Alexander Payne and his movies
Alexander Payne is a long-time veteran film director who has won Academy Awards in 2005 for his light-hearted comedy “Sideways” and later in 2012 for “The Descendants”. Payne is a native of Nebraska and studied film at the University of California in Los Angeles. Even though he has been out of film school for over 30-years, he claims he is still learning about the motion picture making process.
Alexander Payne is most well-known for creating light comedies whose characters often have a dark side to either their personality or their background. In creating the script, he has commented that he likes to portray characters in real life situations that often, in a wryly humorous tone, expose the dark undercurrent of society. Payne shies away from deliberately portraying the protagonist in a positive light, saying that too many films in the past did this, and it leaves the theatregoer with an affected impression. Among his best-known characters are Citizen Ruth’s Ruth Stoops played by Laura Dern and Election’s Tracy Flick played by Reese Witherspoon.
He and scriptwriter Jim Taylor have successfully collaborated on the scripts of five motion pictures together. Taylor told reporter Samantha Brown in a recent interview that he and Payne think so much alike that they seem to share the same brain. He also said that a script typically takes about six months to write, and afterwards many revisions also take place during the shooting. He and Taylor often like to write about complex characters in very realistic, humanist situations.
Alexander Payne has put the spotlight on the genre of “dark comedy” with most of his major motion pictures earning critical box office appeal. His presence among major Hollywood directors will no doubt continue for several decades to come.
Alexander Payne is a long-time veteran film director who has won Academy Awards in 2005 for his light-hearted comedy “Sideways” and later in 2012 for “The Descendants”. Payne is a native of Nebraska and studied film at the University of California in Los Angeles. Even though he has been out of film school for over…