Back in 1999 a producer sent Payne the unpublished novel called Sideways (finally published this summer) while he was finishing Election. He wanted to make it, but had to make About Schmidt first. You see, Payne only works on one project at a time, and can't even start working on his next project while editing his current one. This focus has paid off time and time again, though, as every feature script he's written with Taylor has been made (though one script they did a polish on is still in development).
Knowing that all writing draws on personal experiences and emotions, I asked him what it was about the book that appealed to him. "Just the humanity of it," he told me, and then put his fork down. "I'm trying to think of a good answer. You know what makes a movie personal? It's that you're making a movie that you yourself want to see. We're audience members. The moment you start making the film where, maybe, 'I don't like this' or 'it's not the type of movie that I would want to see,' then you're lost."
One refreshing thing in talking to Payne about directing is how he emphasizes and obviously loves the collaboration that goes into filmmaking. He told me, "I think this one has some of the best stuff we've done, and by 'we' I don't mean just Jim [Taylor] and myself, but our collaborators--the production designer, the editor, the composer."
He continued, "For me, the whole joy of filmmaking is trying to create the circumstances under which things I never could have imagined might happen, in both macro and micro senses. Inevitably in interviews I'm asked, 'Is it what you had in mind? Is it what you envisioned?' and I say, 'I didn't envision anything.' I mean, what is a screenplay? Is it really writing? It's kind of technical writing, in a way. Insert flap A into slot B, and so forth. It's really just the written record of the imagining of a possible film. What the film ends up being becomes quite different--very similar, but different, with the same DNA somehow."
Speaking of DNA, on Friday, November 5, at EMP you should go see Charles Mudede introduce the Jude Law movie Gattaca, and then give a talk about how science-fiction movies are changing their focus from physics to biology, machines to mutation.
