Alexander Payne Dialogue with Kenneth Turan, 2005 Kenneth Turan: We're at the Walker Art Center for a Regis Dialogue with filmmaker Alexander Payne. We're going to be discussing his artistic vision, his sense of humor, and his love of film. Alexander Payne's films are characterized by his ability to bring emotional reality to drop dead funny character comedies managed to be achingly true to life while dealing with seriously out of control situations. Even the setting of most of them paints quintessentially all-American hometown of Omaha, Nebraska emphasizes the notion that these people could well be anyone's friends and neighbors. Maybe even yours. Kenneth Turan: I'm Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio. I'll be your host as we discuss Payne's work. Now, the Regis Dialogue with Alexander Payne is about to begin. Kenneth Turan: Well, I wanted to start at the beginning. I wanted to start with Omaha. You are famously born in Omaha. I had kind of a two-part question about that. I wonder, first of all, do you think people make too much of that? There's always every article that is written, it says, Omaha, films in Omaha. Do people make too much of it? On the flip side, what do you get from it? What do you think being born there, coming from there, has kind of done to the way you look at the world? Alexander Payne: It's so funny because you're commenting on the question and making too much of it at the same time. Kenneth Turan: Yeah. That's not easy to do. I've been practicing. Alexander Payne: You can't have it both ways. I think, I mean for my taste, I think people do. I mean, I get so sick of the question. There was the B side of why do you want to shoot there? Because I always say, you never ask Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen that question about New York. It's just they happen to be from there. Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson happened to be from LA and you don't ask them those questions, why LA? Why would it occur to you to shoot in LA? Alexander Payne: But because I'm from Omaha and I like to point out that Fellini shot early on in Rimini and even returned later for Amarcord. I just think in many arts earlier in your career, you feel a necessity somehow to connect to that. I don't really know how to answer that question other than it occurred to me to do so. I was and remain tired of seeing American films really only set in LA, which I feel is an anomalous place within this country and yet it's shown to the world is being like typical over US. Kenneth Turan: Quintessential America. Alexander Payne: It's only because the film business is located there and they're lazy and they don't go shoot in other places. The thing is too is like, I think we're all ... It's kind of my tirade, but we're also anxious to see a version of ourselves mirrored in art and in cinema that I didn't grow up seeing myself a Midwesterner in film. I mean you grew up in Omaha and you just see all those people out in LA and I don't know ... Jun 3, 2005 1 Kenneth Turan: I mean, I don't think even though it is trying to have it both ways. I mean, where we come from has an impact on who we are. I do what did coming from Omaha have to do with who you are today as a director? Alexander Payne: Well, the real answer that would I think be more how did where I come from have to do with me as a person. We could get into that, but we've got other stuff to cover. I'm glad I'm from there for a variety of reasons. I think it's a great place to grow up and good values and a good rhythm of life and a certain honesty and frankness and humor, with which I grew up. I think Omaha is of the Midwest in that way, but also specific in its own way. Alexander Payne: But the other thing too just in terms of me personally as a filmmaker is because I like to get reality in film, like somehow have a, you could even say a documentary approach to fiction filmmaking that I felt I needed to get it right first in Omaha, the place I knew the best before I could move on. I think if Sideways is successful at all in terms of getting a sense of Santa Barbara County, it's because I went armed with what I had learned and finally starting to get it right in About Schmidt with respect to Omaha. Kenneth Turan: Now, I read and again sometimes you read things, I know as someone who writes things or things that you write and you read are not always true, but that you had a camera when you were quite young, but your family had gotten a kind of an eight-millimeter cameras. Is this a true story? Alexander Payne: Sort of. My dad owned a restaurant in downtown Omaha, which his grandfather had started. From Kraft Cheese he had received a, not even Super 8 but Regular 8 movie projector. Kenneth Turan: Wow. Alexander Payne: Which in those days you get, I'm sure many of you remember, you used to buy like 3 and 12-minute versions of films in Regular 8 and Super 8 at the camera store, Castle Films and Blackhawk Films later. I took to that. And so, when I was about five or six started developing an interest in movies. My first thing was threading that projector and showing movies. Then later when I was about 14, I got a Super 8 camera. Kenneth Turan: Yeah. But despite that's something I was- Alexander Payne: Used. Kenneth Turan: Do you still have it? Alexander Payne: I do. Kenneth Turan: All right. I was interested that we so hear about filmmakers who's interested young and then they immediately go off to film school. I mean, I was interested in the fact that you did not. I've just wondered, did you think about being a filmmaker at that age? Did you dismiss it? You almost went to graduate school in journalism, undergraduate. You Jun 3, 2005 2 went to Stanford and had a classic liberal arts education. I just wondered what was your thinking about being a filmmaker at that stage? Alexander Payne: It was a far off dream. It was dream like, oh, wouldn't that be great? But it was so distant. You grew up in the Midwest with ... I'm second generation immigrant. It's not the mentality to think that that's possible. I mean, I'm so jealous in meeting people in the coast. It's like, oh, my parents were in the arts who grew up in the business. Like it's a no brainer. Alexander Payne: For me it was so far away. And so, in a way I was headed toward it my whole life because I was such a film buff my whole life. On the other hand, it took me to go through college than actually get to fall quarter senior year to think, well, where the hell am I going to apply to grad school and resisting my parents' pressure to apply to law school. I ended up taking the LSAT but, you know. Alexander Payne: I was a double major in history and literature with an eye toward either journalism or film. I still had it in the back of my mind. I thought, I got to apply and unsure whether I had the talent or the interest, an interest that would extend to making films as opposed to just being a film buff. Then I got in and then the life to try this, maybe I'll suck at it, but I've got to try it. Kenneth Turan: And UCLA is a very particular kind of place. I know other UCLA graduates, film school graduates. Can you talk a little bit about the sensibility of the place? Alexander Payne: I think in today's film schools, well, this was the mid-'80s. For me when USC was like the hot shot white guy film school to go to. I got into USC as well and went down and spent two days at each place, went down from Stanford to LA. Really what tipped the scales was that USC is much more ... USC and AFI are much more industry feeder schools, very Hollywood oriented. Then you're paying through the nose for tuition and they retain rights to your negatives of the student films and you have to compete to make advanced films. Alexander Payne: Whereas at UCLA, it's a public school and it's one person, one film. You're expected to make a film and you can be anything you want. I think the best film schools in the US continue to be UCLA and NYU, because NYU is similar. Kenneth Turan: Yeah. Also, I mean, the filmmakers who come out of there tend to be more adventurous. They tend to be less the kind of cookie-cutter filmmakers.