Finding Inspiration: Alexander Payne

I'm writing a TV series with a friend and former colleague. It's going to be great. It's actually going to be Canada's next great series.

Only one problem: I have no idea what I'm doing.

I was tasked with writing the first draft of the first episode. Oh god. How do I structure? How many pages is each act? What are my plot points? How do you communicate anything in 23 pages? How do you write dialogue. Someone fucking help!

And with that desperate plea, someone did: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor.

Not psychically. I don't personally know Payne or Taylor. But watching their entire body of work (save for Citizen Ruth) starting with Election and on down through The Descendants (which Payne wrote and directed and Taylor executive produced) was all the inspiration anyone could need.

While watching, laid up on the couch for the majority of last week with an ear infection, I paid close attention to the writing of the characters. I imagined the work, not as finished films, but as scripts that had been acted out and photographed. It was like having the curtain pulled back. These guys know how to write great fucking characters. 

Payne is often tagged with being a great satirist, a reputation he got off his first two high concept comedies Citizen Ruth and Election. The description fits. At the end of Election when we come to the conclusion that asshole Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) and raging cunt Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) very rightfully deserve one another, you can almost picture the shit eating grin Payne sports while taking a steaming dump on these horrible people.

But then Payne went on to reveal a great humanist lurking below the razor sharp satire and has started making thoughtful films about flawed American everymen just trying to get by with doing the right thing, whatever the fuck that is.

In About Schmidt which is, let's face it, a loose remake of Bergman's Wild Strawberries, the title character retires only to find he hasn't really done anything meaningful with his life; spent every day in an office only to be instantly replaced; hasn't seen anything; has a daughter that doesn't like him and a wife that he shares nothing but a marriage with.

Finding out that his wife was having an affair after she suddenly dies, Schmidt has the  urge to break out of the confines of his monotonous existence and takes a road trip towards his daughter's wedding, which he hopes to break up. She's getting married to a man he personally thinks she could do a lot better than. He's probably right.

Along the way he writes his life story to a young boy who he is sponsoring. He comes into contact with the opportunity to seduce a woman, meets his son-in-law-to-be's eccentric family (including a priceless Kathy Bates as the mother), and, in one of the film's best scenes, has a conversation with his late wife under the stars. All of this leads towards that final fatal moment in which Schmidt is faced with an important life decision. He must determine whether or not his daughter's happiness is more important than his own. In the end he fears he's done the wrong thing and his journey has all been in vain. But Payne the humanist let's his light shine down on Schmidt, even if the final scene feels a little contrite.

In Sideways Payne sends a McAllister type and a Schmidt type on a road trip the weekend before one of them is to be married. It sees Payne maturing as a dramatist. Writer Miles (Paul Giamatti) is awkward, horribly insecure, on the verge of alcoholism and knows everything about wine but nothing about people. He's constantly standing outside the world, looking in on it. Actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is shallow and vain but a people person. He's the kind of guy that hasn't met a challenge he couldn't talk his way into or out of. He wants to get laid one last time before tying the knot. He has a hard time stopping at just one. He thinks it wouldn't hurt if Miles got a little bit of the same. 

As per the basic rule of drama, if you put two opposite personalities in a room together for a conversation, they will end up learning something from one another. Jack realizes Miles is a pussy, Miles realizes Jack is a douchebag and neither have the insight or goodness inside themselves to tell the other the truth. 

The heart of Sideways is Miles. We feel for him because, despite his incessant drinking, his failed attempts at getting a book published, the way he obsesses over his ex, and his uptight academic approach to wine, he's a lover at heart. If only he could channel that love away from wine and towards Maya, the angel that's been sent to save him.

This leads to the famous wine monologue which single-handedly won Virginia Madsen an Oscar nomination. He asks her why she likes wine and she looks him right in the eye and delivers a response that must be the single most poetic thing he's ever heard a woman say on the subject before adding, for good measure, "Plus, it tastes so fucking good." Amen. That he doesn't ask her to marry him right there is unfortunate. That he excuses himself instead of making the move she so clearly wants him to is his personal tragedy. But Payne is not cruel and steers Miles down the same path to redemption as Schmidt. Not before he hits rock bottom though.

The Descendants beautifully weaves a tale of not one or two, but several broken people, all trying to deal with their trials and tribulations under the Hawaiian sun. The first image is the only one we see of Elizabeth King conscious before a boating accident leaves her in a coma that she will never wake up from. It's the only one we need of her. Her smile beams as she cuts through the water. She is, in the only instance we'll ever get to know her, happy.

Her husband is Matt King (George Clooney, better than he's ever been) who ponders, in typical Payne voice-over, what it is that makes all the women in his life go a little crazy? The sad irony is that it's probably, in part at least, him. He's a lawyer, travels a lot for work, pinches all his pennies and, as the descendant of one of the first white land owners in Hawaii, is the sole trustee for a large piece of property that, if sold, will make him and his numerous cousins rich men. Talk about pressure.

Together they had two daughters. The oldest is Alex (Shailene Woodley). She is sprung from a boarding school by Matt after he receives the news that her mother will never wake up. She was sent there so that she wouldn't be able to get into drugs and alcohol or fight with her mother who she harbors resentment for. The younger one, Scottie, is acting out at school. With an absent father that doesn't know how to talk to her and a thrill seeking mother, can you blame her? They're not bad kids, just the product of what one can only imagine was a troubled upbringing.

Alex has a secret. The reason she didn't like Elizabeth was because she was having an affair. When Matt finds out it leads to one of those great Payne scenes that skirt a thin line between comedy and pathos. He runs. Not valiantly or with dignity, but desperately, down the street, around the bend and to the neighbor's house. He wants answers. They, quite rightly, don't know how many they should give him.

Also in the picture, before a subplot that finds the Kings taking a trip to track down the man Elizabeth was having an affair with adds another bitter and ironic twist to the tale, is Elizabeth's father. He only has two scenes but is played by Robert Forester with such subtly and depth that one gets to seeing how Payne could have easily fashioned the entire film around him. He's a stubborn man. He's his own kind of man. He thinks the world of his daughter; that she would never hurt anyone; didn't have a selfish bone in her body. If only Matt had maybe just been a little more attentive, given her maybe just a bit more money, and if Alex and Scottie had maybe just been better daughters, than maybe his little girl would still be alive. Payne leads Matt to the same kind of moral decision that he led Schmidt to. In a hospital room with Forester, Matt, finally starting to realize the man he needs to be, does what he thinks is, quite simply, the right thing, even when the wrong thing would have been much easier and more instantly satisfying.

The Descendants is, for me, Payne's most inspiring film. It dismisses almost all hints of the still present satirist that was lurking below the surface of About Schmidt and Sideways and instead focuses solely on the heavy morale decisions that a man must face and how they effect all those surrounding him.

Payne graciously gives every character their due. All are flawed but sympathetic. Even when he has a chance to reduce someone to mere punching bag, he doesn't. Look at Sid, Alex's stoned, moron of a boyfriend. Yes, he looks dumb and has a tendency to say things in moments where he'd be better served to just keep his mouth shut. But then he's given a beautiful moment in which King asks him, if the tables were turned, what he would do and Payne gives the kid the kind of monologue that got Virginia Madsen her Oscar nod. At the end of the day, this kid isn't without pain and heavy decisions as well. The bond between them during this moment is never spoken but you can see, Matt is, whether he realizes it or not, a changed man because of it. In a way, aren't we all?

The Descendants

Maybe the most interesting character to think about in Alexander Payne’s new film The Descendants is Elizabeth King, the comatose wife of George Clooney’s Matt King. The only scene we ever see Elizabeth conscious in is the first one in which we get a hint of the boating accident that leaves her waiting to die. What’s interesting about her is that, by the end of the film, when all of the drama that her accident creates has been said and done, Payne doesn’t quite let us know whether to envy her or despise her. Maybe we should do both. In a way she’s the luckiest person on screen, sitting it out while the lives of her family members crash down around them. And yet, in a strange way, everything that happens throughout the film is, in some small way, kind of her fault. As if she dumped a load of crap on her family, checked out and left them to deal with it.

But that has been, more or less, Payne’s style throughout his career (with the exception of maybe his debut Citizen Ruth): to make small movies on big canvases about desperate men struggling with their simple cosmic purpose of just trying to do the right thing despite all their flaws. What’s the meaning of life, some people ponder? In Payne’s world it’s simply to get by with doing as little damage as possible.

The remarkable thing about The Descendants, and what has been remarkable about all of Payne’s (along with writing partner Jim Thompson) work has been how he finds those small human notes that lie under the comedy. Much like the way Payne treats Elizabeth King, he never passes judgement on his characters, never turns them into two dimensional caricatures and never allows them to fully ever do just the right thing or just the wrong thing. We love them all and yet hold our reservations as well. No one is perfect in Payne’s world. Maybe that’s why it always kind of reminds us of ours.

The film opens as Matt King, the descendant of one of the first white land owners in Hawaii, narrates about his life there. Some people call the place paradise; they can’t imagine how fantastic it would be to live there. Ya, screw paradise says Matt, try coming and giving it a try sometime.

King is in one heck of a dilemma. Not only has his youngest daughter been acting out, getting into trouble at school, but his oldest daughter is away at a private school where she can’t get into alcohol and drugs or rebel against her mother, and his wife, who he soon finds out after springing daughter Alex from private school, was cheating on him. His numerous cousins are also anticipating that he will make them all a lot of money by selling a piece of land his ancestors have had in the family for generations and which he is the trustee for. To top it all off, he’s just been told his wife will never recover and it’s time to pull the plug, something his overbearing father-in-law (the invaluable Robert Forrest) silently blames him and the rest of the family for. Screw paradise indeed.

The film takes much of its arch as Matt, his daughters and Alex's stoned boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause) travel around the islands looking for the man his wife was seeing; wanting to meet him, see what he looks like, confront him, who knows. He hasn’t thought that far ahead.

If all of this sounds like typical sad-sack drama, in theory, it is. What makes it special is how unafraid Payne is of displaying his character’s rough edges. When King finds out about his wife’s infidelity he doesn’t steam, throw a tantrum or any such thing. He runs; down the street, around the bend and to their friend's house to get any information he can. This is, in a perfect blend of mockery and pathos, not a valiant run or a display of grand melodrama. It is the sad, pathetic, desperate run of a man doing the only thing his irrational mind could think to do in that moment. The entire movie is kind of like that: irrational to the point of comedy and yet deeply moving on a human level because of it.

And look at the way Payne treats characters like Sid: dumb, stoned, the kind of kid you pray your oldest daughter never brings home. Matt gets a few laughs at the kid’s expense and then in a subtle scene that sneaks up on us in a way we could never anticipate, Payne gives him the kind of monologue that won Virgina Madsen an Oscar nomination for Sideways. Sid isn’t just a dumb kid, he’s a kid with a heart and a mind and real dilemmas not far removed from Matt’s own. The movie never elaborates on the bond that passes between these two by the end of this scene. It trusts its audience enough not to have to.

That’s the approach Payne takes through the entire movie: never giving us what common movie logic has dictated his characters should give us. The Forrester character is not a bad man, just his own kind of man; Alex is not a bad kid, just one affected by the actions of her parents; and youngest daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) isn’t troubled in any way, she’s just growing up trying to find herself without the guidance of a mom. Even when we so desperately want King to lash out at his wife and blame her for all the drama she has caused, he doesn’t. He holds himself with dignity and respect. He does, most simply, the right thing, the best way he knows he can.

This of course all revolves around the plot involving the land. Should Matt sell to developers and make his cousins rich or should he keep the land, untouched and pure, the way his ancestors inherited it (the way the natives want it to stay), and figure out a way to keep it in the family? The setting is important, not because we rarely ever see dramas set amidst the tropical backdrop of Hawaii, but because it is a land that his been built through the deep heritage of those who discovered it and their descendants who desperately, as history is slowly devoured by commerce, try to keep that family heritage alive as best they can.

The film is thus, at its heart, one about family and the importance of continued bonds. It ends with one simple shot, which some will deem to be too neat and easy, but it’s the one the film has so rightfully worked its way to deserving. This chapter of this family has closed. For a moment they were on a bumpy ride. What happened was tragic, cruel, unfair and unkind but life goes on, history has been written and these characters continue to learn and grow into the future. Families get shaken up from time to time, kids act out and parents make mistakes, but at the end of the day, no matter the circumstances or price tag, a family will always still be a family. That’s history worth preserving.