Political disputes along the U.S./Mexico border have only gotten more intense in the 27 years since John Sayles directed Lone Star and he made it pretty clear he isn’t a fan of recent security measures that have been taken.
In a new interview with The Guardian about his 1996 film — which stars Chris Cooper as a Texas sheriff reckoning with the history of violence in his border town — Sayles said that he recently made his mark on the border wall that has been touted by former U.S. president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“I don’t think we’ve made any progress on border issues since the movie was made,” Sayles told The Guardian. “Back then, it didn’t have the same tension. The border patrol would just say no me hagas correr to illegal immigrants – don’t make me run – and deport them. I don’t think a wall is the answer: it’s like a Christo installation that has cost billions of dollars. I recently visited it with a friend and we urinated on it.”
Everett Collection
Lone Star was recently added to the Criterion Collection, which prompted The Guardian‘s retrospective interview with both Sayles and Cooper.
Sayles remembered casting Cooper for his “laconic” screen presence, which came as a surprise to the star, and Matthew McConaughey (whose only previous movie role was Dazed and Confused) because “I needed a guy who didn’t have any star weight but who had the presence to play off against [Kris] Kristofferson.”
“John is 20 years ahead in his storytelling,” Cooper told The Guardian. “Look at what we’re dealing with now. Border conflict is a nightmare. The way John did those transitions suggests history is never too far away from the present. That’s the film’s legacy: things don’t change too quickly, if ever.”
Read the full interview at The Guardian.
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