//

Interview: John Sayles on Casa de los Babys, Career, and More

We recently spoke with the writer-director about the rocky dramas that continue to resurface in his films.

Interview: John Sayles on Casa de los Babys, Career, and More

John Sayles’s latest Casa de los Babys catalogs the emotional baggage of six would-be mothers stationed inside a South American hotel waiting for the processing of their adoption papers. What continues to distinguish Sayles from any other white filmmaker working today is his impassioned concern for the lives of women and the culturally underprivileged, above and below the Equator. The past is less a threat in Casa de los Babys than it was in Sunshine State, but the film’s nameless South American pit stop brings to mind the same ambient, allegorical landscapes of Matewan devastated by the specters of imperialism. Filmmaker and political activist, Sayles seems to continue exactly where William Faulkner left off, tracing the decadence, growth, decay and subsequent reinvention of lives devastated by institutionalized racism of the New South (Sunshine State) and the economic, political and spiritual upheavals of many a Latin American country (Men With Guns). Slant Magazine recently spoke with Sayles about the rocky dramas that continue to resurface in his films (the past, single motherhood and the difficult relationships between men and women) and the even rockier dramas that continue of physically and ideologically isolate his America from the rest of the world.

What kind of research did you have to do for Casa de los Babys regarding adoption agencies?

I approached it through the perspective of a would-be adoptive parent and got the adoption rules for every Latin American country, from Mexico down to Tierra Del Fuego. In some countries, no foreign adoptions are allowed. Some have very stringent rules, and in others the rules aren’t as stringent but there may be a long residency requirement. At the time that I did the research, the country that had the residency requirements closest to Casa de los Babys was Chile.

Did you find that a lot of American women went to these countries trying to adopt foreign children?

In Latin America, the women seemed to come mostly from the United States. When there’s a long residency period and one of them has to stay down there for several weeks, it’s usually the women. It’s easier for them to take the time off work. The men may fly down every weekend, or every other weekend, or when the lawyer says the process is getting serious.

What do you see in this desperate struggle to adopt?

I know so many people that have adopted children, both domestically and from other countries. There’s this thing that they want to be parents. Most are about to get their first child. The character that Lili Taylor plays is somebody who could probably conceive, but has decided that there are lots of kids in the world that need adopting and, since she doesn’t have a partner, she’s decided to do it that way.

What about the commerce aspect of the baby trade?

It’s one of the reasons the film is split into two worlds. One is that desert-island world these women occupy where they don’t speak Spanish. And then there’s the world of the people who live there. These two worlds agree on one thing, which is that it would be great for these children to have parents. But there’s a resentment and shame there. “Why can’t we take care of our own kids? What’s wrong with our culture and what’s wrong with our economy that foreigners can come and take our kids?” Sometimes there’s absolute economic desperation, which is sometimes compounded by racism. Many of the kids who are up for adoption are darker skinned or more Indian looking than the people who have the money to adopt them. The people in the United States may have gotten past that particular prejudice but some of the people in these countries may not have. Some people are horrified at the idea of these children being taken off to another place, wondering how they will know their culture or religion.

Advertisement

What about the bureaucratic hassles the film’s women encounter?

Those are different in every country. Because they vary so much, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t say which country the film takes place in. In some countries, the bureaucratic organization is efficiently handled but the process may take a long time. “If the people are serious about this kid, they have to have their shit together enough to send at least one of the parents down here to stick around for a couple of months. It’s not really about milking money out of them. It’s about commitment. If they are committed enough to have one of our children, we want them to come down here and they are going to learn something about the country and go through this bedding period. And if they can’t handle that and don’t have that kind of patience, then they’re not getting one of our kids.”

What about other places?

Well, in other places it’s truly not very efficient. There’s a church bureaucracy mixing with a state or federal one. Local lawyers get involved because that’s the way they make their money, and the rules aren’t very clear. And that’s what makes these people paranoid. “Because my application keeps getting bumped to the bottom, do I have to pay someone off?” The communication in these countries isn’t very good.

Besides the resurrection of the past, another recurrent theme in your films is motherhood.

Women who are going to have their first biological child are working on this kind of set nine-month schedule. The child can be premature or come very late, but the mother can usually tell when it’s coming. But when you’re adopting, you’re always waiting for that phone call. It’s like your photos have been finally developed and it’s time to go to the drug store to pick them up. It’s this kind of lame-duck period where you’re treading water until that phone call. I’m also interested in how the ability to have a kid rests on the woman, biologically and psychologically. Even if the woman can carry but the chemistry between the wife and the husband isn’t working, the woman very often takes the guilt upon herself. There are plenty of movies about groups of guys—because of army movies and sports movies—but there aren’t that many movies about groups of women thrown together. In some ways, Casa de los Babys is a female bomber squad movie. [laughs] In the film, the women have this range of issues and experiences.

You’re exposing a lot of these hassles in the film. Since so many of your films are such stirring works of political activism, do you ever anticipate a film like Casa de los Babys to perpetuate changes of any kind?

Well, I don’t think it’s a crusade in that way specifically. Even in this movie, the lawyers aren’t corrupt. He’s a hassled bureaucrat. He’s complying with the laws of his country and he has his own resentments. These women are coming down and they think they’re ordering a pizza. There are two sides to everything.

What do you see in the desperation of these women to adopt?

Advertisement

Each of these women has some kind of issue, and some are very common among parents. Daryl Hannah’s character is someone who’s given birth three times but has suffered the trauma of all of them dying. Obviously there’s something in her DNA that doesn’t bode well for her having another child biologically. As a result, some of these women have these feelings of failure. Or it could just be money. Some may have planned on adopting when the economy was good, and now that they’ve lost their jobs they’re afraid that the agencies may bump them if they find out. Others worry about being put to the bottom of a pile because they don’t have husbands. There’s anxiety always if you are a single mother adopting.

How was it working with such a talented, all-star cast?

It was a lot of fun, on both the Mexican and American side. We were able to house all the American actresses together so they got to do some of the stuff their characters do in the film on their days off. It was nice for them, because it’s very rare for American actresses to be on the set of a movie at the same time. It’s usually two at most. [laughs] They got to talk about their lives and their careers and do a little bonding off screen. And it was fun to see them work together, giving them a cage to wander around in and see how they reacted to each other within the framework of the film. And on the Mexican side, we were really lucky to get some really talented actors. Some are very well-known, like Pedro Armendáriz Jr., and some are getting to be well-known theater actors, like Bruno Bichir. Vanessa Martinez, who played the maid Asunción, is someone who I’ve worked with before.

I love her. She was amazing in Limbo.

Yeah. She grew up speaking Spanish so it wasn’t a stretch for her to act in Spanish. Rita Moreno told me that she had not ever had a part that was all in Spanish. She came to the States when she was nine years old and she was in American movies and she often had an accent of some sort, but never acted in Spanish before.

Why isn’t Vanessa getting any more parts?

After Limbo, it was important to her and her family for her to finish college. She’s still in her very early twenties. And she would tell you the same thing: she’s not J. Lo. She doesn’t live in Hollywood. She’s been offered a few things and she’s turned down a few things, because she thought the parts were uninteresting or a little insulting. Rita Moreno said the same thing. Half of her life she was saying, “Why did you people take our gold?” They have to make this decision: if it’s just the girl in the cantina, do you really want to do it? It seems like a Taco Bell part. Of course, you can ask the question to any of my actresses in the film. There are not a lot of interesting things for women to do in this country. If you are not J. Lo, Nicole Kidman, or Meryl Streep, there’s a limit to what you get offered.

How do you prepare with your actors?

I don’t do a read-through and I don’t do rehearsals. I really rely on the actors to bring a lot to the situation. I send everyone a biography, in Spanish or English depending on their character, which gives them a backstory. For instance, the American women went in knowing a little more about who their husbands were than what you find out in the film. I would write in the biographies how long they’ve been there and what their medical problems were—some of the stuff that’s not necessarily revealed in the film—just so they have a little more ammunition when they’re thinking about their characters.

Advertisement

There’s a powerful sequence in the film where Susan Lynch and Vanessa Martinez talk to each other at-length inside a hotel room despite their obvious language barrier.

I’m always interested in the stuff that separates people, whether it’s race, class or sex. Language is also a big separator. These are two people that struggle to get passed it, but don’t really understand the details. They sense some kind of affinity for each other. These are two women that would probably be very good friends if they spoke the same language or were in the same place. I told Susan Lynch that her character probably came to the United States and cleaned hotel rooms and did the kind of jobs that Vanessa’s character does in the film. They’re working class women and they’re both Catholics. But, more important, they’re on the same wavelength.

On the issue of race, there’s a quality to so many of your films that recall William Faulkner. Are you a fan of his works?

I’ve read most of his books, and they’re not easy. [laughs] I spent a lot of time in the South and I remember being disappointed when I went over to a colored drinking fountain at a bus station and it was just clear water. I thought it was going to be Kool Aid. I thought the water was going to be literally colored. And when you get south of Washington D.C., there’s this weird segregation that goes on. Having been to a lot of these places, having been to Mississippi, a lot of Faulkner’s books were more vibrant for me than for somebody who hadn’t spent time down there. He was very much of his time, but he was also very much ahead of his time. My first assistant director on Casa de los Babys has been trying to make this short film based on this Terry Southern story that was in Esquire years ago. Southern was sent by Esquire to cover this convention of twirlers at Ole Miss and he got there the day after Faulkner died. So there he is in Oxford, Mississippi, where Faulkner is from, and he goes to the college library to see if they have Faulkner’s books, and the first one he takes off the shelf has the n-word written in the inside page. This was a guy who was a suspect in his own country.

When you’re brought in to tweak something like The Alamo, how do you negotiate another writer’s material?

As a screenwriter, you get a mandate. “We’ve got a story that’s about to start shooting, but this character needs some back-story. You’ve got three days.” It could be that small a mandate. When I take a job, I really talk to the people who are hiring me about where they want me to go with it. If it’s a place I don’t think it’s a place it should go or if I don’t think I’d do a good job of taking it there, I don’t take the job. There’s a certain amount of economics and politics to it, but the main thing for me is that you’re helping someone tell their story. I end up working a lot harder when I write for other people. I do more drafts, I have more meetings, I do more research. Because I’m helping them articulate their story, but you’re just never going to be as emotionally involved as you are with your own scripts.

You were working on a film recently about the Philippines insurrection.

Yeah, that’s one that I wrote for myself that we haven’t been able to finance. People don’t know this about me, but I’m really David Lean. [laughs] It’s called Sometime in the Sun, based on the Philippines insurrection, which was kind of like America’s first Vietnam. It was a very nasty, four-year jungle guerilla battle. It was happening at the same time that blacks were getting some rights after the end of the Civil War. Jim Crow really didn’t exist until about 1880 and the other half of the film takes part during the turn of the century. It’s about the massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina. It was about the black soldiers who were over in the Philippines whose families are loosing all their rights in the States.

Will we ever get to see the film?

Advertisement

I don’t know. At the time, we were trying to raise $11 million. Now it would cost $12 or $13 million. And then I wrote another epic called Jamie MacGillivray, which Robert Carlyle brought me the germ of the idea for. That one was even bigger, set during the French Indian War around the time of The Last of the Mohicans. Just to give you an idea of the scope, it starts at the battle of Culloden in Scotland and ends at the Battle of Quebec. It’s about Highlands Scottsman who’s defeated at Culloden and sent as an indentured servant to the New World, instead of being hung by the British, and escapes and gets involved with the Indians in the French-Indian War.

What are you working on now?

Because we just couldn’t raise the money for that this year, I’m working on another one that we’re trying to put the financing together for. It’s called Silver City, a murder mystery set in the middle of a governatorial campaign in a western state. And that’s less money. We need $5 or $6 million. But even that kind of money is hard for us to raise. Independent filmmakers as well known as myself haven’t worked in three or four years. Sometimes you finish one movie and you don’t know if you’re going to make another one. Lucky for me, I have this other bread-earning career as a screenwriter.

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.