John Sayles summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see John Sayles.

John Sayles, (born Sept. 28, 1950, Schenectady, N.Y., U.S.), U.S. film director and author. He graduated from Williams College and wrote short stories and novels, including Union Dues (1977), before becoming a screenwriter for Roger Corman. He made his directorial debut with the acclaimed Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980). He explored social and political issues in other thoughtful films such as Lianna (1982), Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), City of Hope (1991), Lone Star (1996), Sunshine State (2002), Honeydripper (2007), Amigo (2010), and Go for Sisters (2013), and he usually wrote his own screenplays. Sayles also directed the children’s movie The Secret of Roan Inish (1994). He was one of America’s most successful independent filmmakers. In addition, he continued to write fiction, and his later works included the novel Yellow Earth (2020).

directing Summary

Directing, the craft of controlling the evolution of a performance out of material composed or assembled by an author. The performance may be live, as in a theatre and in some broadcasts, or it may be recorded, as in motion pictures and the majority of broadcast material. The term is also used in

Analyze short fiction elements evidenced in “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Necklace,” and “The Magic Shop”

short story Summary

Short story, brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise

acting Summary

Acting, the performing art in which movement, gesture, and intonation are used to realize a fictional character for the stage, for motion pictures, or for television. (Read Lee Strasberg’s 1959 Britannica essay on acting.) Acting is generally agreed to be a matter less of mimicry, exhibitionism, or

novel Summary

Novel, an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting. Within its broad framework, the genre of the novel has encompassed an