Hollywood Grind: How Alexander Payne Has Remained Independent

(Hollywood Grind is a column that examines filmmakers working within the studio system to produce and/or distribute their work.)

Alexander Payne has never been a studio filmmaker, per se, but he has bobbed and weaved around the system, contributing his talents to big-budget productions while carving out a career balanced between adapting literary works and creating his own original visions, (mostly) in colloboration with co-writer Jim Taylor.

The Descendants, which opens in the U.S. in New York and Los Angeles today before expanding in limited release on Friday, revolves around Matt King (George Clooney) as he deals with changing family dynamics and the responsibilities of property ownership. He's a wealthy man who is not ostentatious about his inherited material prosperity and doesn't want to spoil his children. He's so wrapped up with his ideals, though, that he doesn't realize how far he's drifted away from his family.

In his alienation from friends and family, Matt King is related to Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) in Sideways. Like Matt, Miles is adrift from intimacy, though perhaps "driven away" is the better description; he's a cranky, cantankerous bastard, and has a degree of self-awareness about his actions. Like Matt, Miles knows that he needs to make some changes, but he can't quite figure out how he's missed out, where exactly he went wrong, and what more he actually needs to do to find happiness and peace in his life.

And so it goes with Payne's other films. About Schmidt explores a retired insurance executive (Jack Nicholson) who doesn't know how he got so old -- and why his daughter doesn't seem to like him. In Election, Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) finds his life spiraling out of control for reasons he can't (or refuses to) fathom, and so he fixes on Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) as the chief culprit. And the titular character of Citizen Ruth, played by Laura Dern, never quite understands, or acknowledges, that she's her own worst enemy.

Citizen Ruth marked the first feature colloboration between Payne and Jim Taylor, who were roommates in Los Angeles at the time. Payne, originally from Omaha, Nebraska, attended film school at UCLA, winning the Jack Nicholson Outstanding Student Director Award as a graduate student before earning an M.F.A. in 1990. The Passion of Martin, his thesis film, played the following year at the Sundance Film Festival.

Based on the short, Payne landed a one-year deal with Universal Studios, but nothing came of it. "What happens to people like me is, you do a film that attracts the attention of Hollywood, and they say, 'Wow, we love the film you made--it's so new and different! What do you want to do next?' " he told Independent Streak. "Then you give them a script, and they say, 'Uh, nope, this is just too new and different.' "

Taylor did some work in China for Cannon Films in 1987, returning to the U.S. and working first in development and then as a filmmaker's assistant. He began doing temporary jobs, where he met Payne, and they eventually became roommates. They wrote short films together and starting writing Citizen Ruth. "Our collaboration grew out of our friendship," Payne said. "The story that unfolded seemed to lend itself to our shared sensibilities."

After winning big on "Wheel of Fortune," a TV game show, Taylor went to NYU film school, continuing to work on rewrites for Citizen Ruth with Payne. Veteran producer Cary Woods loved Payne's description of the film as an "abortion comedy," and "bulldozed and browbeat Harvey Weinstein into making it" at Miramax.

Based on the positive response to Citizen Ruth, Payne and Taylor were able to get the job to adopt Tom Perrotta's 1998 novel Election for MTV Films. About Schmidt was similar, in that Louis Begley's 1996 novel (set in the Hamptons and Manhattan, by the way) was a property that had been set up with Jack Nicholson's producing partner, and they were hired to write the script. In that case, the duo also made use of a thematically-similar script Payne had already written. For Sideways, Payne and producer Michael London had the rights to Rex Pickett's novel, which was unpublished at the time. Payne and Taylor wrote the script on spec, and then shopped it around.

As he explained to Coming Soon, Payne's company, financed by Fox Searchlight, optioned Kaui Hart Hemming's novel The Descendants, around the time it was published in 2007. He was busy working with Taylor on another (as yet unproduced) script), so other writers were hired and director Stephen Frears considered making it.

By mid-2009, Payne and Taylor's other script was done, but the financing wasn't coming together, and Payne wanted to make a movie. "I had to start from scratch and find my own way into the story, make it personal to me if I could because it's not my world, it's not my story. In a way, my co-writer was the novelist, was Kaui Hemmings because I wound up being pretty darn faithful to the book."

Payne and Taylor have also worked on more straightforward studio productions. Payne reportedly did a polish on Meet the Parents. A little later, Payne and Taylor earned "a nice paycheck" for spending four weeks writing a draft of Jurassic Park III, though little of their draft survived. "That director, [Joe] Johnston, and the studio--they're not interested in movies, they're interested in theme park rides," Payne told Film Freak Central. "I know that our script, and this sounds like sour grapes and it's not, is much more interesting. All they wanted was action."

The writing team also labored on the movie that became I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, spending a month on what Payne characterized as "a fix-it job" in an interview with the Boston Globe. "We were very proud of that. But it was completely changed by Sandler. He wasn't involved when we wrote it. It wasn't supposed to be two white guys. It was supposed to be a white guy and a black guy. We wanted Jamie Foxx and someone else - it could have been Sandler, it doesn't matter. And they changed that and we were upset. And we also had what we thought was a better title, which was 'Flamers.' ... In retrospect, I sort of wish I directed it."

Even with the reputation that he's established over a decade and a half, Payne still has to work hard to make the movies he wants to make, to protect his own fiercely creative visions. If all goes well, filming on Nebraska will begin next April; the story of an alcoholic father, to be shot in black-and-white, still needs a marquee name to fill the lead role. And after that, Payne hopes to make Wilson, adapted by Daniel Clowes from his graphic novel.

And after that? I'm imaging something ... independent.

The Descendants, starring George Clooney, opens today in New York and Los Angeles. It expands to a limited nationwide release on Friday, and will expand wider next Wednesday.