last month, is known for his thoughtful, socially conscious ensemble dramas made entirely outside of Hollywood; most recently "Limbo," "Men with Guns" and what many consider to be his masterpiece, "Lone Star." In "Sunshine State," Angela Bassett and Edie Falco star as two Plantation Island natives. Bassett's character fled as a teenager and now wonderingly returns; Falco, a lifer, runs her family's modest motel and is desperate to get out.
The director, who divides his time between Hoboken, N.J., and a farm in upstate New York, understands the simultaneous push and pull of a small town. "I think those are two really conflicting kinds of ideals and needs in American people," he said. "This longing for some kind of community and roots, and a kind of reveling in our mobility, not wanting to be tied down. Angela's character is just as conflicted as Edie's."
Because of the constant difficulty of financing independent film, there's sometimes a long break between Sayles' films — "Limbo," his most recent, was three years ago. But the director and his longtime producer (and life partner) Maggie Renzi are greatly helped by his frequent screenwriting work. "One of the advantages I've had," he said, "is not that I finance (my films), but the money I make as a screenwriter finances the financing. We can maintain an office, make copies of screenplays, finance a location scout, get a production manager."
Sayles' recent screenwriting projects include a rewrite of "The Alamo" for director Ron Howard, a screenplay based on "A Cold Case," (the New Yorker article about a determined cop who solves a decades-old double homicide) for Tom Hanks' production company, and an adaptation of a science-fiction novel for James Cameron. "Like all screenwriters," he says, "I do a lot of stuff that doesn't get made, or somewhere it gets made but you don't end up taking credit on it."
But that's how he's able to make movies like "Casa de Los Babys," about six American women who travel to a South American country to adopt babies. Sayles will shoot it this summer. Also, Renzi is in the process of raising money ( "about three times more than we've ever raised for a movie," she says) to finance their very ambitious 2003 project: "Jamie McGillivray," an 18th-century epic set in Scotland, starring Robert Carlyle.
"It's a great yarn," says Renzi, "a really good page-turning action picture." Sayles smiles quietly, as if he's already shooting the movie in his head.
Moira Macdonald: mmacdonald@seattletimes.com