Posted on 08/16/2004 7:23:52 PM PDT by RogueIsland
WASHINGTON (AP) - Although his new movie pokes fun at President George W. Bush, director John Sayles hopes viewers will think about politics beyond the White House.
The Sept. 17 release of Silver City was planned to affect voting - whether it's by sending people to the polls, changing their vote or merely making them think about politics, Sayles said Wednesday at a National Press Club news conference.
"We felt like it was important to make this movie and get people thinking about it," Sayles said, adding it ought to influence "elections I know nothing about."
Sayles and his producers are working with progressive groups to spread the word about the film and they're hoping the activist group MoveOn.org will adopt the film.
They even plan to delay the movie's release in Ohio until October, when they can get young voters interested via a three-day "Swing State" bus tour of the state's universities.
Sayles is known for his thought-provoking, independent films, such as The Return of the Secaucus Seven and Eight Men Out, about the 1919 baseball scandal with the Chicago Black Sox. He didn't shy away from any satire when it came to Silver City, his 15th film.
It's easy to draw parallels between the movie's main character - a right-wing, first-time candidate for Colorado governor - with Bush and his run for Texas governor in 1994. Like Bush, Dickie Pilager comes from a political family - his father is a senator - he's a born-again Christian and is "grammatically challenged," as Sayles puts it.
Pilager's website (dickiepilager2004.com) could easily be confused with any of the hundreds of candidates running this November, with its requests for donations, bright colours and links to real voter registration sites.
The plot is simple: the filming of an environmental TV spot goes awry when Pilager, played by Sayles staple Chris Cooper, fishes a corpse out of a lake. His Karl Rove-like adviser, played by Richard Dreyfuss, whisks him away and sets out to find the truth behind the prank.
The movie will amuse, Sayles said but ultimately provoke viewers to think about their own voting choices.
"'How does the guy I'm voting for - or not - stack up? Do I even know?"
"How informed am I as a voter?"' he said.
He also scripted the low budget Star Wars knockoff, "Battle Beyond the Stars."
The last time I saw a Sayles film, I was in gradual school. I saw "Passion Fish" (?) with an artsy coffee-shop barista that I asked out because I saw her reading "Confessions of a Bohemian Tory", by Russell Kirk!! We had dinner and coffee after, she telling me about her impressions of Kirk and the Albert Jay Nock book her advisor gave her, with me somewhat too enthralled by this rightist angel to savor the words much. And then we went to the Sayles film and not long into it, she practically attacked me, with lips and fingers at once wild and prim, just as one might expect from a bohemian Tory...
And so, when I think of Sayles, I automatically think of coffee, Russell Kirk, and foreplay. Though not in the same thought.
John Sayles?? John Sayles???
If John Sayles took a dump in the woods, and no one noticed, is he still really full of crap??
how many anti-Bush movies have there been now??
One that probably could have wrapped up 20 minutes sooner than it did, but you take what you can get...
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