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John Sayles isn't just the "Great American Novelist/Filmmaker", he's one terrific interview subject: smart, funny, and fully informed about the farce that is Hollywood and the tragedies of American history. Film Comment magazine's Gavin Smith is one of the sharpest, most thorough interviewers of directors in American journalism. Sayle
John Sayles isn't just the "Great American Novelist/Filmmaker", he's one terrific interview subject: smart, funny, and fully informed about the farce that is Hollywood and the tragedies of American history. Film Comment magazine's Gavin Smith is one of the sharpest, most thorough interviewers of directors in American journalism. Sayles on Sayles explains how a guy who sold his blood for money and only took creative-writing courses to keep his grade point high enough to avoid the Vietnam draft wound up winning an O. Henry Award, how his National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle nominations for Union Dues fed his career as a writer for B-movie tsar Roger Corman (and his continuing relationship with Titanic director James Cameron), and the bumpy road from Return of the Secaucus Seven to double Oscar nominations, masterpieces such as Matewan and Lone Star, and such writing gigs as Apollo 13--which paid better than selling one's blood. What precisely did Tom Hanks brilliantly do to improve Apollo 13? What did Jeffrey Katzenberg do to Baby It's You when he realized it wasn't enough like Porky's? How did Nashville inspire Secaucus Seven, and why does Sayles think The Big Chill owes nothing to his film? What crucial influence did Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man have on early Sayles, and on one great scene in The Brother from Another Planet--a film that came to Sayles in a dream? Get this book and find the answers from one of the best American storytellers of recent times.
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