PORTLAND, Maine — Chris Cooper and John Sayles drove up to Portland together a few weeks ago to attend the Bates Film Festival.
They’ve been friends for nearly 40 years, but since Cooper is an Academy Award-winning actor who’s performed in such films as “American Beauty,” “Seabiscuit,” and “The Bourne Identity” and Sayles is an acclaimed indie writer/director (“Matewan,” “The Brother from Another Planet," "The Secret of Roan Inish”), they don’t get to see each other all that often.
When they do hang out, “we just catch up with each other,” Cooper said.
What do they talk about?
“Movies. Politics. What’s going on with their dogs,” Sayles said.
“It’s pretty regular stuff,” Cooper added.
They came to Maine for the festival’s screening of “Lone Star,” a contemporary western that came out in 1996. Cooper played the lead role as a sheriff in a small town in Texas on the Mexican border. Sayles wrote and directed, picking up an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay.
Many of the issues “Lone Star” deals with—immigration, racism, the fuzzy and often shifting lines between myth and truth—remain remarkably fresh 28 years after the film’s release.
“The good thing is the movie was about something that really needs to be talked about,” Sayles said. “The bad thing is we haven’t moved very far on border [issues]. In some cases, we’ve gone backwards.”
Looking back at how he explored those issues leaves Sayles with satisfaction and disappointment.
“There are a bunch of things I’ve dealt with in my movies that I wish weren’t problems anymore,” he said.
Cooper has an interesting take on the stories Sayles has told on film, stories that invariably comment on the world around us: “We always say John’s biggest problem is he’s about 10, 15 years ahead of his time on so many subjects.”
Note: Our conversation with Chris Cooper and John Sayles has two parts. The first segment airs June 10, and the second part airs the next day on June 11.