Return of Secaucus Seven / John Sayles Closer Look

Oh. Yeah. OK ready for such a term one. Park two words. First word of the way. Oh my God. Oh oh oh hush hush. Over There Over There. It's a film about turning 30. The reunion of a group of college friends who have drifted apart since their arrest together in Secaucus on route to a war protest in Washington. Here now almost 10 years later they commune again for a weekend of charades basketball and Mistah place to place. Trust sounds like the return of the Secaucus Seven wasn't filmed in New Jersey though it was shot in New Hampshire in a mere 25 days with a cast of absolute unknown. It's a first for John Sayles he wrote it directed it edited it and even acted in it you know the part that was the most difficult was in that I hadn't really looked

through a movie camera before I started this thing. I didn't know. What could be done quickly. As far as setting lights up as far as camera movement and those kind of things I had to rely on micro. They were very good so I just told them this is what I want. Can we get it in the time we have and sometimes they'd say yes and sometimes they'd say no and we'd have to figure out what else to do if they said no if we just weren't going to have time to get it. And so there were a lot of time pressures during the shooting but when I came to the editing it was really pretty easy sales road of filmmaking it's been an interesting one. I was born in Schenectady New York in 1050 and chose his present address in Hoboken because of its proximity to New York. He lives there with Maggie Renzi who worked with him on the film itself has had various odd jobs he's worked as a hospital orderly meat packer factory labor and stage actor. Many of those experiences later became the subject matter for his writing. In 1975 he won the O'Henry award for his short story. I 80 Nebraska and his

first novel was published his second book union dues was the only novel nominated for both the National Book Award and the national Critics Circle Award. And after that while I was writing novels I was sort of saving my money and getting interested in directing. And decided that one of the. There are many ways to become a film director I mean nobody knocks on your door and says Will you please direct your film and although not many people have done it. One of the ways that that's been done is by making independent features. John had been living in California and came to vacation to visit friends and stayed up late one night with Jeffrey Nelson who was a friend of ours and the director of the summer theater in Norfolk I was shot much of the movie. And it was really like one of those Mickey Rooney to the movies where everybody says hey kids you want to put out a play. We figured that Jackie with his connections in that town and the actors and you know working that here could find the locations that we needed and the housing so

he could. And John's job was to write a screenplay that fit that. Budget that we had. Cells knew the financial constraints would limit the story line and within two weeks he wrote a script to fit the total $60000 budget. The project was a real team effort. Both cast and crew willingly accepted long hours primitive conditions and low wages. Maggie for one served as unit manager assistant editor. I played the part of Katie in the film. JT likes Francis change works in theory. Francis Croft the most fun with the actual making of the movie and the acting was fun. But as much fun as the acting was for everything that I did when I was an actor. It was an extraordinary group of people to be with and it was the first time that most of us had ever done features. Tell. Me. How many sales agrees it was a

lot of fun but also a lot of hard work and careful planning and go to counting the money to make edits a caucus came from his successors a screenwriter for such films as Purana Battle Beyond the stars and the recently released werewolf movie The howling at my head. I'm going to buckle your books I've got books. Screenwriting was a big incentive for sales to do his own film. He says he loves to write but doesn't particularly like to write for someone else to direct but I think you know you just know that going in as a screenwriter you're not it's not like being the author of a book whereas I think writing and directing a film if you control the casting and you control the editing is much more like writing a book. It's much more what you want to say rather than you just helping somebody else tell their story and writing a blueprint for what they're going to do with it. But sales will continue writing those blueprints despite the frustrations like the time he

spent four days in Tokyo in a hotel room never getting the chance to see the city and never tasting Japanese food. He was too busy doing a marathon rewrite on a film called The equals. I would buy 20 pages and send it downstairs to the director John Frankenheimer and he would say OK this is fine or else he would call up and say Have you written this part at. And I'd say no why and he said well we just cast the actor and you can't speak any English so don't give him life and sort of give him very few lines or we have just cast somebody who speaks very good English and so go through all the scripts you've written and give him some lines. All routes try not to have this character say anything with an L or an R at the beginning of a word because you know he can't handle it. Jack Crowe recently said in the Newsweek review that he looks you know to get 30 million dollars to the bill. Do you hope that. Yeah I hope I get 30 million dollars. But it really needed was that a no no no I would make 60 films or 30 films or whatever.