Time & Perspective Quote by John Sayles

Sayles makes “independent” sound less like a brand and more like a geographic condition: you live out on the margins because you were never issued a map to the center. The first sentence is intimate, almost confessional, but it’s also a quiet indictment. Feeling “on the margins” isn’t an aesthetic preference; it’s the lived reality of a filmmaker who built a career outside studio pipelines, often financing films through patchwork means and trading polish for autonomy. He’s naming the emotional cost of that stance: isolation, limited access, and the constant awareness that legitimacy is something other people get to hand out.

Then he sharpens the blade with “Once upon a time,” a fairy-tale opener repurposed as cultural autopsy. It signals nostalgia, yes, but also skepticism: the story of “indie” has been rewritten. Independent used to mean materially independent - outside the money, outside the publicity machine, outside the gatekeepers. Now it can mean an awards-season lane, a boutique label under a conglomerate, a vibe you purchase rather than a position you’re forced into.

The subtext is a critique of how subcultures get monetized. When “independent” becomes a market category, the margins become a curated look, not a power relation. Sayles is defending a definition rooted in economics and control: who owns the film, who gets final cut, who takes the risk. His line mourns a lost clarity while reminding you that the margin isn’t an identity badge - it’s where you end up when you insist on making work without asking permission.