“I’ve long admired Leo Biga’s journalism and prose portraiture for its honesty, thoughtfulness, and accuracy. On a personal note, throughout many years of being interviewed, I find Mr. Biga’s articles about me to be the most complete and perceptive of any journalist’s anywhere. They ring true to me—even in critique—in a way that reveals the depth of his talent in observation, understanding, and expression.”

—Alexander Payne

“Leo Biga, through his extraordinary talent with words, brings us a fascinating, comprehensive, insightful portrait of the work and artistry of Alexander Payne. Mr. Biga’s collection of essays document the evolution and growth of this significant American filmmaker, and he includes relevant historical context of the old Hollywood and the new. His keen reporter’s eye gives the reader an exciting journey into the art of telling stories on film.”

— Ron HullSenior Advisor to Nebraska Educational Television,

Professor Emeritus of Broadcasting, University of Nebraska, Author of Backstage

“I’d be an Alexander Payne fan even if we didn’t share a Nebraska upbringing; he is a masterly, menschy, singular storyteller whose movies are both serious and unpretentious, delightfully funny and deeply moving. And he’s fortunate indeed to have such a thoughtful and insightful chronicler as Leo Biga.”

— Kurt Andersen, NY Times Bestselling Author of True Believers and Heyday

Host of Studio 360 “Alexander Payne is one of American cinema’s leading lights. How fortunate we are that Leo Biga has chronicled his rise to success so thoroughly.”

— Leonard Maltin, Film Critic, Indiewire.com

Praise for Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film

LEO ADAM BIGA

A Reporter’s Perspective 1998–2012

HIS JOURNEY IN FILM

Omaha, Nebraska

©2013 Leo Adam Biga. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9883293-1-7LCCN: 2012949617

Send inquiries to the Publisher: Inside Stories LLCwww.AlexanderPayneTheBook.com

To contact the author, email him at leo32158@cox.net or write in care of the publisher at Concierge Book Publishing Services, 13518 L Street, Omaha, NE 68137. Design and publishing coordination: Concierge Marketing Inc.

Printed in the United States of America10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Foreword: Alexander Payne’s Omaha: A Quixotic Appreciation by Timothy Schaffert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Foreword: Alexander Payne’s Indiewood: An Essay by Thomas Schatz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

1 Getting to Know You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Alexander Payne: Portrait of a Young Filmmaker Alexander Payne’s Emergence as a Rising Filmmaker

2 Intense Gaze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Alexander Payne Discuses His New Feature Starring Jack Nicholson, Working with the Star, Past Projects, and Future Plans Being Jack Nicholson About About Schmidt: The Shoot, Editing, Working with Jack, and the Film after the Cutting Room Floor Conquering Cannes: Omaha Native Alexander Payne’s Triumphant Cannes’ Debut Schmidt, Payne, and an Intersection About Payne: Alexander Payne on His New Film, Nicholson, and the Comedy of Deep Focus

3 The Sideways Diaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Hollywood Dispatch (On the Set with Alexander Payne: A Rare, Intimate, Inside Look at Payne, His Process, and the Making of His New Film, Sideways) A Road Trip Sideways, Alexander Payne’s Circuitous Journey to a New Film

Contents

4 Taking Stock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 Alexander Payne’s Post-Sideways Blues Scuba Diving with Alexander Payne: In the Wake of His Oscar Win and Divorce, the Filmmaker Draws Inward and Reflects on the New Status He Owns and What It May Mean to His Work ‘Every day I’m not directing, I feel like I die a little.’ Catching Up with Alexander Payne–After a Year of Largely Producing-Writing Other People’s Projects, He Sets His Sights on His Next Film Size Matters: The Return of Alexander Payne, Not That He Was Ever Gone

5 Payne as Auteur and Collaborator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189 Jim Taylor, the Other Half of Hollywood’s Top Screenwriting Team, Talks About His Work with Alexander Payne Film Currents A Decade Under the Influence When Laura Met Alex: Laura Dern & Alexander Payne Get Deep About Making Citizen Ruth and Their Shared Cinema Sensibilities Alexander Payne and Debra Winger Hold Court for Feature Film Event ‘09 The Soderbergh Experience, Alexander Payne and Kurt Andersen Weigh In on America’s Most Prolific and Accomplished Filmmaker of Their Generation

6 Reasserting His Place in the Cinema Firmament . . . . . . .239 Alexander Payne , George Clooney, and Co. Find Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing Shooting The Descendants in Hawaii Hail, Hail The Descendants: Alexander Payne’s First Feature Since Sideways a Hit with Critics, George Clooney- starring Comedy-Drama Sure to Be an Awards Contender

Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, Producer Jim Burke, and Actress Shailene Woodley Discuss Working with Alexander Payne on The Descendants and Kaui Hart Hemmings Comments on the Adaptation of Her Novel Alexander Payne and Kaui Hart Hemmings on the Symbiosis Behind His Film and Her Novel The Descendants and Her Role in Helping Get Hawaii Right Two-Time Oscar-Winner Payne Delivers Another Screen Gem with The Descendants and Further Enhances His Cinema Standing Alexander Payne Delivers Graceful Oscar Tributes–The Winner for Best Adapted Screenplay Recognizes Clooney, Hemmings, and His Mom

The Wrap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .279

Alexander Payne Filmography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .285 Director Writer Producer

Alexander Payne Awards Won . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .287

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .289

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .291

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .293

Reasserting His Place in the Cinema Firmament

When Alexander Payne returned to feature filmmaking in 2010–2011 with The Descendants he very much picked up where he left off on Sideways to make a work with deep currents running through it. Here, those currents are not only personal for the protagonists, as they are in Sideways, but cultural, ancestral, and historical as well, thereby making this the most complex tapestry he has woven yet.

While there is no doubting Payne had a small army of devoted fans and critical champions prior to The Descendants, I still intuited there was a sizable body of film viewers who hedged when it came to his work. Why? Because to their tastes he never quite went all in with the comedy or the drama, preferring instead to not so much straddle both sides of tragedy but insisting on having it both ways and thus going back and forth between the two, even within the same scene. I think that left some viewers feeling dissatisfied or cheated.

It is clear by now though that that is who he is as a filmmaker and he is not about to change. Why should he? His films are increasingly nuanced, mature works that take you through an emotional journey full of revelation. They also leave you hanging to an extent ruminating about what next lies in store for their characters. That is more than most films do.

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In addition to that segment of viewers who wanted more clarity or resolution I think there were those who wanted him to take on more challenging stories, as he did with his first two features, and there is a point to be made there. One could argue that from About Schmidt on Payne has revisited stories that share much in common and that can be considered variations on a theme: Schmidt, Sideways, and The Descendants all focus on middle-aged or older male protagonists at some crisis point or crucible in their lives that propels them on a physical and emotional journey.

All are, in one way or another, road pictures. There is a quest or search involved as well. As a Greek-American writer-director steeped in the classics, he may be at some level, whether consciously or unconsciously, retelling elements of The Odyssey from film to film. After all, his protagonist (s) only sets off on his journey after some sort of fall or loss, and in the course of the adventure he encounters all manner of characters who variously help or hinder his progress.

Not surprisingly then his new film Nebraska is almost quite literally a road picture from start to finish. Its primary character is a miscreant older male who’s managed to alienate himself from everyone in his life, including his son. Faced with a willful, foul-mouthed, somewhat addled father who believes he’s won a sweepstakes, the son indulges the old man on a journey to claim a prize that isn’t there. En route, the son decides to grant his father the gift of redemption. And in a grace note ending that beats all, the son lets the old man get the last laugh for once. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, who did the photography on Sideways and The Descendants, will once again help Payne realize a visually stunning landscape, only this time the desolate and sublime stretches of Nebraska prairie and Sandhills. Together, I am sure they will find the poetry of its wide open spaces. Capturing these settings in black and white should add a dramatic effect.

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Of course, as Payne points out, the road picture template or device is both a convenient and effective one for propelling a story. The notion of a journey framing a story is as old as The Odyssey itself. When applied to film, it offers a perfectly legitimate dramatic means for opening up a picture and having protagonists meet up with interesting characters and adventures. Besides, who doesn’t want to spend two hours in the company of Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, or Jack Nicholson, or George Clooney on a virtual road trip filled with laughs and heartache?

As the following stories delineate, The Descendants project came into focus for Payne after he was unable to pull the financing together on Downsizing. It had already been some years since Sideways and the questions were mounting as to why he had not yet followed up that success with a new feature. Then when Downsizing proved too big a gamble for investors in the depths of the recession, he was left somewhat in the lurch. Or so it seemed.

In truth, he had a number of feature options to pursue, including the long announced project, Nebraska. But it was The Descendants he committed to making. It meant working with a superstar for the second time in his career and certainly his experience with Jack Nicholson on About Schmidt informed his handling of Clooney on Descendants. Like Sideways, the project took Payne far from the Omaha-based locales of his first three features and planted him in a landscape full of picaresque beauty and cultural-historical import.

Much as he did on Sideways Payne fully embraced the emotional and dramatic palette of his characters and their situations, only here he avoided even more the comic deflections, distancing devices, and set pieces he has sometimes over relied on to the detriment of the films. Oh, he still infused The Descendants with

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humor, only more subtly, grounding it in greater reality. Perhaps it is the melancholia at the heart of the story, perhaps it is a more wizened and assured Payne extracting what the material offered, but there is a difference to be sure, and I think it helps account for why the film did so well around the world. The Descendants’s worldwide box-office take makes it by far the most popular and biggest money-making work of his career.

The material may not have been any more challenging on its face, but I think it was for Payne because the story required him to articulate in words, visuals, and sounds the complexity of a cross-cultural setting and a panoply of personal dramas unfolding within it that were largely outside his own experience. There was a lot he had to get right in order for us to care enough about these characters and situations to want to take this journey with them.

Therefore there were a lot of things that could go wrong. Because he would be operating in unfamiliar territory, he probably did more preparation for this project than he did on all of his other pictures combined. As the following stories elaborate, he literally schooled himself on the intricacies of Hawaiian culture so that the characters and the actions would be naturally immersed in those attitudes and rituals and signposts, rather then feeling forced or imposed or artificial. He not only achieved that but he also managed to convincingly tell this moving, funny, sad story of a family on the brink of collapse coming together in the midst of tragedy, and did so without making it cloyingly sentimental. The laughs and tears are honestly earned.

His growing finesse as a visual artist is perhaps best expressed in the boat scene near the end, when Matt King and his daughters scatter Liz’s ashes in the ocean and Payne uses the water and light to cast an abstract hue of hope and the hereafter over the somber proceedings. Earlier, Alexandra’s imploding rage is released under water in the family’s backyard pool.

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Then there are the Paynsian touches that make it his own. Matt King’s flip-flop run to confirm his wife’s cheating and his peering over a hedge to spy on the target of his revenge are homages to the silent film comedies Payne loves. His knack for summing up characters and situations with a single image reaches a zenith at the very end, when the final shot holds on Matt, Alexandra, and Scottie for a remarkably long time as what remains of their battered family regroups around the sofa watching TV. They share an unspoken, easy affection, accentuated by their physical contact, that tells us they are going to be okay. They have made it to the other side of their ordeal and are back to the simple yet profound rituals and routines of everyday family life.

The fact that Payne does not cut away from this portrait signals to me he is more comfortable letting the subtext of a moment speak for itself through characters’ nonverbal cues than perhaps he was before. Similarly, he seems more comfortable letting emotional or dramatic scenes play out longer without visual interruption or cinematic comment, though as he has rightly pointed out to me he’s always favored long takes, certainly more than many of his contemporaries.

For these and other reasons this Payne film reads as his most accomplished achievement. It is the closest thing he has done to a traditional or mainstream film from Old Hollywood. It is also completely in synch with the sensibilities of that 1970s humanist strain of films he was weaned on and that he so admires. The picture is wholly accessible to general audiences while retaining the quirkiness and acerbity that has in part defined his work.

In my view his work is likely to veer ever more in this direction, and I think that is a good thing.