Alexander Payne: Making serious films his way in the studio system by Kevin Lewis / DGA MAGAZINE / November 2002 Does a filmmaker operating in the studio system have fewer difficulties with creative rights than the independent filmmaker? "Everything is different," said director/screenwriter Alexander Payne. "I now, knock on wood, have final cut in my contract. New Line was good enough to give it to me for my latest, About Schmidt. Now, I won't leave home without it." About Schmidt was the opening-night film at the recent New York Film Festival. He talked about his directing methods with DGA Magazine and at a press conference at the Walter Reade Theater held with the film's actors, Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Hope Davis and Dermot Mulroney. Payne began his career as a writer, achieving considerable recognition when he also directed the films, Citizen Ruth (1996) and Election (1999), both of which he co-wrote with Jim Taylor. Taylor collaborated again with Payne on About Schmidt, which they adapted from the Louis Begley novel. What is remarkable is that in an era when filmmakers decry the lack of interest among the major studios in producing serious, character-driven movies, Payne has been able to make thought-provoking films within the studio system. Though he had no contact with the Old Hollywood, Payne is almost a throwback to his predecessors, William Wyler, George Stevens, John Ford and King Vidor — directors who all enjoyed directorial careers helming intellectually challenging, character-driven movies within the studio system. Though he is a screenwriter, Payne defends the right of the film director to ultimately control the screenplay. 'When it comes time for me to direct, I'm very willing to say, 'Who wrote this terrible dialogue?' and throw it out," he said with a smile. "But it doesn't happen very often. The dialogue is pretty much as it was written. When I go into production, I like the script to be as solid as it can be." Payne added that there was "very little improvisation and very little rehearsal" among the actors, a fact assented to by the actors. Nicholson, who has directed films, said he liked Schmidt's script as written when his friend Harry Gittes, one of the film's producers, brought it to him. "The reason why there wasn't a lot of rewriting on the script is because Alexander takes the time to write and decide what he wants to begin with," Nicholson said. Many other scripts "get to a certain point," Nicholson said, and are then used to entice an actor or actress. Few of those scripts that make it through the production process end up with many white sheets left, he added, because the material has been "sifted around the stars." When asked how he resolves any differences in his interpretation with those of the director, Nicholson said, "My process is always to make a firm argument, wherever the disagreement is, and if I feel I've expressed it, and I feel that it hasn't altered the situation, I do what the director asks me to do. That's the way I always do it. I do make a good argument. That's what I'd want actors to do for me when I direct." Though Nicholson's acting career has overshadowed his directorial one, he feels he may be more comfortable than many superstar actors working with directors because of his early years working on Roger Corman movies as both actor and uncredited director of sequences. In return Payne said, "When he would make suggestions and ask me to try something, I always took it in the very generous spirit in which he offered it to me, and I learned from him." Nicholson, in what is one of his subtlest, most interior performances, was attracted to the part of the retired insurance actuary Warren Schmidt because of the mendacity of the character "who understood nothing about his own life." The clever use of voiceover, in which Schmidt relates his frustrations in letters to his Childreach foster child in Africa, and the plot device of a man trying to disrupt his daughter's marriage to a man he dislikes, recalls another classic comedy about a corporate executive's epiphany, Father of the Bride (1950). Asked if he modeled his performance on that of Spencer Tracy, he said, 'When I am cast in a movie where the woman's part is more interesting in her behavior, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire, the cleanest, clearest actors you would want to think of." Directors often state that casting is crucial, which Nicholson expressed in a statement his acting teacher told him. "Every character you play is 85 percent exactly the way you are. It doesn't matter if I play Mata Hari." Relaxing that 85 percent and "isolating the other 15 percent is what acting is all about." About Schmidt has a somber, reflective tone for a comedy, resembling in many ways the films of Ingmar Bergman, particularly Wild Strawberries (1959) in which an elderly man interacts, like Schmidt, with the people he meets along his long auto journey to his estranged daughter. But Payne wants audiences to realize that it is a comedy, and resists being compared to Bergman. What gives the film a muted look is that it has an authentic Midwestern feel about it. Payne insisted it be shot on his native soil. He was born in Omaha and is of Greek ancestry. "I drive around Omaha. I do a lot of the location work myself. I don't know how directors really get a good feel for their locations by just looking at folders and then choosing." Payne worked very closely with his cinematographer, James Glennon. Though Schmidt reflects in meticulous detail the tawdry strip mall stores, the white paint and dark brick town square building of Midwestern America, and the metallic mobilehome parks, it has a seamless bleak, wintry color scheme that was the look Payne wanted to achieve. "I get very involved with choosing the angles. I design the shots in conjunction with the DP. The framing and the movement are very important to me. The lighting is really his department under my direction and guidelines." Many consider Payne an independent filmmaker, although his films were studio films — Citizen Ruth was Miramax, Election was Paramount. About Schmidt is New Line. "I don't think independent implies necessarily the source of the funding," Payne said, "but rather the authorial and personal spirit in which the film is made. "Of course I've had to worry about the funding. I always say that an 'independent filmmaker' will take money from anywhere, be it a consortium of dentists or a studio. We don't care where the money comes from as long as we can have control over what we do and be empowered to make the movie."