(Marvel’s Iron Man), and was an early American film for German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who later worked with director Martin Scorsese on Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and The Departed.Ī native of Schenectady, New York, Sayles got his start in movies working with trailblazing cult filmmaker Roger Corman. The film also marked the debuts of Matthew Modine ( Full Metal Jacket, TV’s Stranger Things) and Robert Downey Jr. Spano and Arquette ( Pulp Fiction, TV’s Ray Donovan) were still early in their careers. “It had that kind of spirit of making an independent film.” “It was a tough experience in some ways, but I always felt really good about the film that came out of it,” he said. Sayles notably clashed with Paramount Pictures to preserve the bittersweet arc of the 1960s romance between ambitious, upper-class Jill (Arquette) and Sheik (Spano), an aspiring crooner. Ironically, Baby It’s You is the only studio film that Sayles has helmed since his directorial debut, 1979’s Return of the Secaucus Seven. Vincent Spano ( Alive, TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), who co-starred with Rosanna Arquette, will present the award. The festival is hosting a screening of Sayles’s 1983 coming-of-age film Baby It’s You, along with a Q&A with Sayles. The Mammoth Lakes Film Festival in California will honor Sayles on Saturday, May 27, with the Sierra Spirit Award, recognizing maverick, visionary filmmakers. Scorsese is independent of spirit and conception.” The Mammoth Lakes Film Festival will honor sales this weekend with a Sierra Spirit Award “The Coen brothers’ films are mostly independent. “My definition has always been that the filmmaker makes the film that they want to make because they think it makes a good story, not because demographics tell us that people in Omaha hate it when the dog dies,” he said in a phone interview this month. Yet to him, independent filmmaking is more about a state of mind-and storytelling-than financing. This reckless disregard is especially damaging here in Los Angeles, which is constantly fighting to be perceived culturally as something more than the plastic backlot of Hollywood’s industrialized production.Story is a guiding principle for writer-director John Sayles.įor nearly forty years, he’s made films outside the studio system such as Eight Men Out, Honeydripper, and Lone Star, creating emotional pyrotechnics through characters, relationships, and nuance. The modern world is a thorny, uncertain, rough-and-tumble place (not that it ever hasn’t been), and the best films should aim to reflect that with a clear-eyed awareness in their context and perspective and a strong reach for more.įilms such as the Sundance Film Festival breakout “Pariah” and John Sayles’ historical drama “Amigo” are recent examples of politically committed, culturally connected films that do not pander or patronize, unlike “The Help” or “The Whistleblower,” to use another film that Farber holds up as unfairly bashed by critics and on which he quotes me specifically.Īt a time when independent films as exciting, engaging and forward-looking as “The Color Wheel,” “Green,” “Vacation!,” “Without” and many more struggle for even the chance to build an audience - and I remain convinced that there is an audience for these films because I like them and I know I am not so special - to fall back on some sort of nostalgically self-satisfied indifference is in essence an abdication of duty. The retort to Farber’s position is simply and obviously this: Today is not 50 years ago. For Farber, “The Help” falls perfectly in line with classic Hollywood social-problem films such as “Gentleman’s Agreement,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “In the Heat of the Night” and should be lauded as such. If I may be indulged to step from behind the curtain for just a moment, a recent essay here by the esteemed critic Stephen Farber struck upon a number of issues regarding both writing about movies and cinema-going that brought into relief core elements of what these Indie Focus pieces are meant to be about.įarber used the recent film “The Help” as his jumping-off point to uphold a notion of self-consciously middlebrow filmmaking, lauding the movie for a studied sense of messaged importance and genteel ambition carefully calibrated to flatter the sensibilities of its audience.
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