The Films of Alexander Payne - C/D

eh "write what you know," etc. It's one thing for me to implore Woody Allen to hang out with different kind of friends; it's another to recommend he cast Martin Lawrence.

ok fine I would recommend it

i think its kinda unfair to write sandra oh off as "exotic love interest"? but i dont disagree that it might be nice to see some ppl of color in these movies. also its one thing to have a white-ppl-only movie set in the midwest but if this movie about hawaii is as white as the trailers make it seem that wd be...... weird

ugh fuck sideways. i really love election + citizen ruth is a crazy film. i always think of this dude in terms of a "what happened?" narrative. maybe i should see about schmidt.

sandra oh was not an "exotic" love interest -- she was just a good-time gal as they say.

never watched the director's cut w/ "me love you long time" monologue eh

I guess my issue isn't with what he's doing/done in terms of career being abt. white people woes, it's that he's selected four books to adapt (Citizen Ruth is original, right?) and the six or seven lead parts in each of them – save his ex-wife's – are all pretty similar. Google tells me that Payne went to UCLA and lived in Spain, so I think it's a little disingenuous to claim he's just doing 'what he knows' b/c at some point in his European and Angeleno life he has to interact w/ a lot of different people.

Also I've enjoyed all five(?) of his films, to varying degrees.

Maybe his own knowledge of Spain is superficial...?

i dont care if his movies only have economically comfortable white people in them, i like lots of stories about economically comfortable white ppl

some of my best friends are economically comfortable white people

ah who am i kidding, all of them are

heard he's adapting the 'first world problems' meme into his next droll character study

when super-white whit stillman made a film about spain the results were not so great (at least compared to his other films)

white stillman, amirite

i think there is disagreement on that point, but barcelona is my least favorite stillman, too

spanish people are white btw

He got worse with each film.

o u last days of disco haters >:[

My grandfather's side of the family is Asturian, and they would be quite upset if you thought them non-white.

i like last days

i think "spain" represents something other than middle-america whitebread, i don't think anyone was claiming spaniards as people of color

oh i was just being annoying i love whit stillman! and movies about white people!

I would love to watch Alexander Payne's version of Othello

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rigenweb/stones1/StillmanWhite.jpg

^ whit stillman's grand uncle iirc

Othello, Nebraska:

Nick Nolte as Othello
Peter Fonda as Iago
Swoowie Kurtz as Desdemona
Jared Hess as Cassio
Conor Oberst as Rodrigo

^^^ would actually be the worst film ever made

i do think what i find irritating about sideways is treating white middle-class men's interest in wine and women who are prettier than they are as so fucking fascinating, but the white middle-class part is probably a red herring. i don't know to articulate what i dislike about that movie i'd probably have to watch it again and that's not going to happen.

whit stillman is way better than this guy. last days of disco 4e.

if you didn't enjoy last days of disco you should have just danced through it, it is jiving

lol now why tf would this alexander payne thread be going off on a quiet sunday afternoon

its raining outside!!!

raining racism

a torrential downpour of white privilege

icey who do u think is more racist: alexander payne or paul simon?

i said he made white films for white people, people objected, we caviled, nobody had much heart or stake so the discussion crawled under the jungle gym where it's sullenly drawing in the dirt with a stick

blame it on the payne

haha

Hey, that's my stick.

fwiw i don't object to the assertion that his movies are largely populated with and consumed by omg white people, i just feel like singling this one guy out (i guess because most of the comparable contemporaries are commercially successful enough that studios think it necessary to shoehorn a sassy black friend into their flicks) for the "super-whiteness of his oeuvre" is kind of a loaded and strangely tacky way to address the generally complex and worthwhile subject of race in contemporary film

although i guess we can tackle the insufficiency of his writing for female characters by saying his movies are mega-penile or something

superwhite mega-penile

the milieu depicted in the film is obnoxious, but i remember enjoying sideways and thinking it was pretty funny.

i didn't mean to turn you on, alfred

i'm nothing if not loaded and tacky, it's true

http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451af1569e2010535d69fd7970c-800wi

"Remember when I asked that black guy if he liked Sideways?"-Liz Lemon, hyperwhite.

like it's a good point, some dude, that AP's no worse than a lot of his peers. but there's something more blatant? tossed-off? about race, society, gender, whatever, in payne's films that is espesh irksome to me. david lynch as well. just a casually all-white cast in movies that are supposed to be about, you know, the all-caps American experience.

feel like paynes films are p blatantly abt 'white culture' - like i somewhat give them a pass for their verisimilitude - not that its not in some sense stylized and ott - theyre just you know v observant and cutting - tho i dont doubt that irl thered be more not white people living the lyfe depicted in the films

let's go through his movies and pick out the characters that should clearly have been played by actors of color

should prob have its own board tbh

i love black payne

Note how the two scenes unfold on a near line-by-line basis:
1. Paul/Wills is working in his room/on the ward.
2. A messenger interrupts him to tell him his boss wants him.
3. Paul/Wills self-importantly tells the messenger to tell his boss he is busy.
4. The messenger tells Paul/Willis he actually must go now.
5. Paul/Wills reluctantly acquiesce

These are all like unbelievably stock scenes that you can find “line by line transpositions” of in films from the 1920s. I almost feel worse for this guy than I would if his movie really had been plagiarized, the deeper you go into detailed examples the more sad/pathetic it seems. Payne-esque, even!

Yeah at first I was willing to give it credence because he's not just a random loon but an actual produced screenwriter, but the more you see it it's ridiculous.

Paul/Wills is called to adventure.
Paul/Wills refuses the call.
Paul/Wills embarks on a road of trials.

The but where he’s like “clearly they used software to do this” 🫣

Also is the character called fucking Wills or Willis, in the holdovers the guy has the same name all the way thru

The Plagiarism Today blog has a thoughtful backgrounder on this:
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2024/03/11/why-the-holdovers-is-not-a-plagiarism/

Though it contains a qualifier of note:

My Analysis

Note: I have not seen The Holdovers nor have I read Frisco. This analysis is based solely on the allegations provided by Stephenson and the follow ups shared by other screenwriters.

Saw "The Holdovers." I thought it was really well directed and acted, but the story and writing ultimately didn't transcend its more familiar/predictable beats.

Yeah my take too. Also nice to see snow, albeit in a movie.

I keep thinking of him saying "your toes would curl!"