Borders and Boundaries:
An Interview with John Sayles.

John Sayles describes his new film, Lone Star, as "a story about borders." It is set in Texas, which Sayles explains "is unique among the United States in that it was once its own country. It was a republic formed in a controversial and bloody way. And its struggles didn't end with the Civil War. There is a kind of racial and ethnic war that has continued. That continuing conflict comes into the clearest focus aroundthe border between Texas and Mexico." But this geographical boundary is only one aspect of the film's concern with borderlines. "In a personal sense," Sayles comments, "a border is where you draw a line and say 'This is where I end and somebody else begins.' In a metaphorical sense, it can be any of the symbols that we erect between one another - sex, class, race, age."

In an even larger sense, Sayles adds, Lone Star is also concerned with "history and what we do with it. Do we use it to hit each other? Is it something that drags us down? Is it something that makes us feel good? You can get six different people to look at the Alamo and they have six different stories about what actual happened and what its significance was. The same goes for your personal history. At what point do you say about your parents, 'That was them, this is me. I take responsibility for myself from this day on.'"

John Sayles discussed his approach to these themes in Lone Star with Joan M. West and Dennis West in May at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Cineaste: Borders and boundaries - geographical, social, ethnic, and personal - are a central theme of your film. How did previous border films such as Touch of Evil, The Border, or The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, influence your approach?

John Sayles: I was very aware of borders and the way they can be geographical or manmade. Within the movie there are lines between people that they choose either to honor or not to honor. It may be this enforced border between Mexico and the United States, it may be one between class, race, ethnicity, or even military rank. There's an important scene where Joe Morton's character, an army colonel, says, "I want to know what you think," and the private says, "Really?" She has to say that because privates do not get to say what they think to colonels and you have to have a special dispensation.

On the other hand, once you cross that border, you may find out things you don't want to know. You may find out that the streets of America are not paved with gold. You may find out what Joe Morton's character finds out, which is that this is not a gung-ho private, this is somebody who's going to say things that make him question himself. His character is having a crisis of faith - although it's not in the church, it's in the military - about what he's done with his whole life.

When you cross the border and go into some kind of new territory, you don't necessarily have the power that you had on your side of it. When Sam Deeds crosses the border, the Mexican guy says, "You're just some gringo with a lot of questions, I don't have to answer you. That badge doesn't mean anything down here." I think that's one of the reasons that people like borders - they can say, "South of this line, I'm a big guy, and I run things here." Or it may be as literal as, "This is my land and, if you come on it, I can shoot you."

A lot of imagery in the movie was taken from The Alamo. The bartender, for example, says, "This bar here is the last stand, Buddy." When Sam goes down to Mexico, the Mexican guy draws a line in the sand, which refers to a famous moment from the history of the Alamo, when Travis drew a line. Of course, the Mexican draws the line with a Coca Cola bottle, but it is still a line drawn in the sand. During the Gulf War, George Bush used that same imagery of drawing a line in the sand. In the other movies you mentioned, I'd say Tony Richardson's The Border was more about drugs and identity. It was also a little more romantic, with Jack Nicholson as the border patrol guy falling in love with the Mexican girl he saw on the other side. That film made it seem a lot harder to cross the border than it really is. She could have come across a hundred and fifty times with her brother. It wasn't very realistic that they would ever catch him. It was also a little bit more of a shoot-'em-up than I wanted to do. Lone Star is not a thriller. It involves a murder mystery, but nobody ever pulls a gun on Chris Cooper's character, so it's not a thriller in that way.

Touch of Evil was influential in just thinking about that idea of a legend. Orson Welles's character is a legend in his own time, but the first time you see him he's this monstrous character. He's the kind of legend who didn't die in time, he's hung around and now he's going to ruin his own legacy. As for The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, both the movie and the song, as well as the corridos in general, were important to me. There are dozens of these songs and many of them have to do with people who probably were pretty bad guys but because they fought the rinches, which is what the border people call the Texas Rangers, they became heroes. Fairly early on in my research I read a book called With His Pistol in His Hand...

Cineaste: ...by Americo Paredes.

Sayles: ...right. I also read an unfinished novel of his which was published recently. But just going back and finding more corridos and reading the lyrics of them was very useful for me in understanding that long history of conflict on the border.

Cineaste: How would you explain your continuing interest in Latinos and Hispanic-American cultures?

Sayles: My feeling, basically, is that I've made a lot of movies about American culture and, as far as I'm concerned, it is not revisionism to include Mexican-American culture or African-American Culture or any of the many other different groups. If you're talking about the history of the United States, you're always talking about those things, from the get- go. As Sam Deeds says, "They were here first." And then the other guy reminds him, "Yeah, but the Native Americans were there before." So I don't see those as specialties. As far as I'm concerned, they're just part of the picture, just part of the composition.

I've lived in a lot of places in the United States and the odds are that sooner or later you're going to live in a neighborhood where people don't necessarily speak English, which I think is one of the things that makes the United States an interesting place to live. Where I'm coming from, in fact, is pretty much the opposite of Pat Buchanan's idea of this monoculture which is being invaded. English-speaking culture is just one of many cultures. It has become the dominant culture or subculture in certain areas, but it's a subculture just like all the others. American culture is not monolingual or monoracial. It's always been a mix. As one character says, "We got this whole damn menudo down here."

Cineaste: Does Lone Star, then, represent your vision of the U.S. as an increasingly multicultural society with more and more bicultural couples?

Sayles: I would say no to the first part and yes to the second. As I said, it's not increasingly multicultural, it's always been so. If you go back and turn over a rock, you find out, for example, that maybe a third or more of African-Americans are also Native Americans and a much higher percentage of African-Americans are also white Americans. You know, as they used to do in New Orleans, if you're 1/64th black, you're black, and it doesn't matter what you look like.

I do think there are more interracial couples nowadays. One of the interesting things I noticed during the Gulf War, seeing so many people interviewed on TV, was the large number of interracial couples, both of whom were in the military. There were also many black officers interviewed, including Colin Powell and people like that, who were asked, "What do you think of this war?," and they'd say, "Well, it's my job to go." They'd be asked, "Why are you in the army?," and they would say, "It's the best job I could get." I was fascinated by the idea that the United States Army, which used to be a bastion of segregation and racism, has gotten to the point where, although it's not the most liberal place in the world, it has become more liberal than the private sector. As a black person, you have a better chance of getting a job there and moving up if you do a good job than you do in the private sector.

Cineaste: History is a central theme of Lone Star, and your seamless transitions in some scenes between past and present seem to represent the continuing weight of the past.

Sayles: It is kind of an obvious conclusion because there's not even the separation of a dissolve, which is a soft cut. The purpose of a cut or a dissolve is to say this is a border, and the things on opposite sides of the border are meant to be different in some way, and I wanted to erase that border and show that these people are still reacting to things in the past. There is a preoccupation with history in the film, whether it's Sam Deeds wanting to find out the personal history of his father, or the grandfather looking back into the roots of the black Seminoles. Pilar is a history teacher for a purpose, including that meeting about how they're going to teach history in the textbooks. Even Joe Morton's character is dealing with the history of black and white relationships. When he asks himself, "Am I just a mercenary?," it's not only because of his personal feelings, it's also in a way a historical question, asking, "Can I be a black soldier in the United States Army and not be a mercenary like one of those black Seminoles who just chased Indians for the whites?"

Cineaste: Many of Lone Star's important characters - Sam, Delmore, Chet, Pilar, and Bunny - are examined in terms of their relationship to a father figure, and even the town and county themselves are seen in relation to their sheriffs. How does this relate to your treatment of the theme of history and to the patriarchal Hispanic tradition of the caudillo, the strongman figure? Sayles: Something that was very much in mind was taking a story and being able to move in both directions with it, of taking something that's a little more particular and being able to spread it out to the political - taking a story like Sam Deeds's and, as he does with his investigation, looking into what is basically his own family history. It tells you something about the whole community, but sometimes that becomes a metaphor for personal history. For me, very often the best metaphor for history is fathers and sons. Inheriting your cultural history, your hatreds and your alliances and all that kind of stuff, is what you're supposed to get from your father in a patriarchal society. Both Texas Anglo society and traditional Spanish society were patriarchal societies, especially on the border, which had a history of rancheros, with 'Don' this and 'Don' that, who had these big spreads with peons working for them. It was very pyramid like, whereas in other parts of Mexico it was much more influenced by Indian hierarchies, which are not pyramid like, where men and women have separate roles but it's a little more circular. There may be a village chief but he might change every year, so it's more about communal ownership rather than one guy owning the land, and whose eldest son is going to own it in turn, and it's going to be passed on that way.

It was also important for me to include the story of Pilar and her mother. I think people generally take the same-sex parent as their role model, and so here's Pilar finding out about her family history very, very slowly. She may not even know that her mother was born in Mexico. Her mother may have said, "My people are down there, but I was born here," or "I married your father and he was a citizen." Who knows what legend she's been told. Her mother is very closed about that because in the culture in which she lives, there's a certain amount of shame in being a mojado, a wetback.

Cineaste: Pilar's mother represents a conservative Mexican-American attitude concerning contemporary immigration issues. I assume you did that very deliberately.

Sayles: Yeah, not only to show that factor but also to show that, when talking about borders and lines between people, very often when people cross those borders they want to slam the door behind them. They may have been banging against that door themselves, but because they have internalized the system and given it value, their attitude changes once they get on the other side of the border. The army is a perfect example of that. You may start out saying, "Officers are stupid," but once you're made an officer, you probably change your mind and you definitely don't say, "Now that I'm here, I'm going to abolish rank." That's been the tragedy of the Mexican revolution - you get Porfirio Diaz, who does these great things, and after they get rid of that old guy, somebody else becomes the caudillo again. That has been repeated time and time again in Latin American cultures, where revolutions have turned into just a change of caudillos.

Cineaste: Would you comment on Sam and Pilar, the last couple seen in the film, who have crossed their borders, and, if you care to deal with a related question, will their children be born with a pig's tail?(*)

Sayles: [Laughs] Well, their children won't be born with a pig's tail because, as Pilar says, "I can't get pregnant again." One of the things I wanted to do with that is ask, "OK, what actually is that rule?" I'm interested in the difference between when people do things because of good practical and emotional human reasons, and when they're just following the rules. So here are Sam and Pilar - they were raised separately, they're adults now, there's no question of one being the older brother or the older sister and in some kind of position of power over the other one, so it's a fairly equal relationship in that way. They're not going to have children, so they're not going to pass on any horrendous birth defects, so what is that rule about? She says, "If that's what the rule's about, I'm not going to have children." What they're left with is the realization that, "OK, we have this chance to do something that is going to be seen as enormously antisocial but it's good for us," and they choose to cross that border of moral opinion.

But it is only an individual accommodation, and that was a lot of my point with the ending, it's not going to change society. They're going to have to leave the society they're in, they can't stay in that town. You may be very very nonracial, you may be married to a black person, but if you're in the middle of the Watts riots, that's not going to help you. That individual accommodation you made has not changed the social situation, or hasn't changed it enough so that what society is still doing is going to honor your change. Interracial couples that I know are careful about where they go. If it's a black and white couple, for example, there are places with white people where they don't go, and there are places with black people where they don't go. Only on the edges of those societies is there a place for them and their kids. In the hearts of those societies, sometimes, they're just not welcome.

Cineaste: I understand Lone Star is a Texas produced brand of beer. Why choose Lone Star for the title of your film?

Sayles: Well, the same reason, I think, that Lone Star chose it as the name of their beer. Texas is the Lone Star state. Texas chose the lone star because they were an individual who wanted to become part of a group. Once they broke away from Mexico they said, "Well, we are a republic," and choosing a lone star for their flag was a wannabe gesture toward the United States. I associated that with the character of Sam Deeds, who is an individual who stands very much outside of the group, looking at it, and who is supposed to eventually join it, but in this case he decides not to. You feel at the end of the movie, no, he's not going to run for sheriff again.

Cineaste: Would you comment on Wesley Birdsong, the Native American roadside merchant figure?

Sayles: As long as I was portraying the other people down on that border, I figured, well, I cannot leave this guy out. What I found interesting in that area of Texas is that although the reservations cover a lot of land, there isn't a huge amount of political fighting going on between the reservations and the state the way there is in the Dakotas, Montana or Wyoming. In Texas, they really have been relegated to reservations that are out of the way and out of mind, so that Native Americans you meet off the reservation are very likely to be enormously outnumbered in the general population and therefore somewhat isolated.

Cineaste: Is the Native American merchant a Kickapoo and was he a veteran of the Korean War?

Sayles: Yeah, he would be a Kickapoo down there. I didn't get into their history in the movie, but those are people who have been everywhere, including both sides of the border. It's a very split tribe right now, with about four different outposts, stretching from the Midwest to Kansas to Oklahoma to Texas to Mexico. The idea is that he was a friend of Buddy Deeds, who was a veteran of the Korean War, so Wesley may or may not have also been a veteran. It's not unusual to go into an Indian reservation and find that most of the guys have been in the army just for something to do. There are an incredible number of VFW posts on Indian reservations.

For me, what's important is when Wesley says, "I tried living on the reservation but I couldn't take the politics." Reservations are extremely political, with very tough infighting, and what he has decided to do, once again, is to take that individual accommodation. Where you see him is, as he says, "between nowhere and not much else." He is extremely isolated and he happens to like that, but that's where that choice can take you. The choice to escape the politics, to escape history, to escape that struggle and to do the antisocial thing, can leave you enormously isolated.

He is very self-possessed and he seems fairly content, so he is the upside of that kind of isolation, whereas Bunny, the ex-wife of Sam Deeds, is the opposite of that. She's kind of like the Ghost of Christmas Future, she's the person who has not escaped her family history. She's somebody who is a warning to Sam. In twenty years she's going to be in that room, bouncing off the walls, talking about how, "I loved my daddy, I hated my daddy." He'll be five years dead in the ground and she will still be living in his shadow and she's never going to get out from under it.

She's almost like a throwback to what would have happened to Mary McDonnell's character in Passion Fish if she hadn't come back to the world of human relationships. Her strongest personal relationship, other than the one with her father, is going to be with the Dallas Cowboys, who are always going to be there for her. They are cyclical, and, in a way, outside of history. They will always be there, and they don't have to know that she's there for her to feel like they care. So she has escaped in that way. I've often used the metaphor, in Brother from Another Planet, Passion Fish, and City of Hope, of television as a drug. Some people are addicted to alcohol or crack, but for others that fantasy world, that received world of soap operas or football or whatever, becomes a constant electronic drug that's available to you.

Cineaste: This is the first feature that you have shot in Super 35mm format. How did that decision relate to the visual style of the film?

Sayles: Super 35mm basically is just a different way to get a widescreen look. We shot widescreen on City of Hope, and, in that case, it was a practical decision because we had to switch between all these characters. We were very crowded sometimes, with two people in the foreground and three people in the background, and we needed more room for them so the image size didn't get too small. We could keep the image size fairly big on them and fit more people on the screen because we were doing so much trading in the master shots, which was a stylistic thing which distinguished City of Hope.

One of the things we wanted to do in Lone Star was to show the horizontal look of the border. It's not mountainous, it is a very long, absolutely flat horizon line, and we wanted, at least in the beginning of the picture, to isolate people in that flat, wide land. It takes about a county's worth of acres to raise a hundred head of cattle down there, and widescreen gave us that feeling of just a few people fighting over that little thin strip of river where the good land is and which is surrounded by scrubby desert. Super 35mm is just a different way to get a widescreen look where you use regular lenses, but because you use more of the frame, you don't have to hang quite as much light. Making an ambitious movie on a low budget, you have to move a little faster.

* A reference to the incest motif in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.