100 Quotes by John Sayles

You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain’t a union, it’s a goddam club! They got you fightin’ white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain’t but two sides in this world – them that work and them that don’t. You work, they don’t. That’s all you need to know about the enemy.

I certainly grew up seeing more movies and television than I read books, but when it came time to do the thing itself you don’t have to hire a lot of people to sit down and write a book, so that was the story-telling medium that was available to me.

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.

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.

There are very few distributors left to do off-Hollywood movies, and those distributors generally have got thousands of movies to choose from. So you’re pretty lucky if you get one to even take your movie and it’s pretty rare that they pay anything upfront.

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.

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

As a screenwriter I’m often writing in genres where there have been thousands of movies; whereas when I direct movies they tend to be in between genres. They tend to have a little bit of a genre to them, but they’re really about the people, and they’re people we haven’t met before.

I never actually do rehearsals. That’s one of the reasons that I write those bios and if I can meet with the actors I’ll meet them or talk to them on the phone. What I want is for them to come on set knowing their lines and knowing who the character is.