[ John Sayles on his labor-uprising masterpiece Matewan, as it
enters the Criterion Collection.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SAYLES: "IF THEY CAN DO IT BY BUSTING A UNION,
THEY’LL DO IT”  
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Dan Kois
October 28, 2019
Slate
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_ John Sayles on his labor-uprising masterpiece Matewan, as it enters
the Criterion Collection. _

John Sayles' Matewan (1987), Slate.com

 

“There’s but two sides to this world: them that work and them that
don’t,” the union organizer Joe Kenehan says to the hardscrabble
coal miners of West Virginia in _MATEWAN_, the indie-film hero John
Sayles’ vivid, warm portrait of the events that touched off the
great West Virginia “coal war” of 1920. Released in
1987, _Matewan_ was frankly leftist in its politics, portraying the
union as an unalloyed good in a town being exploited by greedy coal
barons and menaced by company thugs. But it’s also a thoughtful
exploration of how difficult it can be for workers of different races
and backgrounds to find solidarity.

Sayles shot the film in West Virginia with a cast that, typical for a
Sayles film, is packed top to bottom with faces you’ll recognize
from the long and successful careers they later enjoyed, including
Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn, and Ken Jenkins. (The only
honest-to-God star at the time in the film was James Earl Jones.) But
watching it now, two faces stick out: Chris Cooper, who plays Kenehan,
made his screen debut in _Matewan_, and he’s remarkable—wise,
empathetic, brave, and sexy as hell. And as a teenage preacher, the
singer Will Oldham—only 16 during filming—makes a mighty
impression.

_Matewan_ comes to the Criterion Collection this week
[[link removed]], and I spoke to
writer-director Sayles over the phone about how _Matewan_ happened,
Will Oldham’s acting career, the Writer’s Guild, and whether the
long decline of labor unions in America can ever be turned around.

_This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity._

DAN KOIS: SO MUCH OF THE STORY OF YOUR CAREER IS HOW YOU FINANCE YOUR
FILMS AND KEEP THEM INDEPENDENT. I’M CURIOUS WHERE THE FINANCING
FOR _MATEWAN_ CAME FROM. WAS IT HARD TO GET FINANCING FOR A MOVIE
ABOUT ORGANIZED LABOR?

JOHN SAYLES: Yeah, we thought we had financing. One company said,
“Oh, we can take a bank loan and finance the film,” back when we
thought we could make it for under $2 million. And we were _one
day_ from flying to West Virginia to start preproduction, we’d
already mostly cast the movie, when they called and they said, “You
know that minor detail about the bank loan? Well, they just turned
down our bank loan.” So a couple years went by—

A COUPLE _YEARS_?

A couple years, yeah.

Oh my God.

I made _Brother From Another Planet_, and a couple Bruce Springsteen
videos in the meantime, so it wasn’t a total disaster. I
made _Brother From Another Planet_ with my own money, for about
$300,000. [Sayles has long been a screenwriter-for-hire and won a
MacArthur “genius” grant in 1983, which helped.] And then we were
able to, with me putting in some money, a couple independent investors
putting in some money, and Cinecom, which was a distribution company
at that time, putting in some money, do _Matewan_ for
three-something, I think it was like $3.6 million back then, which was
still very low-budget. But with the actors working for scale, and me
shooting only about, I think, seven weeks, it was doable.

So you had cast most of the actors before _Brother From Another
Planet_, when the script was already done, and then you just sort of
crossed your fingers that they would remain available?

Yeah, well, what happened is, of course, we, there were a few parts
that we hadn’t cast, including two of the big leads, which were the
kid, Danny, and Joe Kenehan.

CHRIS COOPER.

Chris had come in the first time and had never at that point done a TV
show or a movie. He’d done some theater in New York. We probably saw
25, 30 actors for that, and Chris was the first actor to come in,
which, when that many people are coming in, is an enormous
disadvantage if you’re not known. But we really liked him, and it
was like, “Boy, that first guy was really good.” And so then two
years later, I think it was about two years later, we again started
casting. And once again, Chris Cooper was the first person who came in
to read for Joe, and finally it was, “He’s never been in anything,
but he’s the right guy. He’s so good, and he’s the right guy for
this part.”

For Danny, we got Will Oldham. He was a kid at the time. He had done a
couple plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville and was recommended to
us.

And then we thought, for scale, we’re never going to get James Earl
Jones, so we were looking for a James Earl Jones _type_ for a long
time. We were already down [in West Virginia] doing preproduction when
we finally just gave up and said, “Well, just take a shot at James
Earl Jones.” And he called me in the production office one day and
said, “I’d like to do this.”

RIGHT. I CAN JUST IMAGINE GETTING THAT CALL AND HEARING THE ACTUAL
JAMES EARL JONES ON THE LINE.

Yeah, it was like, “Darth Vader’s on the phone.”

WILL OLDHAM IS REMARKABLE TO WATCH IN THIS MOVIE. HE’S SO BABY-FACED
AND SO PASSIONATE. I’M SURE HE’S HAPPY WITH THE CAREER THAT HE’S
HAD, BUT IT MAKES ME WISH HE ACTED MORE. BETWEEN THIS AND _OLD JOY_,
I FEEL LIKE THERE’S THIS GREAT LOST AMERICAN ACTOR OUT THERE.

Yeah, right after that he did one or two smaller things—I think
maybe even a TV movie about a kid in a well.  And then he went to
Brown for a year, and then was really just kind of more into the
music. I think he’s one of those people who says, “If I wouldn’t
watch this, why do I want to be in it?” Which really limits your
acting choices.

IN THE FILM, YOU REALLY DRAMATIZE HOW THESE THREE DISPARATE
GROUPS—THE BLACK MINERS, THE ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS, AND THE
LOCALS—ARE PLAYED AGAINST EACH OTHER BY THE COMPANY, HOW THEY BAND
TOGETHER, THE WAYS THAT THEY STILL KEEP SECRETS FROM EACH OTHER EVEN
AS A UNION. WAS THAT ALL PART OF THE MATEWAN STORY AS YOU WERE
RESEARCHING IT, OR WERE THOSE CONFLICTS THAT YOU CREATED FOR THE
PURPOSE OF THE FILM?

There was a very overt policy by the mine owners. It was called a
“judicious mixture”: There’s this cancer of unionism going
around the world, and how do we avoid it? Well, one way we can avoid
it is by having a judicious mixture of local hillbilly miners and
immigrants, whether they’re Greek or Italian or from wherever, and
blacks who were brought up from Alabama. And those people will never
get together. In fact, we’ll keep them in separate housing and put
mine guards in between them.

What was amazing to me as I did the research on this is that, despite
that, the conditions were so bad that people who did have prejudices
and suspicions against each other snuck around the mine guards and
found some kind of solidarity. But one thing that you do see is it’s
just like in our country: The strands are woven together but not that
tightly. So, when maybe the crisis is over or gets to a certain point,
they can start to unravel a little bit.

THE EARLY ’80S, WHEN YOU WERE WRITING _MATEWAN_, AND THEN THE LATE
’80S, WHEN IT CAME OUT, NOW LOOK LIKE THE EARLY STAGES OF A LONG
DECLINE IN THE POWER AND EFFECTIVENESS OF ORGANIZED LABOR IN THIS
COUNTRY. WHAT DO YOU THINK RIGHT NOW ABOUT THE STATE OF WORKERS IN
AMERICA AND THE STATE OF WORKER-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS?

They’re pretty bad, worker-management relations. The main power that
a union had was that you had to do it in this one place. The material
that was basic to the industry was in this place—the iron ore, the
coal, the cotton, whatever. One of the things that’s happened is
that, basically, we don’t mine that much coal anymore, we don’t
make that much steel anymore. Manufacturers are going to make things
as cheaply as they can and try to make as much profit as they can. And
if they can do it by busting a union, they’ll do it. And if they can
do it by moving to a place where there isn’t a union … I come from
Schenectady, New York, which was where the General Electric Co. made
most of its stuff. And building by building, starting right about when
I was in high school, they started moving stuff overseas. And all
those big buildings are empty now.

Even the film business—we’re actually one of the last unionized
industries, and more and more films shoot in Canada or elsewhere
overseas. I think when they made the _Hatfields &
McCoys_ miniseries, they shot in Romania
[[link removed]] or
Bulgaria or something like that. “They have mountains. We’ll take
all the actors over, and the extras will be Romanians or Albanians or
whatever.”

I do think that if the gap between the haves and haves-not doesn’t
get much better, you’re going to see more efforts to organize the
service economy. It’s going to be really tough. I mean, if you work
for a Walmart, you got to watch a couple hours of anti-union
propaganda
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to get the job. And they have closed down outlets that were about to
be unionized just to not let the cancer have a precedent.

John Sayles casts his ballot on Aug. 7, 1988, in New York, as the
Writers Guild of America voted on a tentative contract to end a
22-week strike.

THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA IS IN THE MIDST OF A LONG LABOR ACTION
DEALING WITH AGENCIES. WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THAT? DID YOU FIRE YOUR
AGENT, AS SO MANY WRITERS DID, IN APRIL?

Yeah. My agent is taking care of deals that were already made, that
were still in process before that, but not looking for other work. So
I haven’t had a job, a new job, for quite a while, and that’s just
kind of loyalty to the union. I personally don’t think that the
membership was informed or kept in the loop enough about this
particular strike. I don’t think it’s especially popular. But
you’re in a union, you’re not always going to be striking for
something that affects you personally.

RIGHT, THAT’S THE POINT.

I’m pretty marginal. I’m definitely marginal as a director, and
somewhat marginal as a writer. The nice thing is, I can always work
for myself. So I’ve written two novels in the last four years,
one’s about to come out in February, and I tend to get a lot of work
done during writers guild strikes.

YEAH. IT’S INTERESTING THAT YOU SAY YOU FEEL LIKE THE MEMBERSHIP WAS
NOT INFORMED OR KEPT IN THE LOOP ENOUGH. WATCHING JOE KENEHAN DO ALL
THAT LEGWORK TO TELL EVERYONE WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE AND MAKE SURE
EVERYONE IS ON THE SAME PAGE—THE GRUNT WORK OF ORGANIZING IS NOT
GLAMOROUS, BUT THIS MOVIE SEEMED LIKE AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE IT CLEAR HOW
IMPORTANT THAT IS.

Because unions’ hands are tied by legal restrictions right now,
you’re going to see things like the wildcat strike by the teachers
in West Virginia. It’s not necessarily that the union thought that
the strike was a bad idea, but if they did it, the union could get
fined an enormous about of money. I don’t think they met secretly
with the wildcatters, and they may have had some differences, but I
don’t think that the official union was too unhappy with the
membership for that wildcat strike.

But sometimes the needs of the overall membership might be disastrous
for one or two locals. And the needs of one or two locals might not be
met by the organization. Whenever an organization grows to that size,
it can’t always serve everybody equally all the time. Or take the
film industry: I’m in four guilds, craft guilds—the editors guild,
the writers guild, the screen actors guild, and the directors guild,
and none of our contracts come up at the same time, and we can’t
strike in sympathy with each other. So they’re able to have a
situation where, when the writers strike, the actors are pissed off at
the writers instead of supporting them.

BUT IT’S JUST ONE BIG UNION THE WHOLE WORLD OVER, AS YOUR NARRATOR
SAYS AT THE END.

Well, that’s something that you’re—you got to get into Elizabeth
Warren and totally revamping laws, as well as people’s thinking. And
that has worked in certain situations for a certain period of time,
but it really hasn’t caught on anywhere permanently.

DO YOU THINK THERE’S ANY HOPE FOR AMERICA THAT IT CAN SOMEDAY?

I think you’d have to have the kind of shock and awe of some kind of
depression for people to be that bold. Right now, you’re risking the
little bit that you have. It’s like my movie, _Limbo
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of _Limbo_is that most people will stay in limbo because their fear
of hell outweighs their hope for heaven. And they’re willing to keep
treading water, whether it’s a bad relationship or a bad government
or a bad neighbor situation or you hate your boss. It’s not that
easy to say, “Oh, I’ve got three kids and a mortgage to pay off
and I’m going to go out on strike.” It’s often easier to stay in
limbo if you don’t know that you’re going to win. 

_DAN KOIS is an editor and writer at Slate. He’s the author of How
to Be a Family
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co-author of The World Only Spins Forward
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