10 Things to Know About 'The Brother from Another Planet'

10 Things to Know About The Brother from Another Planet

10 Another Daring Soundtrack

Throughout his directorial career one constant for director John Sayles has been Pennsylvania legend, composer Mason Daring. The pair first collaborated on Sayles’ Lianna and their partnership continued on The Brother from Another Planet with Daring not as composer but as a contributor to the soundtrack.

9 Joe Morton’s Evil Twin

While Joe Morton was making his feature film debut in The Brother from Another Planet, as he completed his regular gig on television. On TV, Morton was starring on the daytime soap opera Another World where he played both a kindhearted doctor and that doctor’s evil rock star twin.

8 Ellis Island

The meaning and symbolism is unmistakable. When our alien protagonist, The Brother, crashes down on Earth he emerges in New York on none other than Ellis Island, famous for being the place where millions of American immigrants first touched American ground.

7 John Sayles Dreams

John Sayles told reporters in 1984 that The Brother from Another Planet came to him in three dreams: a dream about a Used Car salesman, a dream about a giant foot rampaging through a city, and a dream about an escaped slave. Each dream provides a seed of what became The Brother from Another Planet.

6 80% of the Crew

From a profile on Sayles in February of 1984, John Sayles said that he noticed he had more black people in his personal life than he did in his movies. The Brother from Another Planet was his response to that fact. He took diversifying his film seriously both on screen and behind the scenes where 80% of the crew was black.

5 Premiered in May 1984 at the World’s Longest Film Festival

John Sayles debuted The Brother from Another Planet at the World’s Longest Film Festival, aka, The Seattle Film Festival, a monthlong film festival that also hosted the premiere of another movie we recently profiled on Movies of the 80s, Alan Rudolph’s Choose Me.

4 Premiered Internationally at the Cannes Film Festival

John Sayles also took The Brother from Another Planet international at the Cannes Film Festival where he and his producer, Maggie Renzi sought distribution deals and as many free lunches as they could manage. According to Sayles, he and Renzi tried to schedule meetings around meals in hopes that potential distributors would pick up the tab.

3 Two Screenwriter for Hire Gigs Paid for The Brother from Another Planet

John Sayles paid for The Brother from Another Planet by taking on a pair of gigs. The first was writing the screenplay for the film Clan of the Cave Bear. He followed that with another screenplay gig, adapting the novel Valley of the Horses for an NBC Mini-Series.

2 Jerry Rudes

You may not know the name Jerry Rudes but he was a pivotal figure for John Sayles. In 1984, it was Rudes whose platform, The French-American Film Workshop, that helped Sayles find distribution in Europe for The Brother from Another Planet. Sayles praised Rudes for providing independent producers an opportunity to connect with European distributors beyond the Cannes Film Market.

1 Harlem Welcomed The Brother from Another Planet

According to The Brother from Another Planet producer, Peggy Rajski, the people of Harlem welcomed the production, especially star Joe Morton who signed autographs wherever he went, based on his fame from Another World. Rajski said that she was told by a few people that just 10 years earlier, white people making a movie in Harlem would not be so welcome, but that things had mellowed in recent years.