It’s astonishing to think that Honeydripper, a cerebral appropriation of Back To The Future’s birth of rock n’ roll scene, is John Sayles’ 16th film as director. It’s even more astonishing to think that after thirty years in the business, Honeydripper, like most of the filmmaker’s other titles, is a small miracle, a genuinely independent picture made against all odds. Born in New York to half-Irish Catholic school teachers, there was little in his background to suggest a career in cinema. After majoring in psychology, he worked in such impeccably blue collar jobs as meat packing, construction, and as a nursing home orderly before he, like Scorsese and Copolla before him, fell in with B-movie mogul Roger Corman.
After a number of years churning out monster movies (Alligator, Pirahna) and hiding props from the boss (“Roger thought everything was too expensive,” laughs Sayles) the aspiring auteur had saved $30,000, the budget for his first picture, Return Of The Secaucus 7. It was the beginning of a schizoid career.
There's Sayles, the politically astute, socially conscious author and director behind such critically acclaimed films as City Of Hope, Matewan, The Secret Of Roan Inish, Sunshine State and this writer’s personal favourite, Brother From Another Planet. This John Sayles is frequently referred to as the Godfather Of Independent Cinema, a noble outsider who has earned two screenwriting Oscar nominations for Passion Fish and Lone Star. Then there's Sayles the Hollywood hack-for-hire who bangs out such diverse screenplays as The Spiderwick Chronicles, Apollo 13 and The Fugitive. He once penned Night Skies, a sequel to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind that eventually became E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. And he has recently re-teamed with director Steven Spielberg to write Jurassic Park IV.
Can it really be so easy to move from the director’s own psychologically complex ensemble pieces to a bunch of dinosaurs chasing interlopers around their island?
“Well, our last two movies were totally self-financed,” says Sayles. “So I’ve written a lot of screenplays for a lot of people. It’s an interesting process. Movies go through so many hands now. You write the screenplay but then the director changes and the new one wants something completely different. Or the studio doesn’t get Brad Pitt and they suddenly go cold on the idea. So then it’s lying around until a whole new team arrive. Sometimes the finished film is more or less what you wrote and sometimes you’ll only recognise a line of dialogue or a scene that’s survived from your original draft.”
Honeydripper, we’re happy to report, is the director’s uncompromising account of the moment when music went electric. Set around the cotton fields and tent revivals of Harmony, Alabama in 1950, the film stars Danny Glover as a club owner who desperately needs a big draw to keep his business afloat. He’s hoping for radio star Guitar Sam but winds up with a young drifter (Gary Clark Jr.) and his homemade electric ax. Though loosely based in fact – Guitar Sam doubles for Guitar Slim who hooked up to a generator in 1952 – this seminal moment of musical history practically demanded certain fictional embellishments.
“Guitar Slim was famous for missing gigs,” says Sayles. “But before rock videos nobody knew what you looked like. Lots of young guitarists were told to play as someone else. B.B. King has lots of stories about performing as somebody else early in his career. The club owner would just tell him ‘Tonight you are Guitar Slim’. Also, all those guys mythologised themselves anyway. You listen to those songs and they’re essentially bragging pieces. The rap generation has nothing on them.”