Casa De Los Babys
An Interview with Director
John Sayles
His filmmaking career
is built on the independent spirit. There are few directors who
can hold a candle to John Sayles deep and wide understanding of
human hardship. John has made films which deal with both great
to small social and personal problems; problems that are equally
ubiquitous to the rich and the poor, which affect third world
countries and your backyard. He is an anomaly in the filmmaking
landscape; always working with very small budgets and delivering
films which on most accounts are very uncommercial and screenwriting
when not directing his own work. He is best known for writing
and directing “City of Hope,” “Passion Fish,”
and “Lone Star.” “Casa de los Babys” marks
John’s fourteenth film. It is a film that brings together
a group of women, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daryl Hannah, Marcia
Gay Harden, Susan Lynch, Mary Steenburgen and Lily Taylor, while
they anxiously wait to adopt a child somewhere in South American.
This film is yet another bold display of John’s beautiful
insight into the human heart. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure
of meeting John and talk about “Casa de los Babys.”
 Why
was this movie shot in four weeks? Was there a time constraint?
John:
This was something I had wanted to do for some time. I had written
a very long short story, about 75 pages. It was too long to be
in a magazine and too short to be a novel or a novella. After
I looked at it again, one of the things that really attracted
me to it was that there are so many movies about groups of men
and so few about groups of women.
The issue
of foreign adoption is common to many places, so why did you choose
South America as the place for this film?
John:
I think because I am more familiar with the culture there. I felt
like I didn’t want to have it be any specific country and
having been to a bunch of Latin American countries I knew the
culture. I speak Spanish, and I felt like I could have half of
this movie in another language and still communicate directly
with the actors. I have on occasion directed actors who didn’t
speak either of the languages I know; I would prefer not to have
that barrier.
What kind
of research did you do concerning adoption agencies?
John:
I approached it through the perspective of a would be adoptive
parent and got the adoption rules for every Latin American country,
from Mexico down to Tierra Del Fuego. In some countries no foreign
adoptions are allowed. Some have very stringent rules, and in
others the rules aren't as stringent but there may be a long residency
requirement. At the time that I did the research, the country
that had the residency requirements closest to ‘Casa de
los Babys’ was Chile.
Did you
find that a lot of American women go to these countries to adopt?
John:
In Latin America, the women seemed to come mostly from the United
States. When there's a long residency period and one of them has
to stay down there for several weeks, it's usually the women.
It's easier for them to take the time off work. The men may fly
down every weekend, or every other weekend, or when the lawyer
says the process is getting serious.
What do
you see in this desperate struggle to adopt?
John:
I know so many people that have adopted children, both domestically
and from other countries. There's this thing that they want to
be parents. Most are about to get their first child. The character
that Lili Taylor plays is somebody who could probably conceive,
but has decided that there are lots of kids in the world that
need adopting and, since she doesn't have a partner, she's decided
to do it that way.
What about
the business aspect of adopting children?
John: It's one of the
reasons the film is split into two worlds. One is that desert-island
world these women occupy where they don't speak Spanish. And then
there's the world of the people who live there. These two worlds
agree on one thing, which is that it would be great for these
children to have parents. But there's a resentment and shame there.
"Why can't we take care of our own kids? What's wrong with
our culture and what's wrong with our economy that foreigners
can come and take our kids?" Sometimes there's absolute economic
desperation, which is sometimes compounded by racism. Many of
the kids who are up for adoption are darker skinned or more Indian
looking than the people who have the money to adopt them. The
people in the United States may have gotten past that particular
prejudice but some of the people in these countries may not have.
Some people are horrified at the idea of these children being
taken off to another place, wondering how they will know their
culture or religion.
Can you
talk about the bureaucratic aggravations the women encounter?
John:
Those are different in every country. Because they vary so much,
that's one of the reasons I didn't say which country the film
takes place in. In some countries, the bureaucratic organization
is efficiently handled but the process may take a long time. If
the people are serious about this kid, they have to have their
shit together enough to send at least one of the parents down
here to stick around for a couple of months. It's not really about
milking money out of them. It's about commitment. If they are
committed enough to have one of our children, we want them to
come down here and they are going to learn something about the
country and go through this bedding period. And if they can't
handle that and don't have that kind of patience, then they're
not getting one of our kids.
What is
the desperation these women have to adopt?
John:
Each of these women has some kind of issue, and some are very
common among parents. Daryl Hannah's character is someone who's
given birth three times but has suffered the trauma of all of
them dying. Obviously there's something in her DNA that doesn't
bode well for her having another child biologically. As a result,
some of these women have these feelings of failure. Or it could
just be money. Some may have planned on adopting when the economy
was good, and now that they've lost their jobs they're afraid
that the agencies may bump them if they find out. Others worry
about being put to the bottom of a pile because they don't have
husbands. There's anxiety always if you are a single mother adopting.
How was
it working with these talented women?
John:
It was a lot of fun, on both the Mexican and American side. We
were able to house all the American actresses together so they
got to do some of the stuff their characters do in the film on
their days off. It was nice for them, because it's very rare for
American actresses to be on the set of a movie at the same time.
It's usually two at most. They got to talk about their lives and
their careers and do a little bonding off-screen. And it was fun
to see them work together, giving them a cage to wander around
in and see how they reacted to each other within the framework
of the film. And on the Mexican side, we were really lucky to
get some really talented actors. Some are very well-known, like
Pedro Armendáriz Jr., and some are getting to be well-known
theatre actors, like Bruno Bichir. Vanessa Martinez, who played
the maid Asunción, is someone who I've worked with before.
How do
you prepare the actors?
John:
I don't do a read-through and I don't do rehearsals. I really
rely on the actors to bring a lot to the situation. I send everyone
a biography, in Spanish or English depending on their character,
which gives them a back story. For instance, the American women
went in knowing a little more about who their husbands were than
what you find out in the film. I would write in the biographies
how long they've been there and what their medical problems were,
some of the stuff that's not necessarily revealed in the film
just so they have a little more ammunition when they're thinking
about their characters.
There's
a moving scene in the film where Susan Lynch and Vanessa Martinez
talk to each other despite their obvious language barrier. Can
you talk about that?
John:
I'm always interested in the stuff that separates people, whether
it's race, class or sex. Language is also a big separator. These
are two people that struggle to get passed it, but don't really
understand the details. They sense some kind of affinity for each
other. These are two women that would probably be very good friends
if they spoke the same language or were in the same place. I told
Susan Lynch that her character probably came to the United States
and cleaned hotel rooms and did the kind of jobs that Vanessa's
character does in the film. They're working class women and they're
both Catholics. But, more important they're on the same wavelength.
When you're
brought in to fine-tune something like “The Alamo,”
how do you navigate through another writer's script?
John:
As a screenwriter, you get a mandate. ‘We've got a story
that's about to start shooting, but this character needs some
back-story. You've got three days.’ It could be that small
a mandate. When I take a job, I really talk to the people who
are hiring me about where they want me to go with it. If it's
a place I don't think it's a place it should go or if I don't
think I'd do a good job of taking it there, I don't take the job.
There's a certain amount of economics and politics to it, but
the main thing for me is that you're helping someone tell their
story. I end up working a lot harder when I write for other people.
I do more drafts, I have more meeting. I do more research. Because
I'm helping them articulate their story but you're just never
going to be as emotionally involved as you are with your own scripts.
What are
you working on now?
John:
It's called ‘Silver City,’ a murder mystery set in
the middle of a governmental campaign in a western state…We
need $5 or $6 million. But even that kind of money is hard for
us to raise. Independent filmmakers as well known as myself haven't
worked in three or four years. Sometimes you finish one movie
and you don't know if you're going to make another one. Lucky
for me, I have this other bread-earning career as a screenwriter.
If you have any questions,
or comments, you can write me at jax@latinoreviw.com.
Casa
De Los Babys Opens September 19, 2003 — Los Angeles/New
York; expands to other cities at later dates
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