In John Sayles' new film Honeydripper, Danny Glover stars as a huckster artist, a barnstorming pianist who conceives a wild and daring plan to revive the economic fortunes of his struggling juke joint in 1950 Alabama by importing a young guitar virtuoso to headline there.

It is not a stretch to read the director's 16th film as an allegory about the struggles of the independent artist in any field, including movies.

Sayles started as a scriptwriter for independent producer Roger Corman and today he is a sought-after script doctor who has worked on films ranging from Apollo 13 to The Alamo. In addition to his own projects, which include an ambitious historical novel, he is currently contributing to the scripts for Tom Hanks crime drama A Cold Case and the new Jurassic Park.

Thanks to such lucrative work, Sayles was able to self-finance Honeydripper's production budget. And now, in conjunction with Ira Deutchman's Emerging Pictures, he and his partner Maggie Renzi are self-distributing the movie under their production label, Anarchists' Convention.

'You've noticed in the last five years that independent movies live or die in their first weekend, and they can't survive that way,' says Sayles, whose two previous films, Silver City (2004) and Casa De Los Babys (2003), are among his poorest box-office performers.

'Most of our films took three or four weeks before people started to talk about them,' he says. 'Our films play to people over 30. Those people don't go the first weekend. It was clear to us that some new way of getting these movies out has to come around.'

Renzi likens the film's distribution to a grass roots political campaign. Sayles says commercial success is predicated on finding a way to tap into each of three key demographics: independent film supporters who recognise his name; the overwhelmingly white and middle-aged bluegrass audience; and an African-American audience which, because of the presence of Glover and co-star Charles S Dutton, will tend toward the mainstream.

The film opens in New York and Los Angeles on December 28 to qualify for Academy Award consideration (Sayles has previously received writing nominations for Passion Fish and Lone Star). A second wave of openings is planned for the Martin Luther King national holiday in mid-January, with an emphasis on Southern cities and urban markets with large populations of African-American or bluegrass musical enthusiasts. Sayles and Renzi have also convened a touring band involving musicians and actors from the film that has played major jazz, blues and bluegrass festivals. They are licensing the rights to a soundtrack album.

'What you want is that people who are going to like your movie are going to have heard about it before (it opens). Then you have a much better chance getting people in that first week or two,' Sayles says.