Alexander Payne, filmmaker: "As a student in Salamanca I discovered 'Viridiana': I never thought that a film could be so beautiful and subversive"

When he was a child, Alexander Payne (Omaha, Nebraska, 62 years old) dreamed of being a projectionist. "And look at me now," he jokes over video call from his home in Omaha days before the holiday break. The two-time Oscar winner for the screenplays of Between Cups and The Descendants – in addition to four other nominations, two for directing and another two for screenplay thanks to titles such as Election or Nebraska – belongs to the lineage of filmmakers who can do whatever they want. "Well, I move on medium-sized budgets, I'm not very prolific... That helps, but I wish I had been faster," he confesses. "I have too much respect for good cinema to do anything. Although... There's a certain pretentiousness in trying not to be pretentious. I plead guilty."

The conversation comes in the wake of the Spanish premiere of Los que se quedan, the story of three characters in the middle of a vital shipwreck who are left alone and aimless one Christmas in the early seventies at a boarding school in New England: an ancient history teacher, a wayward student and the cook, who has just lost her son in the Vietnam War. Two of its actors, Paul Giamatti, who plays the teacher, and who became famous two decades ago for Between Drinks, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who plays the cook, won the Golden Globes in their categories on Sunday. On Jan. 23, when the Oscar nominations are announced, Those Who Remain could appear in at least five categories. "Step by step, please, step by step," Payne clarifies. On Wednesday, however, his name appeared in the quintet for best filmmaker among the nominations for the Directors Guild of America awards.

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The director wanted to study film, but his family forced him to study law at Stanton. In the 1981s, the only European university that had an agreement with his own was the University of Salamanca, and that is why in 1966 he spent a year in Spain. That is why he knows Spanish cinema perfectly and uses some expressions in Spanish —such as "a la deriva" or "entre muchos"— during the talk. At Cannes, when he presented Nebraska, the filmmaker told this journalist that if it hadn't starred Bruce Dern, only one other name would have appeared in his mind, Pepe Isbert, obviously an impossibility since he died in <>. And not Fernando Fernán Gómez, who is closer to Dern's physique? "Maybe, though Isbert was an immeasurable performer." Now, could the action of Los que se queda be transferred to the Salamanca of the end of the Franco regime, in a political change similar to that of the United States five years earlier? "I'd need to think about it, it could be." Would José Luis López Vázquez work for him instead of Giamatti? "Of course, although Giamatti is good, eh. Because he brings humanity, he makes his characters come to terms with real people."

Dominic Sessa and Paul Giamatti, in 'Those Who Stay'.

Although he has only directed eight feature films, Payne often works simultaneously on various stages of his projects. Those Who Stay was born out of a screening at the 2011 Telluride Film Festival, where Payne saw Marcel Pagnol's 1935 classic Merlusse. "There's the story of the professor with an eye problem. But that's it. It was the premise, not the seed. Because years later I got a script for a pilot episode by David Hemingson, whom I didn't know, with a story close to that one, and I called him and challenged, 'What if you rewrote it for a movie?' And he agreed. The credit is his," he explains. How did you decide when to date it? "The fifties is Peter Weir territory [for The Dead Poets Club]. And at the moment there are no unisex schools and there are too many mobile schools." That is why they stayed in the seventies, at a time of political and social change, whose echoes transpire in history. "That's how we came to the need to make it as if we were in 1970, from the credits to the camera movements. I thought it would be fun, it would make it interesting. A decade ago, I was looking for something special by shooting Nebraska in cinemascope and black and white. The key was that we shot not as if it were a period film, but as if we were working in 1970, on a contemporary film. Quite a radical experience."

I grew up watching the movies of the 1970s, before studio cinema got screwed."

In the 1970s, the world seemed to live in a human dimension, before technology swept the Earth. In Payne's films, the human being prevails. "I don't know how to raise this issue without screwing up. I'm not the only filmmaker who thinks mostly about showing people rather than walking clichés, or great special effects... There are fewer and fewer of us, I realize. Yes, I'm interested in people."

Payne, with Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, on the set of 'Those Who Remain'.

Payne doesn't like to talk about himself as a person or his cinema, but instead shepherds the conversation to other creators and their films. Even if his creed peeks out on that walk. "As a kid I was impressed by Modern Times. Then, in Salamanca, because the censorship was lifted and they had not been released in Spain, I saw La Dolce Vita. And, above all, I discovered Viridiana. I never thought a film could be so beautiful and subversive." On his return to the U.S. in San Francisco, he attended the screening of a restored copy of The Seven Samurai. I decided that I would try to study film, more because of my passion as a spectator than because of a creative drive. I thought, 'I'll never climb a mountain that high, but I want to be on that mountain.' And I've repeated that phrase to myself numerous times in my life. It doesn't matter if the result turns into failure, what matters is trying things."

The novel always wins by points, while the short story must triumph by knockout. Well, maybe it's a movie: it has to beat the points."

During their shoots, on Friday nights the crew gets together, drinks martinis and watches films shown by Payne: "On this occasion I presented The Graduate, Klute, Paper Moon, The Landlord, Harold and Maude or The Last Duty." The last three were directed by Hal Ashby. "I like it a lot. Especially his seven albums in the seventies, the decade that ended with Being There. What was it called in Spain?" Welcome, Mr. Chance. "Ah, another one of those ridiculous Spanish titles. Anyway, I also like the films of Mike Nichols or Carlos Saura from that time."

Because Payne belongs to a generation of American filmmakers who confess to being heirs to the cinema of the New Hollywood, such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Jeff Nichols, James Gray or David O. Russell. "Probably, because we're similar ages and we grew up watching those movies, before studio cinema got screwed. Adolescence is the time that marks your character. The character of the student interested me a lot because he's at the end of that period, he's going to make the leap and his life can change radically."

The trio of protagonists of 'Los que se quedan'.

Thanks to his freedom, Payne hasn't needed to work under the rigid scheme of a platform that forces those moments What The Fuck?(WTF) defined by Nanni Moretti in The Sun of the Future. "I do what I want. I've never shot anything against my will. Although I have three scripts in my hand right now, I suspect I'll go for a Western written by Hemingson [he ponders for a few seconds in silence with his head down]. Do you know what I'm privileged at? That I'm directing films at a time when moviegoers still go to theaters. On top of that, humanity has gone thousands of years without inventing cinema!" And he returns to current narrative patterns: "It's clear to me that each story is different, but first and foremost they are like life. Bittersweet. There will be moments of high and others of low. And that those WTF plot twists don't usually happen in the third minute. That's why I care about endings, and I make them neither happy nor heavy, because I'm worried about the feeling with which the audience leaves the room. Julio Cortázar used to say that writing is like a boxing match. The novel always wins by points, while the short story must triumph by knockout. Well, maybe it's a movie: he has to beat the points."

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