Sayles was born on September 28, 1950, in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary (née Rausch), a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator.[1] Both of Sayles's parents were Catholic and of half-Irish descent. Sayles has referred to himself as a "Catholic atheist".[2] He attended Williams College with frequent collaborators Gordon Clapp and David Strathairn, as well as his longtime partner, Maggie Renzi. Sayles earned a B.A. in psychology in 1972.[3]
Career
After college, Sayles moved to Boston where he held a series of blue-collar jobs.[3][4] In summer of 1974 he acted and directed at the Eastern Slope Playhouse in North Conway, New Hampshire.[5] In 1975 he worked with The Atlantic Monthly on expanding a 50-page story he had submitted.[4] This effort culminated in his first novel, The Pride of the Bimbos, published in 1975.
In 1979, Sayles used $30,000 he earned writing scripts for Corman to fund his first film, Return of the Secaucus 7.[8] To make the film on a limited budget, he shot it in 16 mm;[9] he set the story over a three-day weekend to limit costume changes, and wrote about people his age so that he could cast his actor friends from the Eastern Slope Playhouse;[10][11] he chose as the primary setting a large nearby house to avoid travel expenses or the need for permits for different locations.[12] The film received near-unanimous critical acclaim at the time and has maintained its reputation. In 1997, the National Film Preservation Board announced that Return of the Secaucus 7 would be one of 25 films selected that year for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.[13]
Filmmaking and writing
In 1983, after the films Baby It's You (starring Rosanna Arquette) and Lianna (a story in which a woman grows discontented with her marriage and falls in love with another woman), Sayles received a MacArthur Fellowship. He put the money into the science fiction feature The Brother from Another Planet,[14] a film about a three-toed humanoid who escapes bondage on another world and crash-lands in New York harbor; because he is Africanoid in appearance, he finds himself at home among the people of Harlem, being pursued by European-looking alien enslaver men in black.[15]
In 1989, Sayles created and wrote the pilot episode for the short-lived television show Shannon's Deal about a down-and-out Philadelphia lawyer played by Jamey Sheridan.[16] Sayles received a 1990 Edgar Award for his teleplay for the pilot.[17][18] The show ran for 16 episodes before being cancelled in 1991.
Sayles has funded most of his films by writing genre scripts, such as Piranha, Alligator, The Howling, and The Challenge.[19] Having collaborated with Joe Dante on Piranha and The Howling, Sayles acted in Dante's movie, Matinee. Sayles has earned much of his funding by working as a script doctor; he did rewrites for Apollo 13 and Mimic.[20]
Sayles works with a regular repertory of actors, most notably Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, and Gordon Clapp, each of whom has appeared in at least four of his films.
In 2009, Sayles was hired to write a proposed HBO series based on the early life of Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.[26] In May 2010, Sayles submitted a pilot episode, but the following year it was announced that HBO was no longer interested in the series and that FX picked up the rights. By that point, Sayles had dropped out of the project.[27]
In February 2010, he began shooting his 17th feature film, the historical war drama Amigo, in the Philippines. The film is a fictional account of events during the Philippine–American War, with a cast that includes Joel Torre, Chris Cooper, and Garret Dillahunt.[28]
Sayles' novel A Moment in the Sun, set during the same period as Amigo, in the Philippines, Cuba, and the U.S., was released in 2011 by McSweeney's.[29] It recounts the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, the only coup d'état in U.S. history in which a duly elected government was overthrown.[30]
Sayles' last directorial effort was Go for Sisters (2013). In subsequent years, he struggled to raise enough money to make a film with professional actors. He continued to publish fiction. He said in a 2025 interview that he had converted two of his contemplated film projects into novels.[31]
Silver City and Other Screenplays (2004). Nation Books. ISBN978-1560256311
Non-fiction
Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie "Matewan" (1987). Houghton Mifflin. ISBN978-0395453889
Sayles on Sayles (1998). Faber & Faber. Edited by Gavin Smith. ISBN978-0571192809
John Sayles: Interviews (1999). University Press of Mississippi. Edited by Diane Carson. ISBN978-1578061389
Sayles Talk: New Perspectives on Independent Filmmaker John Sayles (2006). Wayne State University Press. Edited by Diane Carson and Heidi Kenaga. ISBN978-0814331552
Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s (2010). University of California Press. Edited by Patrick McGilligan. ISBN978-0520251052
Sayles, John (2003) [1987]. Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan (Reviseded.). Cambridge: Da Capo Press. ISBN978-0306812668.
Carson, Diane; Kenaga, Heidi, eds. (2006). Sayles Talk: New Perspectives on Independent Filmmaker John Sayles. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN978-0814331552.
Shumway, David R. (2012). John Sayles. Contemporary Film Directors. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN978-0252036989.
↑"The 65th Academy Awards | 1993". Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on May 9, 2019. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
↑"The 69th Academy Awards | 1997". Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on October 9, 2020. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
