Quote

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.

John Sayles

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Sayles
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: September 28
Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Schenectady
New York
John Thomas Sayles
Write
Movies
Stories
Grew
Book
Television
Hire
Writing
Seeing
Medium
Thing
Books
Mediums
Time
Came
Available
People
Story
Telling
Read
Certainly

More quotes by John Sayles

Image
But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras we didn't have to pay them.
John Sayles
Image
I don't have a social agenda. I just don't choose to ignore what's in front of me.
John Sayles
Image
Well, acting is cheap I knew all these actors who weren't in the Screen Actors Guild yet, and it happened that they were all just about thirty years old.
John Sayles
Image
Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.
John Sayles
Image
There were not fifteen people in the story department and twenty-five producers and stuff. And Roger had produced 1,000 movies and directed a couple of hundred, and their comments were always very, very specific.
John Sayles
Image
The less money and time you have, the more you haveto plan ahead and be careful about your coverage. It's like a gas:it expands or contracts depending on the size of the container.
John Sayles
Image
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.
John Sayles
Image
I probably wouldn't have done as many as I did in one year, which I did when I was trying to raise money.
John Sayles
Image
I like to act. I work for scale. I don't have an acting agent. I'm in the book.
John Sayles
Image
I'm never at a loss for new projects.
John Sayles
Image
I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.
John Sayles
Image
I've always got five or six things that would either make a good feature or TV show. And you just never know. You go and you pitch and it may be exactly what they're looking for, or they may stop you after two sentences and say, Oh, we've already done something just like that.
John Sayles
Image
The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you're playing a character who changes within the movie, you've got to do that, but you've got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that's really, really tough.
John Sayles
Image
I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.
John Sayles
Image
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.
John Sayles
Image
For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much I only change it on average about two lines per movie.
John Sayles
Image
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.
John Sayles
Image
It's a mixed crowd at the dogs - black, white, hispanic - but to Walt they all look like Jackie Gleason. Heavyset guys with big plans and polyester souls.
John Sayles
Image
I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'.
John Sayles
Image
I see very small movies being financed by crowdfunding. If you're a well-known actor or celebrity of some sort, you can probably raise between one and two million. I don't have that kind of cult [following].
John Sayles