About three fourths of the way through this interview, Alexander Payne stops and asks, “Are you sure you have everything you need? Because this is pretty wide ranging.” And he’s right, there are a lot of topics covered because interviewing Alexander Payne is like talking to a nonstop cinema reference machine. Not like a Tarantino where his references more play as, “How could anyone possibly know that?,” but more references that make a person feel guilty for not knowing. And the last time I spoke to Payne, way back in 2013 for Nebraska, I do remember feeling guilty quite a bit. In a “Why can’t I easily engage with his references and examples?,” kind of way. Since 2013, I, like I suppose almost literally everyone, have seen more movies since I had then. And I walked away from this only feeling guilty I haven’t seen Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (which I will correct soon).
When I spoke to Payne (which took place at his hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side), he poo-poo’d the notion that The Holdovers is back-to-basics after his last film, the high concept Downsizing, didn’t really hit with critics or audiences. He calls Downsizing the anomaly in his filmography, as all his other films, like The Holdovers now, are character studies. Which, he’s not wrong about that.
In The Holdovers, Payne, finally, re-teams with Paul Giamatti, 19 years after Sideways. Actually, Payne reveals (first off the record, then changes his mind) that Giamatti was supposed to star in Downsizing but he couldn’t get funding until Matt Damon was attached. Regardless, things worked out the way they were supposed to because Giamatti is just terrific here as Paul Hunham, a, let’s say, not very popular teacher at a northeastern private school who is staying behind during the winter break to look after the handful of students who have nowhere to go for one reason or another. Paul eventually forms a bond with a freewheeling teen, Angus (Dominic Sessa) and the two, yes, begin to learn more about themselves along the way. It’s truly a hangout movie in the best possible way.
When the interview starts, it starts off the record. Payne loves Paul Giamatti, but this segued into the rare occasions he had an actor on set he didn’t love working with, which for obvious reasons he doesn’t want to share with the world who those people are. So when we pick up the conversation has steered to how he’s worked with some of the biggest names out there and has, mostly, gotten lucky in that regard. Also, as mentioned, this ahead is pretty wide-ranging, but Payne gets into why his next film will be a Western, set in the 19th century in his home state of Nebraska, and he hopes to feature Giamatti again. When I asked who his Western influences were, he mentioned Sam Peckinpah and I now really do want to see an Alexander Payne Western influenced by Sam Peckinpah.
To transition on the record, it seems like you cast well and you don’t run into that very often.
I have not. No, and never in a major part. Of the big guys I’ve had, Nicholson was tremendous, Clooney was tremendous, Giamatti, Laura Dern, Reese Witherspoon, Stacy Keach – have always been tremendous. I’ve had bad luck only with a couple. On time, know their dialogue, there to deliver, there to discern what the director needs and find out what the movie’s about and do that. I’ve had really good luck.
We were talking about Downsizing, does The Holdovers come as a reaction to Downsizing? Because they feel like exact opposite movies.
Is The Holdovers a reaction to Downsizing?
Because Downsizing is such a concept and this is more character-driven.
I’ve done eight feature films, Downsizing is the anomaly. The other seven, sort of, are what you saying…
Right. So does this feel like a back-to-basics almost?
I don’t know about basics, but back to the stories that are just nice little human comedies that I’ve been trying to make from the get-go. Nice little human comedies.
Speaking of, why did it take so long for you and Paul Giamatti to get back together? Because you obviously work very well together and make very good movies.
I’m slow with screenplays. Were I at bat more often, I would’ve been working with Mr. Giamatti sooner. But he wasn’t right for The Descendants, wasn’t right for Nebraska. Off the record, we wrote Downsizing for him and can’t get financing to the tune of $65 million with him in the lead. So I took another fine actor, Matt Damon, but I did have Paul Giamatti in mind for Downsizing originally. Back on the record… or you can say that if you want that, that I had had Paul in mind originally for Downsizing. In as much as you see the great director’s careers, and John Ford and John Wayne and Kurosawa with Toshiro Mifune, Fellini and Marcello, when a director gets to have an alter ego. Giamatti feels like he would function that way well for me. He’s the perfect vessel of tone. Because he can do dramatic things comically and comic things seriously, and he’s just so watchable and lovable. He’s just an excellent vessel of tone.
And you’ve only used him twice.
Oh, you’ve got to start somewhere.
I read you want to make a Western next. Can he be in your Western?
Yeah.
So he is going to be in your Western?
I’ve got to write the fucker first! We have to write it first. But yes.
You mentioned John Ford, is that the kind of Western you want to make? Like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance or The Searchers? Or is this something else?
I prefer… well, The Searchers is a great film. I’m not as high on Liberty Valance as others are. Sorry, I don’t want to get too granular. If you’re sort of asking, am I speaking about a traditional Western or what they call contemporary Western or something like that? No, I don’t really recognize contemporary Westerns as Westerns. I think Westerns are Westerns.
Well, I guess I’m asking who your influence would be for a Western?
In classical Westerns? Anthony Mann and Peckinpah.
Oh, interesting.
And William Wellman.
Like Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia? I guess what would be more contemporary.
Right. More Ride the High Country, which I think is a true masterpiece.
I don’t think of you and Peckinpah in the same sentence very often. That’s very interesting.
I like good Westerns!
I can imagine you like his movies, but I don’t think of your movies alongside his very often. They do feel like they’re very different tones. So that’d be really interesting for you to make a movie like he makes them.
No, it wouldn’t be like he makes them. I would make a movie like I make them!
Well, it’s still fascinating. I am very curious about this.
But then also, you have to throw in the ’70s Westerns. I don’t really like the term revisionist Western but throw in Little Big Man, throw in McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
So Altman, too…
Movies that show that the Western can be an infinitely malleable form. It would be late 19th century in the American West. Probably specifically Nebraska.
We discussed last time but I grew up somewhat close to that area, Kansas City…
Oh, that’s right. You’re our neighbor. You’re where we go for weekends away. Speaking of Robert Altman. Robert Altman and Walt Disney.
During the worst of the pandemic, I did a deeper dive into Altman. To the point, I’ve seen movies like HealtH now.
What’d you think?
Of HealtH?
No, of his career arc.
Oh, I love him. But he’s fascinating, he makes some very weird movies sometimes.
Well, the cool thing about him is that, and the extremely admirable thing about him, is he just never stopped working. He didn’t care if each individual movie was going to be great or not, he just wanted to keep working. I mean, he often referred to himself or would compare himself more to a painter than a filmmaker.
Yeah, that early ’80s stretch is very strange.
He just wanted to keep making paintings.
Obviously, the first movie I ever saw of his was Popeye when I was a little kid.
Which is dreadful.
It’s tough…
I think it’s dreadful.
It was on cable when I was sick with COVID in early September. I tried watching it…
How did it hold up?
I find that movie interesting but I’m not sure his style of making movies was the best for Popeye.
I saw it when it came out. I saw the week it came out in 1980 or whatever that was. And I think my girlfriend and I at the time walked out of it, we just couldn’t take it. I saw it in Medellin, Colombia.
Wait, what?
Down in Colombia.
Wait, so you’re in the country of Colombia, and you’re like, “Let’s go see Popeye.”
Yeah, movie-crazy. So we went to go see Popeye at a mall down there in Medellin, and I think we walked out.
How did it go over with the rest of the crowd?
This is 40 years ago, man. I can’t remember.
When you write your autobiography, that’s where it starts, seeing Popeye in Colombia.
In Medellin, Columbia, yeah.
I think you were on stage at a film festival and you were talking about how there are certain movies that don’t get made anymore. And I think you mentioned Out of Africa and The English Patient…
Oh yeah. Oh, when I was at the Lumière Film Festival the other day. How’d you find that out?
It was on Variety.
All right, okay. And?
I just thought those were two interesting movies to bring up. I mean, Ridley Scott has Napoleon coming up. That’s kind of an epic on the Out of Africa scale?
Well, yeah. And so that’s groovy, yes. But I do miss, in general, things being made that are, let’s say, adult dramas with visual scope being made.
Out of Africa obviously won Best Picture, but it made a lot of money, too.
Right. But when you have beautiful stars and beautiful places doing cool things, just romantically…
Is The English Patient doing cool things? He didn’t turn out too well in the end.
Yeah, but still the milieu is so beautiful.
It’s a very beautiful movie. So is Out of Africa.
The studios will spend a little dough on something which doesn’t have a whole lot of contrivance.
Both movies have nice shots of old airplanes flying, and I assume that costs a lot of money to do.
And beautiful music, and there’s very good traditional scores. John Barry on Out of Africa, this phenomenal score. I forget who did The English Patient. [Note: It’s Gabriel Yared, who won an Oscar for his efforts.]
John Barry does one of my favorite scores, The Black Hole.
The Black Hole? Is that a Disney movie?
It is.
And that’s a John Berry score?
I believe so, yeah.
Oh, very good.
It is very ominous. And didn’t he do a lot of James Bond movies?
He did the James Bond movies, right. And a lot of ’60s British films.
I actually watched Out of Africa somewhat recently. I was going through every Best Picture winner.
You watched every Best Picture winner?
That I hadn’t seen, or at least hadn’t seen since I was a little kid.
Including Around the World in 80 Days?
Oh, man. Yes, I did not enjoy that movie.
The clunkers.
Oh gosh, there are some really bad Best Picture winners. And I know Spielberg loves it but The Greatest Show on Earth is not great…
Oh yeah, no.
Okay, but back to those kinds of movies, it does seem like streaming is making some movies like that.
Streaming will spend some dough on things. And in that same talk, I brought up how much I admired Pablo Larrain’s El Conde, which is kind of a critique of Latin American dictators, Pinoche in particular.
Right, he’s a vampire.
It’s so phenomenal that thing got made, and with the dough he had with which to make it. I mean, it’s really a phenomenal film. And I was just lamenting that, I mean, it’s a double-edged sword, because it’s so fantastic that Netflix paid for it … and then no one is seeing it theatrically. I’m not the first person to say that it’s a double-edged sword, because those films get made, but then they disappear quickly.
Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you. I mentioned when I was sick with COVID in the beginning of September and I just watched whatever was on cable. I saw Election three times that week. That movie still has a life because it’s on cable and we still get this shared experience. If Election was an Amazon movie only, I’m never going to just decide to watch it.
Allowing you to stumble across it.
Exactly.
I never thought that before, but I think that’s a really good point. [Starts writing a note] Yeah, I’m just making a note about how cable allows you to stumble upon things. And I wouldn’t call it a shared experience, because I think the only true shared experience is in an audience…
But it stays in the zeitgeist. I’m friends with someone who sold a movie to a streamer. And he’s told me he has second thoughts now because it never gets a run on, say TBS or whatever. Which it certainly would have. It’s just kind of gone.
Again, it’s a double-edged sword that these movies have a chance to get made, which they may not otherwise have had that chance, but then they’re quickly lost into the ethos.
And like a lot of your movies I think The Holdovers will stick around. If it’s on cable I’ll watch it every time.
You’d have to have Peacock though, at least in the near term. So it’s going to be theatrical only for a few weeks and it’s VOD. You pay 20 bucks to rent it, 25 bucks to own it. And then around January 1st it’ll be streaming on Peacock. Which I’ve never even seen.
Comcast owns both Focus Features and owns Peacock so that makes sense.
Correct. But I’m not going to pay extra for it, hopefully.
So that’s your pitch for people to get Peacock?
Yeah. But hopefully one day, I mean, we’re getting to the point they’re already talking about how can we bundle these different streamers together so that consumers like me don’t have to pay for this one and this one and this one and this one. Fucking bundle them for me.
So after the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, I went back and watched Citizen Ruth. Do you think about that movie?
Sadly. Look, I’m happy that it’s still relevant, sad for the reasons why. But when the Dobbs shenanigans came out in the middle of last year, Laura Dern and I fielded a bunch of calls from journalists. Most notably Washington Post did a piece on its sad relevance. Of course, I’m happy people are still watching the film.
That last scene where Laura Dern walks out and no one even notices her? I think about that a lot.
That movie was kind of inspired by Ace in the Hole. Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole.
Oh, you know what? I’ve never seen that…
Watch that today. I mean, that’s a really ferocious film. And I don’t know, we’re different filmmakers, if Citizen Ruth has the same ferocity that Wilder had in that film? He was able to leverage his success with Sunset Boulevard in doing anything he wanted to.
I have seen that obviously. So this is his direct follow-up to Sunset Boulevard?
Yeah. So Sunset Boulevard came out in ’50, and this one came out in ’51. So have a look and you’ll see the influence.
I think of the pool shot in Sunset Boulevard quite often…
Do you know how they got that shot? Mirror. They put a mirror on the bottom of the pool. So, next time we meet, try to angle for more time.
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