DF: Your movies tend to have a down-home atmosphere and are far less flashy than films coming out of Hollywood. Why?
JS: The main reason is I started out as a fiction writer. So most of my ideas, unlike Hollywood movies, don't come from other movies. In Hollywood, you have to be aware of other movies and who your audience is. When I come up with the subjects and the characters, I'm not thinking about movies. Hollywood movies have to attract hundreds of millions of people even to bother to get them made, so they have to make a movie that doesn't bother anyone. I don't worry about that.
DF: You've consistently had to struggle to find financing both to get your films made and to get them distributed and promoted. What have you learned about that over the years?
JS: Anytime you're making a movie that is not a teen comedy or Spider-Man, it's risky. We've never gotten money from a studio, and when you're looking outside the studio system, that gets pretty quirky. The money that I've made back from previous movies and from screenwriting goes to finance the financing. Looking for funding takes a lot of plane rides and long-distance phone calls. Honeydripper we made for US$5 million, which is really low for a period movie as ambitious as it is.
DF: What is your favorite film that you've made?
JS: I don't have a favorite film. It's more like some of the experiences were more fun. Certainly shooting (1999's Limbo) in Alaska was fun. And we had a great time in West Virginia with Matewan. Our bond with the community there was pretty strong. They really got into the movie. With Sunshine State we got to live on the beach in condos.
DF: Why did you decide to premiere Honeydripper at Proctor's?
JS: It's such a beautiful theater. One of the things we have to do with this film is create our own buzz and distribute the film ourselves. We are competing with a lot of movies this time of year. In the next two months, we'll do 17 different cities. At each one, we'll do a different event. In Boston, I'll read from a short story book. At some of the others, we'll have a Honeydripper all-star band, with some of the musicians from the film.
DF: All your films have a moral theme, and often depict an underdog facing a sociological force. Is this a conscious tactic?
JS: It has to do with how you see the world. For me, drama is conflict. A lot of the conflict people go through isn't wars, it's more of an ethical or moral conflict. I don't always know how I feel about the characters and the decisions they make. Like with the current writers' strike - some of them will go back to work, and some will have reasons you'll be sympathetic to. To me, those are the kind of dramatic situations I want to make films about.
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