Alexander payne

Born on February 10, 1961 in Omaha (Nebraska, United States), his real name, Constantinos Alexandros Papadopoulos, suggests that he is the son of Greek emigrants, although his father, a restaurant owner, decided to change his Greek surname to the more Simple for Anglo Payne. He studied History and Spanish Philology at Stanford University, although he also studied part of his second degree at the University of Salamanca in Spain itself. He finally completed a master’s degree in film from the University of California (UCLA).

In his short Carmen (1985) he already showed signs of his talent by parodying the opera of the same name, with a gas station man cajoled by a ‘femme fatale’ while Bizet’s music plays. Promising from the get-go, Payne had no shortage of TV deals and erotic videos before he was able to pull off his debut feature Citizen Ruth with Laura Dern .as a naive woman, shattered by her addiction to glue and alcohol and even detergents, who has become pregnant. The author’s hallmarks were already present, a clearly satirical tone and a protagonist who is going through a moment of crisis trying to survive surrounded by crazy people. In this case, Payne lashes out at pro-life groups trying to save the unborn, but she also leaves the radical abortionists who want to recruit her to her cause up to the bitumen.

The director made it clear that he was going to be among the greats with Election , chosen by David Denby, critic of the New Yorker, as the best film of the year. He questioned in a satirical tone the American educational system, politics, individualism and the morality of winning at any price. Here the normal man is an ethics teacher ( Matthew Broderick ) who tries to prevent an ambitious nerd ( Reese Witherspoon ) from winning the election for student body, not knowing that she will do anything to succeed. It got an Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay, as it was based on a novel by Tom Perrotta .. “Most of the praise for my work comes from this film. I think its cynicism is appealing. Sentimentality doesn’t usually survive very well over time, while cynicism does,” says the Nebraska director.

After doing a little spin on the script for Her Parents , which swept the box office, and penning a screenplay treatment for Jurassic Park III , Payne co-writes with Jim Taylor the script for his next film as a director, About Schmidt , where a inspired Jack Nicholson played an executive trying to cope with retirement, while discovering on the death of his wife that she had been unfaithful, and his daughter is about to marry an idiot. Although he and Taylor took the Golden Globe for the adapted screenplay, they missed out on the Oscar they were up for.

His film with the greatest impact has undoubtedly been Between the Cups , again written with his partner, Taylor, with whom this time he won the Academy Award in Hollywood, while the film was nominated for four others. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church embroidered two typically ‘paynianos’ characters, a writer in low hours with problems to publish, and a committed guy, but eager to commit an infidelity. They both go on a wine route for a few days in which they will meet two particular women.

In the film, one of the protagonists was his own wife, the Korean-Canadian actress Sandra Oh , whom he had married in January 2003, after three years of dating. But in 2005 they announced that they were getting divorced.

Perhaps the fact that he won the statuette gave Payne stage fright. For seven years he was reluctant to shoot another feature film that could be disappointing, although being quite active, he took advantage of the time by shooting a short for the collective film Paris, je t’aime , he was a producer of the series Hung and of the comedy Convención en Cedar Rapids , and wrote with Taylor the script for the half-baked comedy I declare you husband and husband , although they were shocked by the final result and assure that almost everything was finally improvised by the protagonist, Adam Sandler , on the fly.

He also concentrated his efforts on finishing his most ambitious project, Downsizing , but he needed such a large budget to bring the script to the screen that he failed to get the financing. Depressed at the failure, he refused to adapt Jonathan Franzen’s hit novel “Liberty,” which suited him, but he didn’t see himself working on the story for two years. He was suddenly offered a version of Kaui Kart Hemmings’ The Descendants because the first-choice director, Stephen Frears , had dropped out. “I liked the very strange socio-cultural atmosphere of the upper class of Hawaii, and I thought that I could bring the novel to my territory,” explains the director. That’s how he turned George Clooneyin one of his characters –although more real and not as pathetic as the previous ones–, an ordinary guy who has to face the imminent death of his comatose wife, at the same time that he discovers that she was unfaithful, while he begins an approach to his two young daughters. He has landed five Oscar nominations, including director, adapted screenplay and film.

He is preparing to direct his new film, Nebraska , which, like most of those he has shot, is another ‘road movie’. “My concept of cinema is not that of Alfred Hitchcock , that is, executing with the camera what has previously been drawn. For me, making films is a perpetual discovery of elements that can be incorporated into the film”, explains Payne.