JOHN SAYLES (Writer, Director, Editor 

Honeydripper is John Sayles’ 16^th feature film.  His career began as a novelist and short story writer with the publication in 1975 of Pride of the Bimbos, followed in 1977 by Union Dues, a National Critics’ Circle and National Book Award nominee.  A short story collection, The Anarchists’ Convention appeared in 1979, when he began working as a screenwriter for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures.  Early screenwriting credits include Piranha, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Howling and Alligator.

Using the money he earned writing ‘creature features’, he financed his first feature as writer/director/editor, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, a bittersweet look at a reunion of 60’s political activists.  The film, with a production budget of only $40,000, gained a national theatrical release, won the L.A. Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay and helped launch the ‘American independent’ film movement.  His second film, Lianna, was one of the first American movies to deal with a lesbian relationship in a non-exploitative manner, and set several house records in theaters around the U.S.

His first studio movie, Baby It’s You, was released by Paramount in 1983, and featured newcomers such as Rosanna Arquette, Vincent Spano, Matthew Modine and Robert Downey Jr. in a mid-60’s coming-of-age drama.  Next was the very low-budget The Brother From Another Planet, an African-American sci-fi allegory starring Joe Morton as a black extra-terrestrial who crashes to earth in Harlem. 

Running into financing difficulties, Sayles filled a three-year filmmaking hiatus by acting in a critically acclaimed theater production of The Glass Menagerie with Joanne Woodward and Karen Allen and directing three rock videos for Bruce Springsteen- Born In The USA, I’m On Fire and Glory Days.  He also won a Writers’ Guild Award for best TV movie screenplay for Unnatural Causes, which dealt with the legacy of exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and starred John Ritter and Alfre Woodard.

He was then able to film Matewan and Eight Men Out, projects he had written several years earlier.  Matewan is the story of a bloody 1920 West Virginia coal miners’ strike, and marked his first collaboration with actors Chris Cooper and Mary McDonnell, as well as with cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who received an Academy Award nomination for his photography.  Sayles wrote a textbook about the screenplay and the experience of the production entitled Thinking in Pictures that is used in film courses to this day.  Eight Men Out, the story of the 1919 Black Sox baseball scandal, was based on the book by Eliot Asinof and was one of the last movies released by Orion Pictures.  It has become a perennial on television during playoff and World Series time.

The television movie Shannon’s Deal, written by Sayles, led to a highly-acclaimed but short-lived TV series of the same name in 1989-90 and starred actors such as Elizabeth Peña, Richard Edson and Miguel Ferrer who would later appear in his films. The teleplay won an ‘Edgar’ from the Mystery Writers Association.

City Of Hope, appearing in 1990, was an urban epic filmed in a mere five weeks, one of the lowest-budget Cinemascope movies ever made, and featured appearances by actors he would work with again and again- Cooper, Morton, David Strathairn, Angela Bassett, Miriam Colon and Tom Wright among others.  His third novel, Los Gusanos, a multi-generational tale set in Cuba and Miami’s Little Havana, was published in 1991, and since has been translated into several languages.  Next was Passion Fish, a film about the healing relationship between a home-care nurse coming out of rehab and a paraplegic former soap opera star.  Alfre Woodard was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, Mary McDonnell for an Academy Award for Best Actress and Sayles received his first Academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

The Secret Of Roan Inish was based on the children’s book The Secret Of The Ron Mor Skerry by Rosalie K. Fry and was the first of his movies filmed outside the U.S., working on the northwest coast of Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.  The story deals with the legend of a half-human, half-seal selkie and the fate of her descendants.  Moving to the Mexico/Texas border, Sayles directed Lone Star, a tale of race and history that proved to be his most commercially successful picture and garnered a second Academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay.  

Men With Guns, a road movie set in a strife-torn Latin American country, was shot on a very low budget in three different states in Mexico, with dialogue principally in Spanish and several indigenous languages.  It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best foreign-language film.  Limbo, released in 1999, was a story of three damaged people (played by David Strathairn, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Vanessa Martínez) who find each other in the extremes of the Alaskan wilderness.  It was invited to the Official Competition of the Cannes Film Festival and remains Sayles’ most controversial movie.

The year 2001 saw Sunshine State, boasting a stellar cast led by Edie Falco and Angela Bassett.  The film takes place during a festival week in a Florida coastal town about to be inundated by corporate tourism.  In 2003 Casa De Los Babys told the story of a group of American women waiting to adopt children in a South American country.  CASA featured Academy Award winners Marcia Gay Harden, Mary Steenburgen and Rita Moreno.

Throughout his career Sayles has continued to function as a screenwriter for hire, working with a “who’s-who” of American and international directors and writing over fifty scripts.  He received the John D. MacArthur Award, given to 20 Americans each year for their innovative work in diverse fields.  He is also recipient of the Eugene V. Debs Award, the John Steinbeck Award and the John Cassavettes Award.   He has acted in dozens of films, written songs for his own features, and served as executive producer on Alejandro Springall’s Santitos and Sundance Best Picture winner Girlfight, written and directed by Karyn Kusama. 

Silver City, released in 2004, marked his fourth collaboration with both actor Chris Cooper and Director of Photography Haskell Wexler.   Honeydripper, about the origins of rock and roll in the deep South, is the latest project.  Shot mostly in Greenville and Georgiana (boyhood home of Hank Williams) Alabama, the cast includes Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Stacey Keach, LisaGay Hamilton, Mary Steenburgen, Vondie Curtis Hall, Ruben Santiago Hudson, Sean Patrick Thomas, Kel Mitchell, Yaya DaCosta, R&B legend Mable John, singer-songwriter Ke’b Mo’ and Austin guitar sensation Gary Clark Jr..  The movie is, once again, independently financed, being produced without the safety net of a distribution deal, and full of the humor, drama and complex life of this most unpredictable of American directors.

Sayles was recently honored with the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Writer’s Guild of America. 

MAGGIE RENZI (Producer) 

Maggie Renzi has been John Sayles' creative partner since 1978 and she has produced nearly all of his movies. She has also acted in many of them. Renzi and Sayles were students together at Williams College in the early 1970s, and have been together since 1973.

Before becoming a fulltime producer Renzi had worked as a bookstore clerk, a pediatric receptionist, a substitute teacher, a casting assistant, a talent agent's assistant, and for two years as a salad chef in Southern California.

She began her acting career as a child at the Williamstown Theater Festival, where she continued to perform into her twenties.

Renzi began her professional association with Sayles when she played a leading role in his first film, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, where she was also Unit Manager and Assistant Editor.

For John Sayles, Maggie Renzi produced Lianna, The Brother from Another Planet, Matewan, City of Hope, Passion Fish, The Secret of Roan Inish, Lone Star, Men With Guns, Limbo, Sunshine State and Silver City.

Renzi produced Karyn Kusama's Girlfight and is Executive Producer with Sayles on the new Jewish/Mexican movie by Alejandro Springall, entitled Se Habla Yiddish or My Mexican Shivah.

DICK POPE, BSC (Cinematographer)

Dick Pope, BSC became interested in photography as a young boy, when his father gave him a box brownie camera and he began making portraits of his family and neighbors in Kent, England. A few years later, an uncle suggested a career as a cameraman. Pope began as a trainee at the Pathé Film Laboratory in London and then started crewing on movies before moving across to 16mm factual documentaries, first working as an assistant and then cameraman, for many companies including the BBC. He traveled the world, often to remote and inaccessible places including war zones, and also specialized in films about the planet’s threatened and disappearing indigenous tribes. Eventually he moved into drama via these documentaries and many music promos/concerts.

In 1990 he was asked by director Mike Leigh to photograph Life is Sweet, beginning a collaboration that has produced films including Naked, Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake. Pope has twice won the top prize, the Golden Frog, at Camerimage, The International Festival of the Art of Cinematography, for Vera Drake and Secrets & Lies, and in 2006 was honored with the Silver Frog at the same festival for The Illusionist. In the same year he photographed Man of the Year for director Barry Levinson and Honeydripper for director John Sayles. He has just wrapped on his eighth film with Mike Leigh and is about to start shooting Gurinder Chadha’s  Angus, Thongs and Full- Frontal Snogging for Paramount. In 2007 Dick Pope earned both an Oscar and American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Award nomination for The Illusionist.

His other cinema credits include: The Reflecting Skin, The Way of the Gun, Swept from the Sea, 13 Conversations About One Thing and Nicholas Nickleby,

MASON DARING (composer)

Film composer Mason Daring has explored many paths on the way to his current career -entertainment lawyer, folk singer, cabbie and truck driver, commercial director, and potential rock star among them. But his professional life has always returned to the world of music.

After getting his law degree, Daring served as legal counsel to first-time filmmaker John Sayles during the production of The Return of the Secaucus Seven. Sayles had heard Daring's recordings, and at the end of editing came to him with an offer to write the music score for the film - for a total budget of $700 dollars. The film was a critical success, and when Sayles started his next film, Lianna, he returned to Mason for both the legal and musical work. Daring turned down the legal work but eagerly accepted the job as composer. He has gone on to compose all the scores for the films of John Sayles, from The Brother From Another Planet to Honeydripper. While he has managed to leave the practice of law well behind him, he maintains his membership in the Massachusetts bar to this day.

Daring also established a record label, Daring Records (a sub-label of Rounder Records), as an outlet to release his film scores and other musical talents Daring felt deserved creative outlets of their own.

Other than the films of John Sayles, Daring’s scores include Music Of The Heart, The Old Curiosity Shop, The Great War, Prefontaine, Where The Heart Is, The Opposite Of Sex, Tru Confessions Say It Isn't So, Cold Heart and Wallace: Settin' The Woods On Fire

HOPE HANAFIN (Costume Designer)

Hope Hanafin was born in North Carolina, but raised in New York City, New York and San Diego, California. She earned her B.A. with Honors from Santa Clara University and an M.F.A. from New York University (NYU). She has designed costumes for numerous television movies, including Lackawanna Blues, Normal, A Lesson Before Dying and Geppetto--for which she won the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence for Costume Design for Television - Period/Fantasy and was nominated for an Emmy®. Her film work includes Because of Winn Dixie, Kazaam, House Arrest and After Dark, My Sweet.

TOBY CORBETT (Production Designer)

Toby Corbett, a three-time Emmy Award nominee, received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington where he studied painting with renowned African-American artist Jacob Lawrence and film theory with noted film scholar Richard Jameson.

After moving to New York City, his first significant work as a designer was an environmental lighting installation for performance artist Pooh Kaye at St. Marks Church.  Working Off-Broadway, he began a long association with the Manhattan Punchline and Riverwest Theatre in the Westbeth Arts Complex. Noted productions included: The Rivals with Larry Pine, Junemoon with Mercedes Reuhl, and Cap and Bells with Angela Pietropinto.

In 1990, he returned to Los Angeles to further his career as a production designer for television and film.  Highlights of his production design include Tracey Ullman’s Emmy award winning show for HBO, Tracey Takes On, The Cooler and Running Scared for writer- director Wayne Kramer and Silver City and Honeydripper for writer- director John Sayles.