Preview: Honeydrippers

As was likely evident from my glowing Lone Star review recently, I'm a big John Sayles fan. I've seen nearly all of his movies - exceptions: couldn't make it through his debut feature, Return of the Secaucus 7, and have yet to see the almost-as-early offering, Baby It's You - and as I recently commented, a bad Sayles movie is generally "only mildly interesting" (praising with faint damnation, as it were). Most of his movies aren't bad, though, with Lone Star being the crown jewel so far, although Eight Men Out - chronicling the 1919 Chicago 'Black Sox' scandal, and starring John Cusack, Christopher Lloyd, John Mahoney, Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn and even Sayles himself - is probably a close second. Also excellent are Limbo, Matewan, The Secret of Roan Inish and Sunshine State, just to name a few.

All of which simply means that I get excited every time I hear about a new Sayles movie on the horizon. At the moment, that's Honeydripper, which is set to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival tomorrow (Sep 10). Today I stumbled across an excellent interview with the film maker at Ain't It Cool News, obviously conducted by someone very familiar with Sayles' filmography. Among the many fascinating nuggets from the Honeydrippers writer/director/editor:

[On choosing a locale for the story to take place in]

"The second consideration is the culture or cultures of the people who live in the place. I've always felt like race is an illusion but culture is real, and an incredibly important factor in how you see the world and react to situations."

One thing you notice as you watch more Sayles films is that each one seems to have been written by a different person, as clearly The Secret of Roan Inish was the work of a lifelong inhabitant of Ireland, while the note-perfect history, mannerisms and tone of Lone Star just had to emanate from the brain of a Texan.

[On why so many high quality actors want to be in a John Sayles movie, despite the lack of a big paycheque or wide distribution]

"I think we can offer a few things. One is that they are three-dimensional characters. I always tell my actors in these ensemble pieces that when they exit frame we should feel like the camera could follow their character and we'd have an equally interesting movie. I like to hear audience members say, 'Oh, I wish there'd been more scenes with so-and-so.' Because we don't make a movie without controlling the final cut, an actor knows that what they see on the page is pretty close to what will be on screen - focus groups and studio executives don't get to mess with what they've thrown down on the set."

It's nice to know that while the studio may have a few notes, director John Sayles, at least, ain't paying any attention to them!

You can read the entire interview, as well as see the trailer for Honeydrippers, right here.