Payne, Alexander 1961-

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PAYNE, Alexander 1961-

PERSONAL: Born 1961, in Omaha, NE; married Sandra Oh (an actress). Education: Stanford University, B.A.; University of California, Los Angeles, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Endeavor Agency, 9701 Wilshire Blvd., 10th Floor, Beverly Hills, CA.

CAREER: Screenwriter, director.

AWARDS, HONORS: First Prize, Munich Film Festival, and New York film Critics Circle award for best screenplay, both for Citizen Ruth; Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay, Writers Guild of America award, and New York Film Critics Circle award, all for screenplay Election; Independent Spirit Awards for screenplay, direction, and feature; Work in Progress tribute, Museum of Modern Art, 2002.

WRITINGS:

SCREENPLAYS

(And producer and editor) The Passion of Martin (thesis film), 1989.

(With Jim Taylor, and director) Citizen Ruth (also known as Meet Ruth Stoops), Miramax, 1996.

(With Jim Taylor, and director) Election (based on the novel by Tom Perrotta), Paramount, 1999.

(With Jim Taylor, and director) About Schmidt (based on the novel by Louis Begley), New Line, 2002.

Directed one of the nine vignettes in Inside Out, 1992; Willie Nelson: The Big Six-O: An All-Star Birthday Celebration (television special, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), segment producer, 1993; Jurassic Park III, screenwriter, 2001; A Decade under the Influence, actor, 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Sideways (screenplay), due 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Alexander Payne's thesis film, The Passion of Martin, garnered many awards for the young screenwriter, and starting in 1990, he began to collaborate with Jim Taylor. The duo wrote several screenplays, beginning with the award-winning Citizen Ruth, a satire about the abortion debate.

Ruth Stoops (played by Laura Dern), pregnant for the fifth time, is a glue-sniffing loser who is being pulled in two directions—by a group of pro-lifers called the Baby Savers, led by Burt Reynolds, and pro-choice lesbians Kelly Preston and Swoosie Kurtz. Both groups descend upon her after she is caught by the police inhaling patio sealant, and the judge says he'll drop the charges if she aborts the fetus. People's Leah Rozen wrote that Citizen Ruth "savagely skewers zealots in both camps."

Election is based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, which itself was inspired by the three-way 1992 presidential campaign and a true account involving a high school girl. Thomas Doherty wrote in Cineaste that "Perrotta and Payne's allegorical satire of American politics makes for an open-book test of connect the dots: corruption, sex, dirty tricks, media manipulation, voter fraud—just like the grownups."

The film stars Matthew Broderick as civics and history teacher Jim McAllister and Reese Witherspoon as overachiever Tracy Flick, the candidate for class president. Jim, who intensely dislikes goody-goody Tracy, recruits jock Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to oppose her, and then Paul's lesbian sister, Tammy (Jessica Campbell), decides to run when her girlfriend leaves her for her brother. Jim teaches ethics in class, but his own disintegrate as the story progresses.

Variety's Todd McCarthy wrote that "the film delights in detailing the frequently lurid and unsavory impulses that drive people, and Payne has developed a cinematically fluid means of expressing them."

Stuart Klawans wrote in the Nation that "the dirty secret of Election is that Tracy has every right to bear a grudge. She knows there is no such thing as fairness at George Washington Carver High School" because Jim "treats her as if she were something that sticks out and so must be pounded down. The film is not too delicate to point out that the thing that really demands pounding lies between McAllister's legs. But out of a frustration he can't even admit to, this man who no longer notices his wife (or the dusty Ford he drives, or the shirts that will disintegrate with two more washings) chooses Tracy as the symbol of all evil." Klawans noted that Jim pits wealthy Paul, who will have, with no effort on his part, the very things Tracy yearns for, against a girl who is using every last penny she owns to run her campaign.

A People reviewer commented that Election "shows high school the way it is, not the way kids wish it were," and said that Payne "deftly manages to show the distinctions of class one finds even in the heart-land."

About Schmidt, based on the Louis Begley novel, was an official selection in the Cannes Film Festival and opened the New York Film Festival of 2002. "Under its deceptively flat, Nebraskan surface, it has a delayed-release emotional charge as devastating as that of any American film this year," wrote David Ansen in Newsweek.

Jack Nicholson is Warren Schmidt, a newly retired insurance actuary whose entire life has been lived without diversion. The part is unlike the larger-than-life parts Nicholson has traditionally played. Warren and his wife, whom he now finds boring, plan to finally have an adventure in a recreational vehicle when she dies of a blood clot, after which Schmidt finds evidence that she once had an affair with his best friend. But he makes the trip alone, to visit daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis), from whom Schmidt has become somewhat alienated and who is about to marry waterbed salesman Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney), a marriage Schmidt would like to prevent. Warren meets Randall's family, a divorced couple played by Kathy Bates and Howard Hesseman, who are stuck in a 1960s time warp. The unseen character is Ndugu Umbo, a six-year-old Tanzanian orphan Warren sponsors and to whom he writes long letters.

Kenneth Turan, writing from Cannes for the Los Angeles Times online on the day of the film's debut, felt that About Schmidt "has an exact ear—and eye—for classically American idiosyncrasies, for the way the odd and the normal turn out to live next door." Turan wrote that Payne "has a reassuring air of intelligent caring and precision about him," and said that "it's the care Payne and Taylor take with their scripts that is the core of their success."

Peter Travers wrote in a Rolling Stone online review that "About Schmidt may well win Nicholson his fourth Oscar. But the real fun comes in watching him work with Alexander Payne, who is a major talent but also an off-Hollywood director . . . who cooks up blistering satires. . . . Both are gloss-free mavericks, not given to coddling audiences."

In reviewing About Schmidt in Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "You don't have to know Omaha to know that Omaha-bred filmmaker Alexander Payne has located what is right and true, personal and universal about quiet American desperation and raucous American individuality. Even more than in his previous two beauts, Election and Citizen Ruth, Payne is in perfect vibration with the Om in Omaha."

In a Time review, Richard Schickel commented that Payne "understands that lives like Schmidt's are composed of incidents that cannot, must not, be forced into confrontation. Payne also understands what it has taken me most of a lifetime to comprehend: that the Schmidts of this world are not to be easily dismissed. Payne did that brilliantly in Election a few years back. Here he's after something deeper."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Enterprise, March 2003, Josh Larsen, review of About Schmidt, p. 49.

Christian Century, September 25, 1996, James M. Wall, review of Citizen Ruth, p. 883.

Cineaste, fall, 1999, Thomas Doherty, review of Election, p. 36.

Entertainment Weekly, January 10, 1997, Owen Gleiberman, review of Citizen Ruth, p. 42; December 13, 2002, Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of About Schmidt, p. 58.

Esquire, January, 2003, David Hochman, "The Scorsese of Omaha: Nebraskan Director Alexander Payne Talks about Ugliness, Hummels, and Jack Nicholson's Hair" (interview), p. 20.

Lancet, January 25, 1997, Bertie Bregman, Allan Rosenfield, review of Citizen Ruth, p. 291.

Nation, June 28, 1999, Stuart Klawans, review of Election, p. 31.

Newsweek, December 16, 2002, David Ansen, review of About Schmidt, p. 64.

New Yorker, December 16, 2002, Anthony Lane, review of About Schmidt, p. 106.

People, December 16, 1996, Leah Rozen, review of Citizen Ruth, p. 23; May 3, 1999, review of Election, p. 27; December 16, 2002, Leah Rozen, review of About Schmidt, p. 45.

Time, December 9, 1996, Richard Corliss, review of Citizen Ruth, p. 82; December 16, 2002, Richard Schickel, review of About Schmidt, p. 72.

Variety, April 19, 1999, Todd McCarthy, review of Election, p. 46.