John Sayles Quotes

• You get to say, ‘Here’s my philosophical idea about what the costume should like,’ and the costume designer comes and gives you choices and sometimes they’re all good, and I say, ‘What do you think?’ and they pick the right thing.

  John Sayles

• When I was really young I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a screenwriter. I wrote stories.

  John Sayles

• Well, acting is cheap; I knew all these actors who weren’t in the Screen Actors Guild yet, and it happened that they were all just about thirty years old.

  John Sayles

• We just said, ‘Okay, you’re in the movie. Bring what you would bring for a three-day weekend and I hope you like the way you look in it because once you’re on camera, that’s your wardrobe.’ But it worked; it worked and we were very surprised.

  John Sayles

• To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: ‘We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,’ and when you ask what’s left, they say: ‘Well, the typing is very good.’

  John Sayles

• Those are fun, especially if they’re going to shoot them in four weeks, because you know they’re not going to mess with anything you do, so it can be very imaginative.

  John Sayles

• There were not fifteen people in the story department and twenty-five producers and stuff. And Roger had produced 1,000 movies and directed a couple of hundred, and their comments were always very, very specific.

  John Sayles

• There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, ‘How can you make a movie during an election that’s about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people’s lives?’ To which my response was, ‘Well, I hope so.’

  John Sayles

• There are genres I don’t care for, and I’ve never worked in those genres, and then sometimes there are people that I haven’t liked and I haven’t worked for those people. But if I feel like there’s a movie that I would like to go see, I’ll jump into it.

  John Sayles

• The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.

  John Sayles

• The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you’re playing a character who changes within the movie, you’ve got to do that, but you’ve got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that’s really, really tough.

  John Sayles

• Not that I’ve always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don’t come out-but I’ve gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.

  John Sayles

• My argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it’s a pro-democracy film. And if Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that’s his problem.

   

   

   

  John Sayles

• Michael Moore, whether you like him or hate him, has done something very important.

  John Sayles

• In a movie you have all these logistical problems; all these practical problems. But you’re also going to have people come who can do things that you can’t do, and you get to direct their talents.

  John Sayles

• If you write a movie for Roger Corman, it’s going to get made. You saw it almost the next day.

  John Sayles

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

  John Sayles

• I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.

  John Sayles

• I take more jobs when I need more money, if I’m investing in films. I take fewer when I don’t. Or if something really good comes along, I usually find a way to do a good job on it in the time that I’ve got.

  John Sayles

• I remember being out here at the Sunset Marquis, and whoever knocked on the door, I would take that picture that I was writing and I would put that in the typewriter, so when I had the meeting, they would say: ‘Oh, you’re working on it right now?’

  John Sayles

John Sayles (33)

Birth:	28th September, 1950
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Film Director, Novelist, Screenwriter

About

John Thomas Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, USA. He is an American film director, screenwriter, film editor, actor and novelist. He studied at Williams College. He directed several films include: Return of the Secaucus 7 (also screenwriter, actor, editor), Lianna (also screenwriter, actor), Baby It's You, Matewan (also screenwriter, actor), Eight Men Out (also screenwriter, actor), City of Hope (also screenwriter, actor, editor), Passion Fish (also screenwriter, editor. Nominated- Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay), The Secret of Roan Inish (also screenwriter, editor), Lone Star (also screenwriter, editor. Nominated- Academy Award for Original Screenplay), Men with Guns (also screenwriter, editor), Limbo (also screenwriter, editor), Sunshine State (also screenwriter, editor), Silver City (also screenwriter, editor), Honeydripper (also screenwriter, editor), Amigo (also screenwriter, editor), and Go for Sisters (also screenwriter, editor). He has written other films include: Piranha, The Lady in Red, Alligator, The Howling, Wild Thing, Breaking In, and Men of War. He has written several novels include: Pride of the Bimbos, Union Dues (Nominated- National Book Award for Fiction), Los Gusanos, and A Moment in the Sun. He has written several short stories, including The Anarchists' Convention and Dillinger in Hollywood.

Related Authors

• Antonio Banderas
• Dennis Hopper
• Crispin Glover
• Jay Roach
• Bryce Dallas Howard
• Chris Rock
• David O. Russell
• Jerry Lewis
• Eric Rohmer
• Claude Berri

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 29th March

Births

• 1916 - Eugene McCarthy
• 1986 - Lavrenti Lopes
• 1931 - Norman Tebbit
• 1927 - Martin Fleischmann
• 1918 - Sam Walton

Deaths

• 1878 - Mark Hopkins Jr.
• 2005 - Mitch Hedberg
• 1982 - Nathan F Twining
• 1934 - Otto Hermann Kahn
• 1970 - Vera Brittain