by MATTHEW HAYS

Since his auspicious debut with Return of the Secaucus Seven, John Sayles has established himself as one of America’s preeminent independent directors. With his uniquely literate films, Sayles has explored a myriad of social issues close to his heart, among them labour relations (Matewan), race relations (Brother From Another Planet), urban strife (City of Hope) and lesbian rights (Lianna). His beginnings, not surprisingly, were as an author; before writing screenplays for Roger Corman in the ’70s, Sayles won the O. Henry Award for his first short story (which had been published in the Atlantic Monthly) and was nominated for the National Book Award for his ’77 novel Union Dues. Sayles has also directed music videos, most notably for Bruce Springsteen (including “Born in the USA”).

Sayles has managed to create engaging, consistent films that confront social issues while avoiding preachiness or didacticism. He is first and foremost a tremendous storyteller, and one with an admirably audacious streak. His Limbo (’99) concluded with a moment many filmgoers found shocking, in a defiantly ambiguous closure that set a precedent for film storytelling, anywhere in the world.

With his latest, Casa de los Babys, a hit at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Sayles follows several fictional characters as they venture to an unnamed Latin American country to see if they can adopt some infants. In true Sayles style, the women who are doing the shopping aren’t judged, and are a decidedly mixed group. While the idea of women being desperate to be mothers seems something untouchable, Sayles also reveals his characters to be flawed and often quite intentionally unaware of the implications of the international baby trade.

As well as making his latest an engaging story, Sayles has again assembled a powerful ensemble of actors, giving the likes of Mary Steenburgen, Daryl Hannah, Rita Moreno, Marcia Gay Harden, Lili Taylor and Maggie Gyllenhaal the opportunity to sink their collective teeth into a nuanced script. (Harden, in particular, is virtually unrecognizable in her role as the quintessential Ugly American.) Sayles sat down with the Mirror at the Toronto Festival to discuss what inspires him, his writing process and the international infant market.

Mirror: It’s funny, I was just watching Return of the Secaucus Seven before I got to the festival.

John Sayles: Of course, that’s just like home movies to me. The little girl who plays my daughter in it is now 27 years old and a physical therapist of some sort. She was also the little girl in Lianna.

M: Lianna was so great. It’s interesting to look back, because you were really a folk hero in the lesbian community for having made that film. Things have changed so much.

JS: It’s interesting, because at the time I made it, there were no films about gay women. And now, there’s a lot of women making films, so I don’t think it’s necessarily something I’d make today. At the time, it was like, “I see all these people around me, why don’t I see them on the screen? This is something I see people going through this all the time, but I never see it in the movies.”

M: Is that how you decide on a topic, it being something you’re not seeing addressed?

JS: That’s certainly a big part of it. Very often it’s things that I’m interested in but I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I can see it from this point of view, and that point of view, but what can possibly be going through this person’s mind if that’s how they’re acting? By questioning that, the story expands. In the end, I often don’t get strong answers. I may have just as many questions as I did at the beginning of the filmmaking process. But at least I’ve explored it more. What I’m interested in are the characters. We have the characters’ point of view, but that’s not the only one floated.

Cunning closure

M: I was really blown away by Limbo. I’m interested in your writing process. When you sat down to write that, had you already settled on the ending? Or was that something you arrived at after sitting down to do it?

JS: In the case of Limbo, that’s one of the first things that I knew. I wanted to write about risk. It represented to me that people live in this state of limbo; they may stay in this bad relationship, but they’re afraid of getting out of it because they might get a worse one, or if they’re in a bad job but worried that if they quit they’ll be unemployed, or if there’s a bad political situation but if we start a revolution we might all get killed. A lot of people are treading water, and the fear of hell is greater than the hope of heaven. So they just stay in this thing. The only way to get out of limbo is risk. So at the end I couldn’t say that risk was always good or always bad. So I wanted to put them at risk, emotionally and physically, and then see where that left them. They have to walk out in the open and not know whether it was heaven or hell.

Casa de los Babys was originally a long short story. I outlined it very tightly before I wrote it as a screenplay. I knew exactly where I was going with it. A lot of times I’ll write a character arc, and by that I mean not necessarily a classic character arc where they learn something, but rather the way we learn something about the character. So Darryl Hannah’s character, she doesn’t really change. She’s punishing herself through her body, and she’s punishing herself with sit-ups. It’s not an internal arc for her, the arc is for the audience. We learn something about her.

Maligning motherhood?

M: I think it’s intriguing what you’ve done here, because no one ever wants to be seen as attacking motherhood, biological or adoptive. It’s like trashing apple pie. You draw these very complex characterizations of people going to a developing nation to purchase children.

JS: I think just knowing a lot of people who are adopted, and being in some of the countries where there’s debate about it going on, finally you can’t get away from the fact that it ends up being a market. Sadly, it becomes a supply-and-demand thing. On the average, many women are waiting longer to have children. There are going to be more women who can’t have kids. The phenomenon we’re seeing right now is a lot of twins and triplets, and a lot of adoption. America is still a relatively wealthy country. So economics don’t make people give their kids up. So there aren’t enough babies to go around, and you end up in places where children aren’t being adopted, again for economic reasons. Sometimes it’s a war or civil strife: there are often these other factors which accompany the adoption stats. Some of those kids are lucky to get a family to take care of them. But there are also the kids who fall through the cracks, and we have to think of them too, something I tried to include in the film.

M: Once they’re 10, people aren’t so interested in adopting them.

JS: Actually, once they’re five, it’s impossible to find someone who’ll take them, and that’s terrible. Even most institutions won’t take them in then. It’s hugely ironic, to have so many desperate to get babies but so many children just a few years older who no one will take.

Casa de los babys opens Friday, Sept. 26

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