An indie line in the sand

DIRECTOR John Sayles and his partner and producer Maggie Renzi were having a drink in New York City while their new film, “Honeydripper,” played at the African Diaspora Film Festival. “Honeydripper,” about the arrival of rock ‘n’ roll in an Alabama blues town in the 1950s, opens Friday in limited release.

Let’s talk distribution, the most important and the least sexy of topics.

Maggie: We’re making it sexy! . . . My thing is, they gave up on the audience over 50. We’re the ones who run the film clubs. And we can handle things that are at a slower pace. And I think they stopped inviting us to movies. They want a home run hit? The second-largest group is people over 50. We have money -- and time now. And there’s nothing for us to see, and there hasn’t been for a while. I think we have to invite people back who’ve been burned by stuff that’s badly lit and badly shot and, well, stupid sometimes.

John: We’re trying to figure out what they should be trying to figure out. Here’s the movie -- and here’s the people who would like to see it. What happens, with our last two or three movies, they play, they close after two weeks in most cities, even if they do pretty good business.

What about the audience at home?

Maggie: I think the DVD thing has its own uses and merits. Of course we belong to Netflix, and of course we have a big TV. I still like to see movies with other people. I love to look over the heads.

There are a lot of writer-directors, but not a lot of writer-director-editors. Do you suffer because of that choice?

John: Quite honestly, I think it’d be impossible to make a movie like “Honeydripper” in five weeks if I wasn’t editing in my head. Five weeks, four -- you have to say, do I have the performance yet? I’ve got these three takes, the acting’s good and the line’s [messed] up here but not here.

Any studio would like you finishing in five weeks.

Maggie: This movie cost $5 million. What could they do for $5 million?

John: In general, I’d say studios aren’t as impressed by low-budget movies. Those ones they visit -- and charge the trip to Paris to -- are not the $5-million ones.

Maggie: Something’s happened where it’s all slipped in together. It puts an unreasonable burden on the distributors of art movies, of filmmakers themselves, as something that has to do with a Hollywood gross. When those studios started to have classics divisions it was, like, that’s a cool idea. But it’s about having grosses that Hollywood can be proud of. Every art movie has to come to $20 million or it’s a failure. We’re just back from Thessaloniki Film Festival, it’s the first complete retrospective of John Sayles, not in his own country . . .

John: . . . and not a country where anyone knew our movies. It was nice to see people came to the first couple . . . and they kept coming

Maggie: For “Honeydripper,” the big theater was filled . . . and no one asked us about box office. People wanted to talk about the stories, they wanted to talk about art.

And this is when I ask you what’s next.

John: We’ve spent all our money on this movie. I just don’t know. When people ask what I’m doing next? I have big epics I don’t think we can raise the money for. Since we couldn’t raise money for what’s basically a fairly entertaining, musical, $5-million movie, why would I think we could raise money for a $35- to $50-million movie that’s heavier?

Maggie: I hope this movie will change the way some people think about John Sayles, because it’ll do well at the box offices. And when we were at Thessaloniki, and people were saying there’s lots of money over here . . . . We know how to make movies, and if anyone comes near us with some movie . . .

John: If someone gave me $5 million, I could make two movies.

Maggie: No, no, let’s make one. That doesn’t make sense. Offer 20, and we’ll make two.

John: But also the idea is the $20 million is an unreasonable thing to expect but . . .

Maggie: Three for 20 million.

John: Ten million. Hard to break even. We don’t agree on everything.

Maggie: I don’t want to make movies for what they cost. It’s harder and harder to do what we do. They have large costs, and we’re union the whole way. And? We like them! We want them to be beautiful. You can’t do that with no budget, right?

John: Yeah. What happens is, they cost what they cost and there’s no above the line. The studio cost, the stars, everyone’s getting scale. I get scale.

Maggie: Deferred.

John: Which means if it makes no money . . .

Maggie: But our deal with unions and guilds is that he’s the first one paid.

John: So it all goes on the screen, as they say. I know studio directors who say, “Here I am, I’m taking the rap for this $20-million movie -- it was a $3.5-million movie, everything else was above the line. But I’m the guy who had to make the movie.”

And now you get to enjoy having a movie.

John: I like the stuff where we talk to the people. It’s getting to them. Have you been in an airport recently? You get stuck for seven hours . . . . But I can write on an airplane, in a lobby, in the hotel . . . . I called my agent and said “I’ll be on the [danged] airplane for 8 hours and 6 1/2 coming back. Get me a rewrite!” And I wrote most of it on the airplane.

Maggie: It’s the perfect place.

John: It’s like being in jail.

Maggie: And you’ve already seen “License to Wed.”