Director Alexander Payne goes his own way by Colin Covert / MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE / June 3, 2005 According to an old show-business adage, satire is what closes on Saturday night. Yet Alexander Payne's jaundiced comedies tickle audiences, delight critics and attract top talent. Payne's films, which he directs and co-writes with Jim Taylor, examine every-day American experiences with insightful skepticism, avoiding the black-and-white certainties of mainstream films. An Omaha native, Payne understands small-town America's dreams and delusions. His central figures are lost souls whose modest ambitions -- touring California's wine country, overseeing a student-council race, enjoying a pleasant retirement -- boomerang in deliciously humiliating ways. In an industry loath to offend its audiences, Payne is willing to speak unflattering truths. "If the artist is the doctor to society, it's not enough to diagnose the broken leg; you have to prescribe a treatment," Payne said by phone this week. "I find a really dreadful lack of evidence of love in cinema today. We need a lot more love in movies." He has publicly chastised the film studios that employ him for cranking out lowest-common-denominator movies. Last year in an acerbic essay in Variety, he wrote, "For 25 years, we've largely been making not films but rather glorified cartoons ... to maximize profits and at the tremendous, tragic expense of our culture." Payne concluded on a note of optimism, however, and does what he can to further the cause of intelligent filmmaking. He recently produced the uncompromising Sean Penn drama "The Assassination of Richard Nixon," and his subtle, character-driven work proves that small-budget films can be more ambitious and accomplished than mega-expensive projects. With four well-received features in the past eight years, most recently the Oscar-winning "Sideways," Payne has become Hollywood's rising star on the international film market -- last month he chaired a jury at the Cannes Film Festival -- and his sensibility has been called European. He says that description "appeals to the film snob" in him, but he feels such comments are off target. "These are American movies about American people," he said. "It's just that Americans have forgotten how to make them." Tonight, Walker Art Center offers a dialogue with Payne and Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, opening a weeklong retrospective of his work. The films begin at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with a double feature of Payne's UCLA Film School thesis, "The Passion of Martin," and his first feature, "Citizen Ruth." His 1990 student film is an early taste of his favorite themes -- loneliness, male cluelessness about women and mortifying sexual embarrassment, all played as comedy. Charles Hayward plays Martin, a glum photographer of Diane Arbus-style freaks who forms a romantic obsession for a young woman who attends his gallery showing. He pursues her with unjustified jealousy, driving her further away with each clumsy encounter. While its humor is sometimes juvenile, the film earned Payne several directing offers from film studios. He rejected those projects, instead writing his script with Taylor. "Citizen Ruth" (1996) is a merciless satire of pro-choice and pro-life zealots. Laura Dern is phenomenal as a pregnant, glue-sniffing derelict who becomes the pawn of a Terri Schiavo-like national fray when a judge orders her to have an abortion or face a felony charge. Burt Reynolds, Tippi Hedren, Mary Kay Place, Kurtwood Smith and Swoozie Kurtz contribute devastating cameos as pro-this and pro-that activists. Casting is one of Payne's greatest strengths. "It's an extension of writing," he explained. "We don't write with actors in mind, but with real people in mind, so we write good parts. You later find vessels, actors, who really embody what you had in mind in ways you never could have imagined." Two perfect cases in point are stoop-shouldered Paul Giamatti as Miles, a morose failed novelist, in the 2004 film "Sideways" (7:30 p.m. Wed.), and Thomas Haden Church as his happy-go-reckless best pal Jack, a randy former actor who's about to marry. The two take off for a carefree week of golf and wine-tasting but wind up veering into spectacular midlife crises. The tension between the men's personalities is delightful. One is too finicky to succeed at marriage; the other is too undiscriminating to settle down. After brief encounters with a sexy winery "pour girl" (Payne's wife, Sandra Oh) and a sophisticated divorcee (Virginia Madsen), the pair edge closer to escaping their inertia. Payne wisely leaves it up to viewers to decide whether they will ever succeed. Jack Nicholson turns the volume down to a cantankerous rumble in 2002's "About Schmidt" (7:30 p.m. next Fri.). A midlevel paper shuffler in an Omaha insurance agency, he moves into retirement to a chorus of congratulations. At home, however, he feels resentful and useless. When he finds that his wife has had a secret life behind his back, he begins a cross-country journey by motor home to his estranged daughter's wedding. The reconciliation most movies would impose on the characters never arrives, and Schmidt finds himself alienated from everyone but his African foster child, Ndugu. Kathy Bates is a hoot as his new in-laws' matriarch, a flirtatious bohemian who makes menacing moves toward Schmidt in her hot tub. The series concludes with "Election" (7:30 p.m. June 11), a 1999 high-school comedy that subverts every stereotype of the genre. Tracy Enid Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is a Little Miss Perfect overachiever running for student council president. Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) is the history teacher who wants to conduct the voting with fair play and decorum. When the striving Tracy offends his sense of fair play by bribing voters with cupcakes, he resolves to sabotage her chances, and the pair face off in a bitter rivalry. Jim fears Tracy's ferocious desire for victory, and she sees him as one of the envious weaklings who always try to pull down a winner. At once a witty character study and a wicked send-up of American politics, the film argues persuasively that Washington, D.C., is just high school with power. It's the kind of barbed insight that American movies can use more of, and that Payne is sure to provide.