SOURCE: Davis, Thulani. “Blue-Collar Auteur.” American Film 16, no. 6 (June 1991): 18-23, 49-50.

In the following essay, Davis explores Sayles's role as spokesperson for the working class.

Hoboken, New Jersey, seems an unlikely place for American film-making, even though one of the few things you ever hear about it is that On the Waterfront was filmed there. However, when independent filmmaker John Sayles migrated to Hoboken after making his first film, he found what has become the weathered landscape of a John Sayles film: the face of decaying urban working towns all over, unglamorous, exposed to the elements—physical and spiritual. It is a landscape he re-creates even if he shoots in Cincinnati, and his films are about the kind of working-class people who live in this small immigrant-built town that had its heyday when New York's harbor was teeming with ships. Although Sayles spends less time there now, he...