Alexander Payne by Daniel Robert Epstein / SUICIDEGIRLS.com / December 2004 Alexander Payne is the handsome young director of the films as Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt. His latest picture is Sideways starring Paul Giamatti and Payne’s wife Sandra Oh. Sideways is the story of Miles Raymond [Paul Giamatti], a failed writer who teaches junior high school English. He takes his best friend, former hot actor Jack [Thomas Haden Church] on a weeklong drive up to wine country in California. There they explore the nature of their failures and question their relationships. Jack, about to get married, has an affair and wonders whether he should call it off. Miles, recently divorced, questions whether or not he made the right choice. Daniel Robert Epstein: How did the book, Sideways, get to you? Alexander Payne: The book was unpublished but the producer, Michael London, had the rights. A lot of books get to me unpublished, it makes me feel special. Maybe they aren’t published because they are uncommerical and these days uncommerical may mean interesting. DRE: You had a small success with Citizen Ruth and since then you’ve been adapting books. What is the reason for that? AP: When you finish a film you wonder if you will ever think of another movie idea. So it’s nice to get a book where you like the characters and the situations. The most important thing in a film is the flash of the idea. If the idea is good that’s what the audience responds to. From the filmmaker’s point of view that idea is what gives you the feeling that you will be able to see it through for two, three even four years with having to work on it every single day. There has to be something interesting otherwise you’re fucked. There is something about considering a novel because the idea is still there even if you change it for the film. It’s good to have a milieu set of characters and situations. You enter a dialectic with the material by taking what we like and leaving out what we don’t then adding on scenes as well. Don’t forget that with someone like Kubrick who is very much a personal filmmaker, 95 percent of his work was adapted from books. DRE: You’re part of this generation of filmmakers that everyone wants to work with like PT Anderson, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson and David O. Russell. Are you aware of that? AP: That started in 1999 when Election, Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, Rushmore and Magnolia came out. I’m really good friends with David Russell. Spike and I know each other but not very well. I met Paul Thomas Anderson once and he’s not a team player though he’s a perfectly nice guy. We met at Cannes but he sticks to himself. Spike and Sofia [Coppola] were always very nice and friendly. DRE: Do you see commonalities between your films and theirs? AP: Well they are all 35mm, 24 frames per second in color and stereo. We’re all around about the same age within ten years. DRE: How important were the locations when making Sideways? AP: Very important. As much as I make fiction films I still have a very documentary sensibility both in trying to get the reality of people and the area. It’s about observation almost reportorial observation. I really want the place to be accurately presented. I went to live in the wine country of California for four months before we started shooting to take notes and to make it feel accurate. The spilt screen of them driving through the country and the wine tasting was to make a postcard triptych of that area. I like things to feel right. DRE: How did you find the house where Paul’s character has to get back his friend’s wallet? AP: We spent a lot of time looking for that house. It’s in Landford California. DRE: Paul Giamatti has said it was originally a meth lab. AP: I wouldn’t say that but it’s owned by a nice lady whose two sons are local gang guys and might be in prison. The cops that were supervising our set mentioned that they had knocked in the door of the house. I like to use found objects more than creating so rather than pick some house and make it low rent we found a genuine low rent house. When we use locations the crew has strict orders to leave it better than we found it. The general rule is to never let a crew shoot in your house but if people need the cash we try to make a good experience. DRE: Were you into wine before you did this film? AP: Yes I was. I’m not a connoisseur or an expert but I always liked wine, especially in the last 10 or 15 years when I began to learn more about. I thought it would be fun to get into with this film. DRE: How was it directing your wife for the first time? AP: She made it easy because she’s a pro. DRE: Thomas mentioned that you seemed to get frustrated at them because they couldn’t make his and Sandra’s sex scene sensual enough? AP: I think they were doing it in a cartoony fashion and it should be real. It’s slightly exaggerated but I want it real. They did it for at least those three seconds you see it in the film. DRE: Did all of the actors audition for this film? AP: Except for Sandra, we used the casting couch at home. DRE: [laughs] How was the audition process? AP: It was the first film since Citizen Ruth where there was no studio looking over my shoulder. It was just me and the producer. I just work the way I always want to which is meet a ton of actors then select those that I feel are most appropriate whether they are famous or not. Had I picked movie stars, which I could have, I would have had more money to make the film but it doesn’t matter. When you make comedies you can’t screw around with casting and slap some famous person in there as an insurance policy for the studio because it will screw up the movie. The very element that makes the studio breathe easier is what will sink the movie. I understand their desire to have someone as famous as possible but I understand comedy more and this is the cast that will hit the tone right. We don’t need a cinema which continues to lie to us. DRE: Thomas Haden Church and Paul Giamatti are so natural together. How did that happen? AP: I cast them singly then insisted they spend some time together beforehand and they wanted to as well. We went through the 140 page script together. I told them that I didn’t want to make a two hour and 20 minute movie so they have to talk fast. They needed to practice their dialogue and hang out together. If the audience didn’t believe their friendship then the movie would really stink. DRE: How is this movie personal for you? AP: It has my sense of humor and pathos. It’s not autobiographical exactly but it’s personal in that it’s exactly the way I would make a movie at this point in my life. There aren’t compromises in it. It hits me as a filmmaker because when you are allowed to make a film with a lot of control it’s a very intimate experience. DRE: What did you learn from Jack Nicholson about dealing with actors? AP: The first thing that comes to mind is what he had learned from Jeff Corey, a teacher of his in the 50’s, when you approach a role you must have the confidence that you are 80 percent of the character you’re playing. It’s not that you are like that character but that you are 80 percent of that character. All you have to create is that 20 percent. Before I directed Nicholson I called Mike Nichols, since he had directed Jack four times, so I asked him for advice. Mike said to just tell him the truth. I thought that was liberating. I talk to a lot of film students and the students always say they think they know everything but how to talk to actors. When you take directing class they tell you to say activable verb and there is just all this pressure when it comes to actors when you just want to say “Do it fucker!” Actors always scold directors by telling them to take acting class because then we will know how to deal better with actors. I tell them to take a directing class because then you will know how frustrated we are with them. There are some idiot actors you have to manipulate but I try to avoid that. It’s nice when you say cut and you can go up to the actor and say “That sucked, could you do it better?” In our first week I would say to Nicholson “Everything you’re doing is great but because of the circumstances there needs to be more urgency” and he would say “Oh you mean faster?”