Laughing through the pain by Glenn Lovell / THE MERCURY NEWS / November 3, 2004 Alexander Payne's movie-making agenda is so basic that it sometimes sails beneath the communal radar. The former Nebraskan simply wants to remind us that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds, and that if we sometimes feel, well, puny and insignificant, we're not alone in our aloneness. The Payne'd outlook has already infused ``Election'' with Reese Witherspoon and ``About Schmidt'' with Jack Nicholson. It can now be found in ``Sideways,'' a sort of Abbott and Costello road picture set among Santa Barbara County's Santa Ynez vineyards. Miles (Paul Giamatti), a struggling novelist whose passion for the grape knows no bounds, is your prototypical Payne hero: a guy who succeeds -- and may even get the girl -- without really succeeding. Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is Miles' traveling company, a dopey Lothario whose dunderheaded sincerity often wins the day. ``Sideways'' -- now playing in San Francisco, opening Friday in San Jose -- pretty much sums up how all Payne's characters move. Struggle as they might, they ``don't really advance in life or change . . . or anything,'' says Payne, 43, during a visit to San Francisco. ``Maybe I'll keep that title from now on -- just like George Foreman, who names all his kids George,'' adds the filmmaker with a laugh. Among Payne's director heroes are Ernst Lubitsch (``Ninotchka'') and Billy Wilder (``Some Like It Hot''), who also made comforting comedies about people who wind up basically where they begin. ``What I think I'm doing here and in my other movies is telling the audience, `You are not alone in the misery and the solitude you feel, and in how you're mucking your way through life, looking for answers and not finding any.' '' If this is all Greek to the average filmgoer, well, it's meant to be. Payne traces his fascination with fate to ``Oedipus Rex.'' In ``Election,'' a high school teacher (Matthew Broderick) attempts to stop a scheming, overachieving student (Witherspoon) from winning the senior-class election -- but, through his meddling, assures her victory. A similar dynamic exists between Miles and Jack in ``Sideways.'' ``It's very Greek,'' the filmmaker acknowledges. ``The very steps you take to avoid your fate are the very steps that bring it about. You see that in `The Godfather' 1 and 2, and in `Election,' Reese's character says, `You can't interfere with destiny because if you try to interfere, the same thing is going to happen anyway. And you'll just suffer.' '' The Stanford- and UCLA-educated Payne sometimes sounds like a university professor. This afternoon his speech is peppered with references to Lincoln, Fellini and old-time radio comics Bob and Ray. ``I consider myself a UCLA film student who happens to be making films professionally,'' he says. ``And I'm still trying to figure out what a movie is.'' For all the accolades that have been heaped on Payne since ``Citizen Ruth'' -- his first feature -- starring Laura Dern as a homeless woman who uses her pregnancy to work both sides of the right-to-choose debate, you'd think he would have settled in as the new Woody Allen. Think again. ``I don't personally think my films are that great,'' he reveals. ``I'm always thinking, `How can I do better? What have I learned on this one that I can apply to the next one?' When I finish a film, I no longer know what it is. Because I'm no longer making it, I lose interest.'' You can sense this already happening with ``Sideways.'' Just as the public and critics are beginning to pick up on the comedy, Payne is looking ahead to his next project with long-time writing partner Jim Taylor, vaguely described as ``about the times in which we're living.'' Payne was executive producer on ``The Assassination of Nixon,'' a grim but mesmerizing character study with Sean Penn as a nebbish furniture salesman who slowly becomes unhinged in the Watergate '70s. ``It's a bit `Taxi Driver'-ish,'' Payne says, picking up on the film's advance buzz. ``I'm inured to its `downer' elements. I find it funnier and more controlled than anything Penn has done in years.'' Speaking of offbeat performances, Church's work in ``Sideways'' has Oscar nomination written all over it. Church, best known as the mechanic in ``Wings,'' had auditioned for Payne's ``Election'' and ``About Schmidt'' but lost out to other actors. ``The third time was the proverbial charm. I'd never seen Tom in his TV show, but he had the looks and age that were appropriate for this washed-up actor. And he's funny. You can't help but like the guy, even though much of what he does is unsympathetic. I thought, `I've never seen this guy in a movie before.' I'm not interested in seeing the same old faces in the same old roles.'' He proved this by casting Nicholson as the widower in ``About Schmidt.'' Nicholson, for the first time in years, played his actual age: 66. And with comb over and generous paunch, he earned another Oscar nomination. Payne says he and Nicholson would reteam ``in a heartbeat'' and have, indeed, just happened upon a new project. Subject? ``I don't want to jinx it -- let's just say it also has to do with our times.'' And, like ``About Schmidt'' and ``Sideways,'' it will probably appeal to an older audience. Has this made it difficult to find financing in a world that worships the 11- to 27-year-old demographic? ``Sideways,'' at $16 million, cost roughly Nicholson's salary on ``Schmidt.'' ``No, it was easy to finance because my last two films made money,'' he replies. ``But I have to take my hat off to Fox Searchlight, my new favorite studio, because they were willing to give me the budget needed without insisting on famous movie stars.'' Payne, not surprisingly, has little good to say about the business of making movies -- exit polls, target audiences, etc., etc. ``I disagree so strongly with the premise that the only way you get kids to see a movie is to make a movie about kids,'' he says, raising his voice for the first time during our conversation. ``I'm 43 and grew up in the '70s, when we kids went to movies like `The Sting' and `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' . . . I'm never interested in targeting an audience. My audience is me and my friends.'' And, he would be safe in adding, anyone who cares about strikingly original comedies.