Alexander Payne
-
Nebraska — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Nebraska world premiered in competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where Bruce Dern took home the Best Actor prize. Distributed by Paramount Vantage, it opens theatrically on Friday, November 15th. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) After seeing Nebraska at this year’s New York Film Festival, I struggled to articulate what about it I found so moving. For days after the screening I could picture it in my mind’s eye: those hard, bright Midwestern landscapes in silver and black. With previous Alexander Payne films what I remembered was dialogue, barbed explorations of character. Literary stuff. But with Nebraska, […]
by Susanna Locascio on Nov 14, 2013 -
Cannes Film Festival 2013
For American independents, this year’s Cannes Film Festival felt like the end of an era, especially with the high-profile premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s final film, Behind the Candelabra, playing two decades after sex, lies, and videotape seemed to promise the emergence of a vital American independent film culture. These questions re-emerged not just because Soderbergh has announced that he is retiring from filmmaking, but also because he has been widely critical of a film industry that is increasingly focused on international blockbusters. But the events at this year’s Cannes also raised a number of questions about the role of the […]
by Chuck Tryon on Jul 18, 2013 -
Nebraska Star Bruce Dern on Alexander Payne and “the Dernsies”
This interview with Bruce Dern was originally published following the Cannes Film Festival, where Nebraska premiered. If you ever have the good fortune of getting a press pass that grants you access to a roundtable with a Hollywood star, there are few actors out there who could provide a better interview than Bruce Dern, who recently won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance in Alexander Payne’s comedic drama, Nebraska. A planned 20-minute roundtable with a few grizzled journalists turned into a half-hour sprawling monologue of memories and observations on movie production, gently flavored with imitations of Hollywood […]
by Chuck Tryon on May 26, 2013 -
Cannes 2013: Payne’s Nebraska and Puenzo’s Wakolda
Alexander Payne’s Nebraska is an impressive achievement, a fresh and innovative take on that most familiar of genres, the road movie, one that takes conventions about the American heartland and turns them on their head. It’s also a story about a father and son learning to see and understand each other for the first time. The film opens with a shot of Woody Grant (Bruce Dern in what should be a performance that collects numerous awards) shuffling purposefully down a Billings, Montana, highway, his scraggly beard, limping gait and weathered face suggesting a man who has struggled for the little […]
by Chuck Tryon on May 23, 2013 -
Cannes 2013: First Clips from Payne’s Nebraska and Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive
Two of the big U.S. films playing at Cannes this year — Alexander Payne’s black-and-white dramedy Nebraska and Jim Jarmusch’s vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive — have both released clips today. Above, from Nebraska, father and son Bruce Dern and Will Forte are joined by a weaselly Stacy Keach, and below you can check out two short bursts from Jarmusch’s movie, featuring leads Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska and Anton Yelchin. We’ll have more on both films here on the Filmmaker website once they have screened on the Croisette.
by Nick Dawson on May 15, 2013 -
Sideways Author Rex Pickett on Success, Rejection and Sequels
In this episode of Brad Listi’s Other People Podcast, novelist Rex Pickett discusses the origins of his book Sideways, the basis for Alexander Payne’s hit movie. Pickett has written a sequel to Sideways called Vertical, and in the podcast he talks about why he’s self-published it. There’s a lot here about a writer’s take on the movie business, how success doesn’t protect you from rejection, and, uh, Pickett also has a few things to say about producer Michael London.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 13, 2012 -
DIRECTOR MIGUEL ARTETA ON “CEDAR RAPIDS”
I love what director Miguel Arteta has to say about comedy at the end of this short, unedited interview conducted during this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The director of such Filmmaker favorites as Star Maps and Chuck and Buck is in theaters today with his new comedy, Cedar Rapids, starring Ed Helms.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 11, 2011 -
ALEXANDER PAYNE’S “THE DESCENDANTS” BEGINS SHOOTING
Six years after making the cross-over hit Sideways, Alexander Payne has begun production on his next film, The Descendants. Announced by Fox Searchlight, the film, based on Kaui Hart Hemmings‘s novel, started principal photography today in Hawaii. The film stars George Clooney as, according to the release, an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. Also starting are Judy Greer, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Robert Forster, Shailene Woodley, Mary Birdsong, Nick Krause and Amara Miller. Surprisingly, Taylor is not […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 15, 2010 -
YOU ASHCROFT!
If the Argentinian newspaper The Post can be believed, creators of “airline versions” of R and PG-rated movies have a new word replacement for a common epithet. In what is, if true, an oddly hilarious example of subversive political commentary, the word “asshole” as uttered in Alexander Payne’s Sideways was replaced in actor Thomas Haden Church’s airline dubbing with “Ashcroft.” The paper’s Montel Reel says he heard the word twice in Church’s dialogue while on an Aerolineas Argentinas flight to Lima, Peru. The Arizona Central, which picked up the story, says calls to Fox Searchlight, which distributed the picture, and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 5, 2005 -
SPIRITS GO SIDEWAYS
The 2005 Independent Spirit Awards were announced this afternoon at the IFP Los Angeles’s annual ceremony on the beach in Santa Monica. For the major awards, it was a virtual sweep by Sideways — Alexander Payne’s smart comedy won six prizes. Other winners, listed below, include Garden State, The Motorcycle Diaries, Mean Creek, the filmmaker Jem Cohen, the producer Gina Kwon, and doc filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman. Here are the winners: Best PictureSideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Producer: Michael London Best Director Alexander Payne Sideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Best Screenplay Alexander Payne & Jim TaylorSideways (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Best […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 26, 2005
