John Sayles: Good Guys Shouldn't Always Win

John Sayles, the "grandfather of indie cinema" who visits UAlbany on Monday 2/27, talks to the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

“The studios realize that most people don’t go to movies for complexity,” he says. “Most people want escapism, and white hats, and bad guys who are so bad you can cheer at the end when they get torn to pieces by wild dogs. Movies that are complex are rarer and they confuse audiences at first. Honestly, we figure it’s going to take the average moviegoer who doesn’t necessarily go to this sort of thing 10 or 15 minutes to decide if they’re going to stay or walk out. And maybe they’ll stay and say, well, that was interesting, that was cool. Or they say, what the hell was that? The good guys didn’t win.”