Payne Updates

I wasn't planning on blogging this weekend (though I had hoped to blog at some point in March once the Hawai'i book finally appears in print, as scheduled) but I had a little change in the work schedule last week (mainly due to a massive ice storm that put central Oklahoma at a virtual standstill for the better part of 4 days). This led to a shift in the teaching routine, as well as an unexpected bout of cabin fever for a couple days.

This slightly extended amount of free time encouraged me to revisit the Alexander Payne manuscript for the first time since July. This was apt, as the current phase of the new book I've been stuck on since then concerns in one small part the tensions between labor and leisure in several of his films.

For folks who don't remember, I spent the bulk of my summer researching and writing on this new project, the bulk of which is summarized here.

A quicker recap: I begin researching scholarship on the subject in May of 2021, followed by a quick several day trip through filming locations in Nebraska. From early June until about mid-July, I completed a first draft of three different chapters. The topics broadly were as follows: one on travel/tourism, one on history and nostalgia, and one on tonal and thematic trends within the final acts of his narratives (see the table of contents below). For those who know my areas of scholarly interest (not just as an auteurist), it's not hard to see why I would start there.

As last summer wore down, and I became burned out by the project and by other things in life, I stopped early into the fourth chapter--on the representation of class (work/labor, but also family/relationship dynamics, along with a quick detour into the persist focus on mortality). I probably could have pushed myself for one more week then, but I took the win; I had other tasks on the agenda anyway, and I knew I'd be better off returning to the project in 2022 with a fresh pair of eyes and renewed focus (and, to be candid, some of the topics I'm writing about in this chapter resonate with me now more than they did last year--an unexpected, unwelcome?, inspiration).

This fourth chapter on class at the time I abandoned it back in July was little more than about 3 pages of an introduction, followed by a fairly useful outline and many pages of semi-organized research notes. In other words, I left myself with a lot of general direction but not a lot of substance or depth yet.

Anyway, I'm happy to say that in almost three days of cabin fever I was able to somehow turn that pile into an almost complete first rough draft. Two specific and modest tasks remain--cleaning up and reorganizing some of the material in one mostly finished section and then brainstorming and writing another.

That said, a lot of work still remains ahead in revision, as always--at some point, I will have to revisit all the films, as well as all the sources I've looked over the last year and see what I missed, what still needs to be plugged in. More important, this chapter is the one that is the lightest of the four in terms of the theoretical framing. That part will be heavily strengthened in revisions.

So anyway, I don't want to go into too much detail on the ideas themselves tonight--it's been a long day and I've got an early start tomorrow. If you've looked over the links above you'll have a pretty good idea of where I'm headed.

But I was so excited and re-energized by the rare opportunity these days to be productive on my own projects that I wanted to share the unexpected good news. This book is very much becoming a reality--just this time last year, I'd hardly written a word. In honor of this modest occasion, I thought I would finally share the tentative title and (most of the) table of contents:

The Stranger From Omaha:

The Cinema of Alexander Payne

1. Introduction:

The Stranger From Omaha

2. The Cowards Never Started

3. Very Keen Powers of Observation

4. Takes the Pressure Right Off:

Class, Work, Family

5. You Told the Sheriff You Were Walking to Nebraska?:

Landscapes, Travel, Tourism

6. The Day After Yesterday:

Time, Nostalgia, History

7. Not Too Much Sadness . . . Because I Felt Alive:

Regret, Catharsis, Grace

8. Conclusion

So much writing (two more chapters, plus a modest intro and conclusion) and revision still to come--those two chapters above without subtitles yet? Those are the only two I haven't written, though I have a pretty clear idea for where they are headed.

It's a cliche but it's true--the rough draft is the hardest part. There's no reason I won't have a completed first draft of a book on the films of Alexander Payne done by the end of summer. And then the fun parts begin.