Did the fact that you were an English-speaking person directing a Mexican crew in Spanish and that Slawomir's first language is Polish greatly impact the logistics of shot-blocking and filming?
Sayles: Not really. Slawomir's crew was very good and anticipated what he wanted, and he had an interpreter whenever he needed to try to explain something. What we found in Chiapas just as when we shot Matewan in West Virginia is that it's very easy to be isolated not only from the people in the big city, but also from those in the next hollow. Very often, the Indian village just 10 miles away over a mountain pass would be a totally different language group. In the scene where the men from the village are deciding with the priest whether to sacrifice themselves, run or fight, the actors spoke Tzotzil and the extras spoke Chol. The extras didn't have a clue as to what the Indian actors were saying. The actors spoke Spanish and the extras didn't, so I would have to explain the situation to the extras through an interpreter: I would speak Spanish and the interpreter would speak Chol. The extras were familiar with the situation [set forth in the film's plot], because they worked very close to the Guatemalan border, but didn't know what a movie was. They had heard of them, but nobody had ever seen a movie or a TV show. The only thing they could relate to the idea of doing a scene over and over again would be the Catholic mass.
Language wasn't really our problem, but rather the lack of time. We went in there fast and got a lot done, but having to climb up the side of a hill in the jungle for your next setup can take half an hour. We also had some weather problems: four days of torrential rain washed away one of our sets in Chiapas, which is a very mountainous state. When it rains there, it comes in cascades that's where all of Mexico's hydroelectric power comes from. Not only did we get four days of rain without a break, but we couldn't shoot the next day because the water was so high everywhere that it was deafening: we couldn't shoot sync sound. Our next shot was supposed to be by a pretty little stream, and by that point it was a raging torrent.
Mexico is not a country that makes a lot of movies, so the production people's experience level probably isn't what you would get on an equivalent-sized production in the United States. We hardly brought anyone down from the U.S. [in terms of crew], so it was pretty much like making a Mexican film. But $2.5 million is a healthy budget for a Mexican production. The cast and crew were really terrific, but it could still be tough down there. The phones don't always work, the banks aren't always open, and the roads aren't always good. In addition, the locations were difficult because half of them were in a state which was in revolution. But it didn't really affect us other than that sometimes our location people would get hung up behind a military barricade for a couple of hours. Certain locations, however, were just off-limits, not so much because of the confrontation between the Zapatistas and the government, but because the Catholics and the Evangelical Christians would be feuding in that particular town. The people in those places would tell us that it was just too tense to let anyone in from the outside in, because it would just cause additional trouble.
As a filmmaker, what inspires you to tackle stories set in distinct locales with very specific cultures?
Sayles: Different locales create different cultures: if you're in the desert, you're going to encounter a different culture than if you're in the mountains. Also, because film is a visual medium, the location you shoot in tells part of the story. John Ford kept going back to Monument Valley for that very reason. Most probably, my next movie, called Limbo, is going to be set in Alaska, which is a frontier that is just starting to be tamed. The state's frontier aspect means that there are still a lot more men there than women, and that really affects the culture.
Limbo is a funny hybrid it has elements of a Joseph Conrad story. It's about a fisherman who hasn't been to sea for years because as a young guy he was captain of a fishing boat that sank. A couple of his friends drowned, and he feels responsible. He then gets into a family situation with a woman who's up there on a tour she's a Ramada Inn singer. Her daughter works at the same restaurant as the fisherman, and has a crush on him. Together, they form this strange family. It's also about people dealing with the world changing in such a way that what they used to do be it fishing, mining coal or cutting down trees is becoming more restricted; there's now less of a chance to make a living at it as an individual. Industrial tourism is coming in, so parts of Alaska are turning into places like Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. These once very rough towns now have tour boats pull up, and a lot of geriatric people get off of them and go to the former whorehouse, which now has a gift shop. The film is quite complicated. One of the problems with my movies is that it's often hard to say what they're about in less than two sentences. I think that makes them more interesting, but much harder to sell.
