Digging Deep into John Sayles’ "Matewan"

If it weren’t for RogerCorman, John Sayles may never have come to Hollywood. Back in the lateseventies, Roger was looking for a bright new—and inexpensive—screenwriter forone of his low-budget genre flicks. He assigned his longtime story editor, mygood friend Frances Doel, to comb through the best literary magazines, lookingfor a promising young master of prose fiction who could be converted into ascreenwriter. In Esquire she discovered Sayles, a youthful novelist andshort story writer who was eager to go west. His first screen credit was forthe scripting of Piranha, a darkly comic take on the über-popular Jawsthat featured, instead of one deadly giant fish, a whole lot ofdeadly tiny fish. He followed this with a screenplay for Julie Corman’s TheLady in Red, all the while immersing himself in the skills he’d need tosucceed as a film director. 

It was not long before Sayles applied his Cormanearnings to his own first film as a writer-director, 1980’s Return of theSecaucus 7. (White writing my biography, Roger Corman: Blood-SuckingVampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers, I was thrilled tospeak at length to Sayles about how the lessons he’d learned from Cormancontributed to his long career as a maker of truly independent films.)

 In the 1980’s, while writingincreasingly impressive scripts for others, Sayles continued to pursue his ownidiosyncratic career, exploring a wide range of genres. One of his greatestachievements has been 1987’s Matewan, a powerful drama about thereal-life struggle of West Virginia coal miners to form a union, in the face ofarmed resistance from their bosses.

Walking a fine line between the realistic and the mythic, Sayles captures thedownhome heroism of the striking miners as well as the stark beauty of theirsurroundings. (Legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who surely appreciatedthe script’s clear proletarian slant, was rewarded by the Academy with an Oscarnomination for this film.)

 Though Sayles’ feelings forthe union cause are self-evident, the central conflict in the film is hardly justblack-and-white. The striking West Virginia mine-workers (some younger thanfifteen) tend to start with a bigoted attitude not only toward theAfrican-American scabs who descend on the town of Matewan but also toward therecent Italian immigrants trying to make their home in this locale. And they’reall too willing to use violence to express their feelings. (Everyone, includingthe local housewives and a teenaged lay preacher, seems extremely familiar withfirearms.) This is a place, it’s made clear, that was founded on God and guns.Sayles himself has fun with the small role of the local minister: he’s appearedin many of his own movies, as well as in the films of oth

Over the years, Sayles hasdeveloped a small stock company of actors who return to his projects time andagain. Several of them, including Gordon Clapp and David Strathairn, have beenwith him since campus days at Williams College. Matewan also has a keyrole for Mary McDonnell: this was only her second film, three years before shefound fame and an Oscar nomination for her supporting part in Dances WithWolves. (In 1992, Sayles put her at the center of his Passion Fish,which brought her a Best Actress Oscar nom.) Late great James Earl Jones also playsa essential part in the Matewan action. But the most heroic character isthe union organizer, a deeply committed pacifist, played by Chris Cooper, atthe very start of his movie career.