In the years since 1978, John Sayles has fashioned one of the most vital and versatile careers in contemporary American film. With a rare combination of commercial adaptability and clear-eyed independence, Sayles has achieved a remarkable dual success both within and outside the Hollywood system. On the one hand, by writing screenplays for such filmmakers as Roger Corman, Sayles has established himself as an agile craftsman of plot and dialogue in the conventional Hollywood genres: horror, science fiction, gangster, and martial-arts films. On the other hand, he has used his screenplay earnings and growing "bankability" to finance more personal features on subjects which Hollywood considers too risky for the kind of direct, open treatment which Sayles prefers. Yet despite the obvious differences between the Hollywood genre films he scripts and the personal films he both writes and directs (and often acts in and edits), there is an impressive unity...