But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them.

He used the money to partially fund the fantasy The Brother from Another Planet a film about a black three-toed slave who escapes from another planet and finds himself at home among the people of Harlem. [citation needed] Sayles gets the rest of his funding by working as a script doctor; he did rewrites for Apollo 13 and Mimic. In 1983 after the films Baby It's You (starring Rosanna Arquette) and Lianna (a story in which a married woman becomes discontented with her marriage and falls in love with another woman) Sayles received a MacArthur Fellowship.

John Thomas Sayles (born September 28 1950) is an American independent film director screenwriter and author.