By Phoebe Flowers
Film Writer
Posted September 20 2004
In Silver City, which opened Friday, veteran filmmaker John Sayles has crafted
an intensely pointed satire of President Bush without ever actually mentioning
him by name.
On the surface, the movie is a noir about a journalist-turned-private eye
(Danny Huston) tracking down a mysterious dead body. But what you really come
away remembering is the stunningly funny performance by Chris Cooper
(Adaptation), who plays a bumbling, inarticulate, conservative gubernatorial
candidate named Dickie Pilager. Any similarities between Pilager and Bush are
completely intentional.
What's most interesting about the movie, which was rushed through production --
and self-financed -- to get to theaters in advance of the November election, is
that its focus is on a political issue that has largely gotten lost in the
post-Sept. 11 landscape: the environment.
The story also has roots in Florida; Sayles first conceived of it while
shooting Sunshine State here amid the 2000 election fracas. And the final,
indelible shot in Silver City was actually filmed at a pond in Hollywood.
During a recent visit to South Florida to host a special screening of Silver
City for the Broward Sierra Club, the 53-year-old Sayles (Men With Guns, Lone
Star) and his longtime producer and partner, Maggie Renzi, sat down to talk
about one really great actor, and the personal politics that drove their new
film, which they characterize as "partisan for democracy."
Let's talk about how amazing Chris Cooper is.
John Sayles: We had originally been thinking of Chris for the role [as a
ruthless businessman] Kris Kristofferson plays. And, as the cast started coming
together, Maggie kept reminding me, "You know, Chris does this George Bush
thing, to freak his wife out."
Maggie Renzi: To torture his wife.
JS: And I started thinking, you know, it probably would work better and be
funnier in the long run if we went with just a good serious straight actor,
rather than someone who's known as a comic actor. Because I wanted the
character to have some weight, like, you know, he really could be dangerous.
Or, he really could be governor. Instead of something that seemed more like an
impression.
Do you think that Dickie Pilager is basically a bad or good guy?
JS: He's not very ... as [Tim Roth's character, an underground journalist]
said, he's a true believer. ... He does believe what he's saying. It's just
that he's not the originator of it.
One of the questions I want to ask with the movie, and I think it's one we have
to ask in every election, above a certain level: Do we expect our politicians
to be the guys who can think up policy, who can think up a law? Who can
actually read a bill and understand it? Or, are they spokespeople? It's like on
the TV news. Do we expect the news reader, who's very good looking, to actually
know where Zambia is? Or just pronounce it properly, because they had a session
where they told them how to pronounce it?
MR: Do we want our leaders not to be readers, not to be thinkers? This notion
that Dickie, like George Bush, is just a regular guy -- it's not good enough,
to be the leader of a country, and to be one of the leaders of the world. You
got to have more chops than that. You've got to be better than just that fellow
you drink with at the bar.
The root of this movie came when you were shooting Sunshine State in Florida in
the midst of the 2000 election. I'm interested in how the story evolved since
Bush took office, and what's happened since then.
JS: People on the crew and in the community around Jacksonville talked to us
about, first of all -- well, you know, the true story down here wasn't the
chads, it was the African-American voters not getting to vote. And it wasn't an
accident. The second part of it, which really got me thinking, was: And how
come this isn't a national scandal? How come this is like not even the B story,
it's like the D story? ...
And I started thinking about mainstream press, and how come I read things all
the time -- you know, I read books about politics, or recent history -- how
come I'm reading this four years later, four years after something could have
been done about it, if it's something pretty outrageous that should not have
happened? ...
I thought about doing something about electoral politics, and how you can't
say, "Oh, it doesn't make any difference" between any two [politicians]. You
may not like either of them, but there are differences.
And in the policy, in Silver City, there is the environment, there is
immigration, there's campaign financing, there's worker safety. There are four
or five real deep issues that we have to deal with in this country that whoever
gets in will have different feelings on. And, depending on who financed them,
they may be working for us, or they may be working for people who don't want
any regulation. ...
About a year ago, Maggie and I were talking about, "Well, geez, we've got to
get people thinking about these things, and connecting these dots." Because
there's this disjointedness that I find, which is, things are reported as
natural phenomenon. When, in fact, the minimum wage didn't stay at the same
level for another four years. It stayed there because somebody wanted it to
stay there, and somebody fought really hard. The rules didn't change; somebody
changed the rules. Somebody deregulated.
MR: But it was really important that people be able to make the connection
immediately to Bush. Because we didn't go through all this just to have it be
sorta-kinda-maybe-might. It absolutely should make you think about Bush. ...
Basically, about a year ago, it felt illegal to criticize the president. And it
certainly -- I mean, I wear a ["Re-Defeat Bush"] button. It was a lot scarier
to wear a button a year ago. I wanted the chance, at least, for people to go
into a room, even if it was a dark room, together, to ridicule the president.
Because ridicule is a great part of a political process. It has always been,
ever since we had anything that resembled a democracy.
JS: One thing that happens with feature films is that they take a long time to
make. They're usually lagging behind what's going on in the culture. I was
talking to somebody the other day, and I said, "Well, what if Platoon had come
out in 1969? Would it have been allowed to come out?"
MR: Well, you see how hard they've tried to marginalize these films [critical
of Bush and/or the Republican party]. Also, I think, there's a great
misunderstanding about all these films. It's not like we all got in a room
together, about a year ago, and said, "OK, let's go."
One of the things I find interesting about this movie is that it's so
environmentally focused. It seems that because of the terror and war issues,
people aren't even paying attention to what the environmental policies of this
administration are.
JS: The EPA, under Bush, has really been about, "Well, here's all this stuff
that previous administrations have set up, and that the American public wanted
some kind of watchdog on these groups -- we don't believe in any of that. So
let's get somebody in there who will open up lands that are supposed to belong
to the American people, to developers, or oil drillers, or whatever. Let's get
somebody in there who will find a way to excuse pollution."
People who have already been convicted of polluting illegally, and fined, are
getting their fines lessened, or taken away totally. So it really has been not,
"Oh, we're going to sit on our hands for a while and not do anything." It's
been, "Let's do everything in the opposite direction. Let's take back some
territory."
MR: This war has been a massive distraction. And certainly since Sept. 11, this
administration has been able to use terrorism as this terrible, sort of
suffocating presence in our lives, so that everyone is afraid to think of
anything else. I think it makes people feel helpless.
JS: Florida is a huge battleground ... partly because the exploitation of this
state has been so egregious.
MR: Florida matters. Florida's ecosystem helps the whole world to breathe. ...
A cool thing is that I think this movie is going to get attention to those
issues in a way I think Sunshine State, which is in many ways worthy of the
same attention from environmentalists, never did. I'm glad that we get another
crack at that.
http://www.southflorida.com/movies
sfl-lisilvercitysep20,0,2727397.story?coll=sfe-movies-headlines
--
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas -- that says, fool
me once, shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
http://www.diymedia.net/audio/mp3/tdntb-bushwack2.mp3
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