Sayles pitch

Veteran indie director John Sayles has never let Hollywood dictate what movies he makes. He tells Donald Clarkewhy his latest film has gone down better with black audiences than with whites

EARLY this year, John Sayles's Honeydripper, a tale of r'n'b from the American south, picked up a statuette at the annual NAACP Image Awards. As the event - which was set up to honour positive representations of African-Americans - wore on, Sayles had time to ponder his status in the entertainment industry.

"It was a funny thing," he says. "We won the award for best independent or foreign film. Well, I suppose that makes sense. We have always been regarded as slightly foreign in our own country."

Taken at face value, this statement makes little sense. Rugged and weatherworn, his blue shirt rolled to the elbows, Sayles looks a little as if has just stepped from a Dorothea Lange photo of the Dust Bowl. Originally an underling of low-budget king Roger Corman, he has spent the last three decades developing a reputation as the doyen of US independent film-makers. Singular, socially concerned pictures such as Matewan, The Brother from Another Planet and Lone Star have provided inspiration to a generation of directors with big ideas and small bank balances.

It is, however, true to say that Sayles doesn't conduct himself like other film-makers. Whereas the directors that came after him have used early success in low-budget features to launch careers in mainstream Hollywood, Sayles, working with producer Maggie Renzi (also his romantic partner), has continued to develop shoestring productions on politically sensitive themes.

He has helped write a few popcorn features: The Howling, The Clan of the Cave Bear and, most recently, The Spiderwick Chronicles. Have the studios ever tried to persuade him to direct a big dumb blockbuster?

"No way," he laughs. "That's never really come up. Nobody has ever really said we have this great script, we need you to direct it. The only time that happened was when I was asked to do a few videos for Bruce Springsteen. That was great obviously. Bruce has a great team. But it was strange to be shooting and have all these news helicopters hovering over us and reporting back. That was new."

Honeydripper, the director's 16th feature and in many ways a typical Sayles project, goes among a rural African-American community in Alabama during the early 1950s. Danny Glover stars as the owner of a dingy bar who hopes to revitalise his prospects by booking the hottest rhythm'n'blues star of the moment. When Guitar Sam - clearly based on the real-life artist Guitar Slim - fails to turn up, Glover asks an unknown musician to pose as the star.

"This sort of thing really happened," Sayles says. "Guitar Slim was famous for not showing up to his gigs, and guys like Earl King and Albert Collins - guys who later became icons - were told: 'Learn this song. Tonight you're Guitar Slim.' Before rock videos nobody really knew what these guys looked like. I guess people would say: 'Well, I saw Guitar Slim. You know, he was kind of short and he wasn't all that slim. But he could play'."

He must have felt a little nervous tackling an African-American theme. There was, surely, always the possibility that black audiences might resent a white writer and director telling their story.

"I guess so. But the funny thing is that the film seems to have gone down better with black audiences and black critics than with white ones. I think we, as white people, are so cautious about giving offence that maybe we can be too critical of a project like this."

Certainly, most films about the black experience from white film-makers tend to highlight the suffering and injustice endured by African-American communities. Yet Sayles has dared to tell a largely joyous story.

"There are so few movies made about race relations where there isn't a lynching somewhere," he agrees. "I think maybe both blacks and whites in the south sometimes feel the same way Germans feel about the Nazis: 'Are we only ever going to be portrayed one way in the movies?'"

Sayles, born and raised in New York state, developed his interest in the south - the joys of its music, the horrors of segregation - during childhood holidays spent below the Mason Dixon Line.

"I grew up in a very mixed community and I would notice that the black people would all vanish when the train got past Washington. They all had to go back to the black section. I remember being puzzled by that. But I also remember that the radio got a lot more interesting south of Baltimore. You'd hear gospel and this really raw country."

Now 57, Sayles is something of an institution, but, despite his many awards and plaudits, he claims that he finds it harder than ever to make ends meet.

"It's all changing," he says. "I wrote a lot of scripts for other people over the last few years. But, even after the writers strike, I don't think there's going to be that much work for me, particularly as I am over 50."

Really? Does age matter for a writer? "I am afraid so. A message went out last year from one of the studios saying they didn't want any more period pieces or dramas. They reckon all they can do is make cheap horror films and stupid teen comedies."

He wags his head sadly. Savour John Sayles while you can. He may be the last of an endangered species.