Return of the Secaucus Seven (US 1980)

I guess there has always been an ‘independent’ American cinema (most famously represented by the work of John Cassavetes and before him various avant-garde film artists such as Maya Deren) but the types of films which had the most impact ‘institutionally’, partly through replacing ‘European art cinema’ as the alternative to mainstream Hollywood in arthouse cinemas, first appeared in the form of the politically conscious cinema of John Sayles in 1980. Sales was born in 1950 and when he left university he went on to be nominated for two awards for his second novel Union Dues in 1977 before joining that group of filmmakers who enrolled in the Roger Corman school of exploitation cinema. Sayles wrote screenplays for some of the best Corman-produced films including Piranha, Alligator and The Lady in Red. Starting in 1978 Sayles developed the practice he used for many years – using the cheques from his ‘commercial’ work to fund his own self-produced independent films. Return of the Secaucus Seven was made for $30-40,000 and its immediate success helped to kick-start a new kind of independent cinema.

What I think was important was the way that Sayles was able to keep control over his films and filmmaking. Once he had demonstrated what could be achieved, other directors found themselves in an institutional context in which new funding became available for independent films – money which was invested by the new distributors of films on video cassette in the 1980s. In the early 1980s Sayles was joined by two other directors who would also have sustainable careers. Jim Jarmusch’s second feature Stranger than Paradise was successful in 1984 and Spike Lee had a similar debut success to Sayles (but with much bigger box-office returns) with She’s Gotta Have It in 1985. Jarmusch and Lee, two NYU graduates, made their films for less than $200,000. By 1985 Sayles had already made four features including his one brush with a major studio over their financial control on Baby It’s You (1983) – which convinced him of the need to maintain his own control. There were many other ‘American independents’ in this period but most only managed a handful of films and it is this trio who found ways to pursue their talents in a way to that allowed them to preserve their authorial control. In 1989 Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape won the Cannes Palme d’Or, establishing the American independent idea on the international stage and ushering in the commercial peak of the independent sector – which was sustained until the early successes of Quentin Tarantino and the arrival of the Weinsteins created the monster that would devour its own mother. After Pulp Fiction in 1994, American cinema changed. Ironically, John Sayles made several of his best films in the mid-1990s but the low budget, socially aware cinema of the 1980s was over.

The ‘Secaucus’ of Sayles’ first title refers to a small town in New Jersey and the ‘Seven’ are college friends in the late 1960s, on their way to a demonstration/march in Washington, who are taken in by the local police and spend a night in custody. They remember this ten years later when they meet for an informal reunion weekend. We only learn what the title means towards the end of the film when something similar happens again. At first sight the film has generic markers that might be related to Sayles’ work with Corman. The ‘seven’ appear in the credits in a set of ‘mugshots’ and as the story develops we realise that this is one of those ‘old college friends meet’ narratives that will be multi-stranded in some way so that we follow a series of stories related to different characters. I was thinking about this and one of the novels that sprang to mind was Mary McCarthy’s The Group which was adapted as a film directed by Sidney Lumet in 1963. But that narrative dealt with eight middle-class women graduating from college and heading to New York to live eventful lives with husbands and lovers. In that respect it was like many British narratives about reunions (usually of men) who have been to the same public school/Oxbridge college/army regiment etc. Sayles’ narrative is immediately different in involving a wider range of social backgrounds and in locating the reunion in the town where one of the seven grew up. I’m not sure how equivalent the experiences are, but the same events in the UK would refer to the cohorts of working-class and lower middle-class students who were able to get to universities in the 1950s and 1960s and who became the politically active students of 1968-73. Later, the same narrative idea would be taken up by Lawrence Kasdan to produce the mainstream Hollywood success The Big Chill in 1983. But Kasdan’s would be more middle-class students now in corporate/prestige professional jobs.

Later Sayles’ films have been criticised for having somewhat rambling narratives that don’t have the same ‘drive’ as Hollywood and this has been seen as a weakness in the Sayles approach – implying that by trying to do so many jobs himself he spreads himself too thinly or that he is too indulgent of his own creativity. If he didn’t edit or write his films they would be ‘tighter’. I can see the logic in this but I’m willing to overlook any ‘failings’ if it means he keeps down the cost and keeps control more effectively. In Return of the Secaucus Seven he takes an acting role himself as the slightly older guy with a wife and three small children whose role is marginal and symbolic – he’s in the situation that everyone else will have to accept or fight against in the next few years. His connection to the seven is that he was the guy who dominated the others in the local high school where Mike was a student and is now a teacher. A third character from the town is Ron, a real ‘grease monkey’ and car nut played by an actor who will become a regular for Sayles, David Strathairn. Mike is living in this small New Hampshire town with Katie, played by Sayles’ real life partner Maggie Renzi. These are two of the seven. The other couple in the group are in the process of splitting up – Maura and Jeff. Then there’s Frances training to be a doctor, ‘JT’ the would be singer-songwriter and Irene who works as a speechwriter for a senator in Washington. She brings along her workmate and current boyfriend Chip. He’s a ‘straight’ young Democrat political adviser who believes it’s possible to do good through Washington politics.

The ‘Seven’ know each other through a network of friendships at different colleges and their original journey to Washington in 1969 was as part of the many students going to a march/protest rally. I don’t think the precise event is mentioned but they joke about how the local police were primed to arrest ‘pinko’ students on any pretext. Because the reunions are held in Mike’s home town, Howie (Sayles) and Ron are loosely attached to the group and they all hang out at a beer joint and play basketball together. I’ve been trying to remember when I first saw the film in the UK. It was quite an elongated release period and it was a time when I was too busy to record every cinema trip. It appeared at the London Film Festival in 1980 and had a couple of preview runs in Edinburgh and at the ICA in 1981 but its full release (by the BFI) came in 1981. I can still recall sitting in a cinema and thinking – this is the first time I have seen my circle of friends on the screen – the people I’d met at university and their partners plus the people I’d met as a teacher. They would all to a different extent have been ‘left of centre’ and from lower middle-class or working-class backgrounds. Many, not all, would have gone on demonstrations and protest marches, most would have succeeded in their own terms. Many of the reviews of The Return of the Secaucus Seven, even the positive ones, see the seven characters as somehow now disillusioned and feeling like they are failures. This is quite wrong. Sayles writes about real people, good and bad, and recognises how they feel. His ensemble narratives range across race, class and circumstance. I vowed then to see every Sayles movie. I’ve failed by three but I hope to see at least one more soon and I have watched all the UK releases.

As well as the representations of a group of recognisable characters, this film is important for its demonstration of how Sayles learned about filmmaking. At this point he had written various films for Roger Corman and begun to learn some basics about production. In the book Sayles on Sayles (1998) comprising interviews by Gavin Martin  for faber & faber, Sayles explains how all the locations in the film were free or paid for in kind or for nominal sums. The actors included many who Sayles had worked with during Summer Theatre stints as an actor and director. The others were recommended by the ones he had already cast. The image above is the whole cast and crew. The film was shot on 16mm (in Duarte color and in Academy ratio, 1.37:1) by someone again from the same background and experience who was working in advertising. Austin De Besche is listed by IMDb as starting with the documentary of Nicholas Ray teaching in New York, I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1974). Sayles quickly realised that he didn’t have the crew (or kit?) available to use tracking shots effectively. Stuck with a largely static camera, he realised that it was movement in the frame or movement created by editing that would work to make the film narrative as a whole ‘move’. Consequently there are two sport activities – volleyball including the whole group and basketball, just the men. There is also a game of charades and a ‘skinnydipping’ scene in a local rock pool. The ensemble performances also give ample opportunities for cuts to individual stories within the overall narrative. The result is that although quite long (104 minutes) for a film that is generally ‘talky’ and seemingly lacking big dramatic moments or a big finale, the narrative is a satisfying watch for a significant audience. I should also mention Mason Daring responsible for the music – he would become a long-term collaborator.

Financially the film was very successful. Because of the low production cost, the rentals which rolled in over several years produced a significant profit. Sayles offered everyone involved either standard rates or ‘points’ for a share of possible profits, which turned out to be a good bet. The Sayles approach was established and apart from one major blip with major studio involvement (Baby It’s You in 1984), Sayles has been able to keep control over his his directorial output of eighteen features in all. Most of them have been paid for by the money earned from writing and acting in genre films big and small. There are two other Sayles films discussed on this blog, Casa de los babys (US-Mexico 2003) and Honeydripper (US 2007). We will try to explore more of his films. We will see that as his work develops, Sayles becomes interested in a diverse range of characters and stories, drawn from many different kinds of American life and culture, including some historical films and an increasing interest in both African-American and Hispanic-American characters. The succeeding films also feature a number of female characters with ‘agency’. Sayles is from a family with Irish Catholic heritage. I think I read that he thinks Irish and Italian feminism have a toughness derived from their Catholic environments. It’s interesting to see Katie talking to the other women about the ignorance about their bodies displayed by the girls she teaches. We don’t talk enough about Maggie Renzi when we discuss Sayles. He reveals that on this shoot Maggie had to take on many of the jobs that on a bigger production would have been taken by industry professionals. In the couple’s next film Lianna (1983) she would be credited as one of two producers.