Born September 28, 1950 in Schenectady, New York to Mary and Donald Sayles, a teacher and school administrator respectively, John Sayles attended Williams College with future collaborators, Gordon Clapp, Donald Strathairn, and Maggie Renzi, his longtime partner.
After graduating in 1972, he moved to Boston where he worked at several blue-collar jobs while writing short stories for The Atlantic. These writings led to his first novel; The Pride of the Bimbos published in 1975. He went to work for Roger Corman writing scripts in 1977 beginning with Piranha . He used his salary to pay for his first film, 1980’s The Return of the Secaucus Seven for which he received numerous awards recognition including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Screenplay.
Both Return of the Secaucus Seven and his second film, 1983’s Lianna featured unknown actors. That same year’s high school romance, Baby It’s You, was his first film featuring heretofore-known actors, Vincent Spano and Rosanna Arquette.
Between 1983’s science fiction film, The Brother from Another Planet starring Joe Morton as an extra-terrestrial trapped on Earth and 1987’s Matewan, a hard-hitting account of a coal miner’s strike in West Virginia starring Chris Cooper, Sayles directed a series of music videos for Bruce Springsteen.
1988’s acclaimed Eight Men Out starred John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, and David Strathairn in a film based on the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox baseball team who threw that year’s World Series. It earned him the USC Scripter Award nomination.
1991’s urban drama, City of Hope starring John Cuasck, Chris Cooper, and Joe Morton earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination from Film Independent for Savid Strathairn. 1992’s Passion Fish earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress Mary McDonnell and Best Supporting Actress Alfre Woodard. He later earned Oscar nominations for McDonnell as Best Actress and Sayles for his screenplay.
The 1993 fantasy film, The Secret of Roan Inish earned film independent nominations for Sayles partner Maggie Renzi who produced and both Best Director and Best Screenplay nominations for Sayles.
Sayles most acclaimed film, 1996’s Lone Star, about race relations in a Texas-Mexico border town, starring Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Joe Morton, and Kris Kristofferson, earned a critics Choice nomination for Best Picture. It also earned Sayles his second Oscar nomination for his screenplay.
Since then, Sayles has written and directed the 1997 political drama, Men with Guns; the 1999 adventure film, Limbo; the 2002 race relations drama, Sunshine State; the 2003 adoption drama, Casa de los Babys; the 2005 political satire, Silver City; the 2007 musical, Honeydripper; the 2010 Philippine-American war drama, Amigo; and the 2013 crime drama, Go for Sisters.
John Sayles remains a force in independent film at 73.
ESSENTIAL FILMS
RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN (1980)
Nominated for various screenplay awards and winner of the Boston Society of Film Critics’ award for Best Independent Film, Sayles‘ first film set the style for subsequent reunion films. In this one, seven former college friends and a few new ones get together for a weekend reunion at a summer house in New Hampshire in which they reminisce about the good old days when they were arrested on their way to a protest in Washington, DC. The cast included Bruce MacDonald, Maggie Renzi, Adam LeFevre, Maggie Cousineau, Gordon Clapp, Jean Passante, Karen Trott, Mark Arnott, David Strathairn, and John Sayles.
EIGHT MEN OUT (1988)
Sayles and book author Eliot Asinof received a USC Scripter Award nomination for this dramatization of the Black Sox scandal when the underpaid Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to deliberately lose the 1919 World Series. John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn D.B. Sweeney, Don Harvey, James Read, Perry Lang, and Michael Rooker were the eight. The supporting cast included Clifton James, Bill Irwin, John Mahoney, Nancy Travis, Brad Garrett, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Lerner, Kevin Tyghe, Maggie Renzi, Studs Terkel and both John Sayles and book author Eliot Asinof.
PASSION FISH (1992)
Sayles received his first Oscar nomination for his original screenplay for this compelling drama about a former soap opera star who is left paraplegic after an accident. Har road to recovery is given a boost when a new nurse with problems of her own takes over her care. Early year ends awards singled out Alfre Woodard as the nurse. The Golden Globes nominated both Mary McDonnell as the ailing actress and Woodard for nominations. Oscar ignored Woodard but nominated McDonnell along with Sayles. The supporting cast included Angela Bassett, David Strathairn, and Leo Burmester. Sayles has a cameo as doctor in the soap opera.
LONE STAR (1996)
Sayles received his second Oscar nomination for his original screenplay for this acclaimed film that was nominated for Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards. Set in a Texas border town, Chris Cooper plays a second-generation sheriff who has to deal with the discovery of a skeleton that may be that of the sheriff who preceded his own father 39 years earlier. His investigation unearths many long-buried secrets involving his father (Matthew McConaughey), his predecessor (Kris Kristofferson) and many more. Also starring Elizabeth Pena as Cooper’s childhood sweetheart and Joe Morton as a straightlaced Army Colonel.
SUNSHINE STATE (2002)
Angela Bassett and Edie Falco head the all-star cast of this drama about real estate developers who descend on a sleepy coastal Florida town throwing lives into turmoil. Bassett is an actress in the Boston area who returns to the town with her anesthesiologist husband (James McDonald) in tow to support her mother, played by Mary Alice. Falco is the owner of a small hotel whose mother is the histrionic Jane Alexander. Timothy Hutton is her latest boyfriend, a lonely, peripatetic landscape architect. A third family is led by Gordon Clapp, a suicidal county commissioner, with a fussy high-strung wife played by Mary Steenburgen.
JOHN SAYLES AND OSCAR
Passion Fish (1992) – nominated – Best Original Screenplay
Lone Star (1996) – nominated – Best Original Screenplay
