John Sayles is man of many talents. For one thing, he’s an acclaimed pioneer of the American independent film scene; his 1996 classic Lone Star, featuring Chris Cooper and Matthew McConaughey, is newly out on Criterion. For another, he’s long moonlit as a big-time Hollywood script doctor and writer of delightful genre fare like The Howling, Piranha, and Alligator. (He also wrote an unproduced Jurassic Park movie featuring human-dinosaur hybrids who work as commandos.) But now Sayles has a third occupation: guy who pisses on Trump’s dumb border wall.
In a new op-ed for The Guardian (in a bit teased out by Entertainment Weekly), Sayles reflected on Lone Star, which is set in a Texas border town and, as you can imagine, has quite a lot to say about immigration. He thinks his film still has a lot to say nearly 30 years later.
“I don’t think we’ve made any progress on border issues since the movie was made,” Sayles writes. “Back then, it didn’t have the same tension. The border patrol would just say no me hagas correr to illegal immigrants – don’t make me run – and deport them. I don’t think a wall is the answer: it’s like a Christo installation that has cost billions of dollars.”
Oh, and Sayles had one thing to add to that topic: “I recently visited it with a friend and we urinated on it.”
Sayles is an old school lefty; his directorial debut, 1980’s The Return of the Secaucus 7, is basically the original The Big Chill, only where the aging hippies don’t regret their activist pasts. All his movies teem with progressive politics, including his creature feature scripts. As such, it’s not surprising that he’d take a whizz on Trump’s pride and joy then brag about it. Heck, it’s good advertising for his excellent, newly Criterionized ‘90s indie great.
(Via The Guardian and EW)