Sayles’ Little ‘Secret’: A Film for Children : Movies: Adapted from a book based on a Celtic myth about a young girl’s encounter with seal people, the film is the independent filmmaker’s latest venture.

ROSBEG, Ireland —  There’s a film crew working on the wind-swept beach here--but it’s accompanied by none of the usual trappings.

There’s not a trailer in sight--nor, indeed, a movie star who might feel at home in it. There are no catered delicacies at meal breaks. Rather, meat-and-potatoes lunches, which cast and crew eat communally on board a converted double-decker bus.

Luxury accommodations to retire to when shooting ends, then? Forget it. Try spartan rooms in bed-and-breakfast cottages rented out by locals at about $20 a night. Clearly, this is a production that counts every penny.

Of course. It’s a John Sayles film.

Sayles, the acknowledged American master of low-budget independent filmmaking, is making two departures here. He has come to this sparsely populated coastal district in the northwest corner of Ireland to shoot his first film outside the United States. And in filming “The Secret of Roan Inish,” his adaptation of a children’s book by Rosalie K. Fry based on a Celtic myth about a young girl’s encounter with selkies (seal people), he is making his first children’s movie.

Not, as Sayles points out, that this relates to Hollywood’s current preoccupation with “family entertainment.” “I’ve felt like a 10-year-old could understand most movies,” Sayles says equably. “The big blockbusters, the Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies, aren’t pitched at that high a level intellectually. Movies pitched at adolescents are the main thing being made by Hollywood. There’s just a new spin being put on it by the studios. Macaulay Culkin hit big, so they figured, well, there’s gold to be mined here.”

He adds ruefully that by the time “The Secret of Roan Inish” opens next year, the vogue for family entertainment may well have passed. “Once again our timing’s lousy,” he says, recalling that shooting began on his 1983 film “Lianna,” about a young wife who falls in love with another woman, just before a spate of gay-themed Hollywood movies were released.

But then Sayles is usually out of step with Hollywood and seems to relish the fact. “The Secret of Roan Inish” is costing about $6 million to produce: a tiny sum by studio standards, but more than most of his films, and twice as much as last year’s “Passion Fish,” which won Oscar nominations for Sayles as screenwriter and for Mary McDonnell as best actress.

Even with its modest budget, “The Secret of Roan Inish” has been beset by money problems. Sayles is himself a major investor in the movie, as a partner with the Denver-based Jones Intercable. But Jones’ part of the deal was only finalized two weeks into shooting--a factor that virtually caused Sayles to close down the film.

Maggie Renzi, who has lived with Sayles for 20 years, has produced his films and acted in many, says: “Getting the money for this was a huge hassle, a really ugly experience. At one point John said he just wanted enough money to pay the crew severance and send them home. But he also wanted the fun of getting to make the film, so I let that be the overriding rule.

“As it is, John ended up investing considerably more than he intended and Sarah (Green, co-producer) and I are getting paid considerably less. But we’re getting it done.” Renzi added that she and Sayles would be renegotiating the recoupment deal with Jones.

It sounds like a stressful way to make films, so why does Sayles do it? “Independence,” he says.

“Sure, it’s wearisome. But people I know who started at the same time I did, working for Roger Corman, who have made movies within the system--they haven’t made any more than I have, and they’ve had much bigger problems. They’ve felt negative about some of their movies or how they were treated.

“There’s Joe Dante and Lewis Teague. Even Jonathan Demme hasn’t always had it that easy. We (he and Renzi) have been lucky with our movies which have had their own integrity and at least have done what they’ve set out to do.”

From Sayles’ accomplished debut, “The Return of the Secaucus Seven” (1980), a precursor to “The Big Chill,” which cost a mere $60,000, he has mostly gone the independent route--with films such as “Brother From Another Planet” (1984), about a black extra-terrestrial stranded in Harlem; “Matewan” (1987), which dealt with a West Virginia miners’ strike in the 1920s, and “City of Hope” (1991), a brooding densely populated drama about a strife-riven inner city.

Only twice has Sayles worked within the studio system; he was unhappy on both occasions. He argued fiercely with Paramount over the sweet-natured teen romance “Baby, It’s You” (1983). He felt Orion didn’t push as hard as it might have done to distribute “Eight Men Out,” (1988), the story of the scandal that rocked the 1919 Chicago White Sox, because the studio already had two hit movies in theaters.

Sayles, one of the few name filmmakers who still consistently works from a leftist viewpoint, always demands final cut.

“Because none of our movies has gone ballistic financially, for a studio to give me final cut, they’d have every other director who works for them saying--why not me? So that’s a factor, but finally the way (studios) do business an the way I prefer to do business is rarely compatible.”

He maintains independence by writing scripts (“Piranha,” “The Howling,” “Alligator”) and acting (this year’s “Matinee” for Joe Dante), then plowing the money he earns back into his own films, which he writes, directs and edits.

Sayles’ willful approach and integrity attracts distinguished collaborators. He works with outstanding cinematographers such as Roger Deakins and Bob Richardson, though for “The Secret of Roan Inish” three-time Oscar winner Haskell Wexler called and asked for the job.

“After I worked with John on ‘Matewan,’ ” recalled the 35-year veteran Wexler, “I came away with great respect for his views and his abilities. Marketing, advertising and demographics seem to be the motive power of our business now, and it’s possible to come up with a lot of films aimed at the lowest common denominator. But with John, no matter what you think of his films, he makes his own pictures.”

“The Secret of Roan Inish” (it means “seal island”) is a perfect example. Sayles reworked Fry’s story, relocated it from the coast of Scotland to this part of Ireland (his own grandmothers are Irish-American) and incorporated two other ancient fables within its framework.

Set in 1949, it tells of Fiona, a girl of 10, sent by her widower father away from harsh urban poverty to live with her grandparents in a fishing village close to mysterious Roan Inish, home of her family for centuries. When her family left Roan Inish for the mainland, tragedy struck: Her baby brother, Jamie, was swept away in a cradle-boat by a strong current, escorted by gulls and a seal herd. Fiona persuades her family to return to Roan Inish and secure Jamie’s return.

Seals and gulls play a big part in the film, which required three kinds of shooting--natural history footage for long shots by a second unit crew; scenes with animatronic seals, devised by a model shop in Bristol, England, and close-ups featuring actors and trained seals.

Sayles has also had to work extensively with child actors for the first time. About 1,000 kids were found to audition for Sayles by John and Ros Hubbard, the Irish casting team who discovered the young talent for “The Commitments.”

Eventually Jenifer Courtney, a Belfast schoolgirl with a serious expression, came closest to fitting the part of Fiona, described as “a girl of 10, blond, pale, loves water.” So it was that on this particular afternoon she was doing handstands on the beach between scenes, watched over by Sayles, who towers over her at 6-foot-4.

As if working with children and non-humans was not enough, Sayles has had to contend with weather and vandalism. Light in County Donegal varies wildly; cold, heavy rain can give way to hot sunshine in the space of minutes. “It’s been a challenge, lighting this film,” says Wexler diplomatically.

A mentally unstable young local man employed as a laborer on the film set fire to three thatched cottages, built by the crew on the beach. “It caused $150,000 of damage,” says Renzi. “But insurance covered us and we started rebuilding the next day.” The incident aroused sympathies around Rosbeg; though 80 locals were employed by the production, the villagers’ attitude to a film crew in their midst had been typically ambivalent. “But after the fire, they behaved toward us as if we’d lost a child,” says Renzi.

It wouldn’t be a Sayles script if social commentary was not included, and “The Secret of Roan Inish,” on one level a straightforward children’s story, is no exception. There is barbed commentary about the alienation of city life, and discussion about the cruelty of killing seals for their hides.

“I think this is where the myth of the half-seal, half-human selkie comes from,” muses Sayles. “It’s how people who lived in nature explained themselves and their ties to animals they might have to kill. Seals are high on the mammal scale. They look soulful, almost human with big brown eyes. It was traumatic for people to kill them. Myths like this came out of the feeling that it’s not such a great idea to club these creatures on the head. So that was a factor in the script.”