Word: secaucus
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When Cheryl Stallings, a 32-year-old associate producer for NBA Entertainment, went to see the movie Soul Food at the Sony Meadows 6 in Secaucus, N.J., last week, she ended up doing something she never does: she talked back to the screen. Now, creative commentary during a film is an established custom among some urban moviegoers--catch a showing of Gang Related (the late Tupac Shakur's last film) in a major city, and it's a fair bet the action will not go unremarked on--but Stallings would rather listen. However, during Soul Food, there was just something...
Sayles would like to show you a woman's mind and heart. This American independent (Return of the Secaucus 7, The Brother from Another Planet) gives his movies the leisurely tempo, the sensible aspirations of foreign films; he means to get at the way real people behave, without the hysterics of Hollywood melodrama. So Passion Fish -- a female-rehab movie about May-Alice (Mary McDonnell), an actress made paraplegic in a car crash, and her helpful nurse, Chantelle (the ever splendid Alfre Woodard) -- is notable for what it doesn't show: the collision, the sight of May-Alice's mangled...
...directing -- Sayles has done each of them. And with distinction. The first short story he ever sold won an O. Henry Award in 1975. His second novel, Union Dues (1977), was nominated for both the National Book and National Book Critics Circle awards. And The Return of the Secaucus Seven, a low-budget forerunner of The Big Chill and the first movie he ever made, was cited as 1980's best screenplay by the Los Angeles film critics. No wonder the 40-year-old Sayles has a near legendary reputation for artistic ambidexterity...
...Jaws. His idols, however, were independent filmmakers like John Cassavetes. In 1978, having saved $40,000 from script fees and book royalties, Sayles struck out on his own; he recruited a cast of actor friends and made the film that would become The Return of the Secaucus Seven...
...would be good to report that Sayles, who likes to portray groups under pressure (Return of the Secaucus Seven, Matewan), has solved all these issues, but he has not. Based on Eliot Asinof's definitive book of the same name, Eight Men Out lacks either the spacious simplicity of legend or the patient detailing of realism. And Sayles often seems like a man who, trying to stretch a single, gets caught between bases and is desperately trying to evade the rundown...