Payne Writing Updates

Jason Sperb

This week I started working on the manuscript for a new writing project on the films of Alexander Payne. I wanted to post an update because I probably won't be saying much more here about the project until I have worked my way through a couple of chapters.

A quick recap:

In May, I started doing research for the project--looking through a combination of academic articles, mainstream film criticism and several interviews to help focus my attention on the subject and to brainstorm ideas for my own work. This resulted in about 40,000 words of research notes--a combination of quotations from other sources and my own free-writing as specific ideas came to me, loosely structured around what I thought at the time the five proposed chapters of the book might look like. This was all also in anticipation of my long planned Nebraska trip at the beginning of June, which I previously blogged about:

Day 1 (Mon 6/7): The Cowards Never Started - my first day felt at the time like it was mostly lost to the road, first in driving all the way from Oklahoma to south-central Nebraska, and than in driving another two hours to my motel in Lincoln (which I had hoped to see more of that same day)--but in-between I made two important stops in Kearney and Minden, the latter of which also took more time than I expected (interestingly, I was actually kind of writing indirectly about the "why" it takes so long in the manuscript just today). The title of this post is a reference to About Schmidt that, in a very direct sense, applies equally to both locations, but of course the deeper significance should be more clear to the causal reader now.

Day 2 (Tues 6/8): Lincoln, Touristic Signs . . . - the second day felt like another loss at the time; I lost the morning trying to blog about the previous day (a mistake I didn't make again on that trip) and I didn't even finish up with Lincoln until late afternoon, leaving only a little bit of time to see other locations on the way to the big prize: Omaha.

Day 3 (Wed 6/9): Payne's Omaha? - this was probably the most epic single day of the trip, as I did manage to see just about every Payne location I had planned to in the span of about 8 or 9 hours of constant driving (I had wisely mapped out every place in town the night before, so I was able to cover ground pretty efficiently and not have to do much doubling back). Still, this day made me a little sad, as before all the issues with the previous two days I had originally planned to have a full second day in Omaha--not just for all the Payne-related locations but for all the other attractions I would have loved to have had more time and money to visit.

Day 4 (Thurs 6/10): The Nebraska Version of Nebraska - This day was largely focused on all the little towns in northern Nebraska that were used for the filming of Nebraska, really the only "Nebraska" film of Payne's that isn't mostly just set in Omaha, which is ironic because of how often he's associated with the state in a broader sense. One of the general ideas I am tracing in the book is how Payne's cinema is in certain ways both inside and outside Nebraska--from a cultural, economic and geographic perspective.

Day 5 (Fri 6/11): Revisiting Plainview - The last day was always set aside just for a meeting with members of the Plainview Historical Society, located in the town where most of Nebraska was actually filmed, since they offered to share their materials from that experience with me once I got to town. I didn't know how much time I would have, and I also knew the long drive back to Oklahoma awaited me at the end of the day.

I go back and forth about the reasons behind, and/or ultimately the necessity for, this epic trip I took, but in the end I am glad I made the time to visit Nebraska.

How can one write about Payne's films without ever having visited there? And by that I don't mean only the literal filming locations (of which there are still so many others I haven't yet stumbled upon)--I mean also the broader sense of what it feels like, however fleeting and fragmentary it might have been, to inhabit that very particular vision of "Nebraska" towards which his films and his biography collectively gesture.

It was inspiring as a writer; it made me feel more immersed in the subject; and it's definitely made me notice aspects of his career and of his films that a million Google searches probably never would have.

So it was a fine trip, but where to go from there? As I coyly hinted at the end of the last post, I had planned to post more of a "thought piece" earlier this past week--I wasn't trying to be too cute with that as I was genuinely going back and forth between two completely different projects on this subject. Just as a way to get started, I couldn't even see any way in which I could begin writing on part of one in earnest and then, if I changed my mind later, pivot that same material back to a foundation for the other. They felt that different in terms of subject matter, methodology, structure and outcomes. Both had their proverbial pluses and minuses and I thought maybe "talking aloud," so to speak, would help my organize my ideas.

So what was the abandoned idea? After spending so much time on the making of Nebraska in particular (not only with seeing places up-close and with meeting wonderful folks with firsthand experiences with the production, but also with the realization that I already knew so much about the entire process of making the film, even before stepping foot in the state), I gave very serious thought to writing a non-fiction book just on the making of the film--a straightforward chronological narrative of events--with, of course, also some broader commentary on the nature both of modern Hollywood and of "small town" Midwest today as a "so what" framing. It would have mostly been an easier book to write, or at least to start, and there would probably be a bigger audience waiting on the other end to read it (which is no small matter to me these days as I often wonder what difference my past writing has made).

(as Magnum would say, "I know what you're thinking." Yes, I can always come back to this idea again later, but experience has taught me that I'll probably be sick of the general subject--Payne, Nebraska and Nebraska--by the time that opportunity would arrive. We'll see).

But there's just too much more I wanted to say on this subject, and I'll always feel like I've cheated somehow if I take the less ambitious route, even if it turns out to be the smarter, safer road to travel (have you guessed yet which metaphors have been on my mind this week?). So, ultimately, I came back to my original idea of a textual analysis of Payne's films, albeit one with as close attention to region and geography as to narratives and themes (in this sense, it's not at all that removed from the Hollywood and tourism book I recently finished--The Hard Sell of Paradise--as it might first appear). More precisely, I've always imagined the book as a travel narrative inside and outside the cinema of Alexander Payne--which includes mostly Nebraska, certainly, but also Paris, California, Norway, and, of course, Hawai'i.

The problem with this latter idea though has always been two-fold: the first, as always, was which section of the project should I begin with, and the second was what does an auteurist/travel narrative hybrid even look like? I'll admit that I haven't done much research for methodological precedents on the latter yet--but that is part of the point. Just as I didn't want to mimic the easy structure of my two earlier auteur projects by just filling in the formulaic blanks of the very helpful but somewhat boring order of a mostly chronological, individual film chapter-by-individual film chapter look at all the movies in the order in which they were released, I also didn't want to feel like I was just relying on someone's idea either.

To be clear, this is not a criticism of either any one else's work, or of my own previous efforts in this field--in particular, I'm still as proud of Blossoms & Blood and of its very precise structure, for example, as I am of any of them. It just meant that if I went back to the auteurist well one last time (and I really do think this is the last one--a post I'll save for another day), then I was determined to challenge myself to be more creative, and, as always, do something very different than anything I'd done before.

So the last pre-writing exercise of outlining in relative length and detail the entire book idea has been biggest hurdle--I couldn't begin writing anything until I was reasonably confident about where everything would probably end up. I had too much anxiety about potential dead-ends and repetition, about writing in circles and ending up with an idea that was even more of a mess than when I started. The original structure I had in mind, that which loosely organized my original round of research notes, was a step in the right direction, but it lacked a clear and coherent logic of flow from one relatively clear chapter idea to the next.

Since I wanted to organize the book around ideas instead of around films, this was a more challenging dilemma than it first appeared, and every time I thought I had a feel for the bigger structure I discovered that I was still wanting to put many of the same ideas in different parts of the project. The whole thing felt more like it was fraying around the edges instead of tightening, as it should be after so much time and thought.

Anyway, this past Monday, I think I discovered a new structure--this one based around seven chapters--and it's been pretty smooth sailing since as I've finally begun moving on from the research, then the brainstorming, and finally the outlining, to actually starting to write this thing! (I know that all sounds vague--at present, I'm still not entirely sure the structure will work, and I don't know how much I want to say about its logic yet anyway, so I'll just keep specifics to myself for now).

However, I will say I am starting where I long thought I would--on the distinction between tourism and travel as they pertain to this particular body of work. But what's been liberating, clarifying, about that deceptively simple idea in the last week is I have a better sense now of what I don't have to cover yet as of what I do.

I've been reminded in the last month of two very important parts of the writing process--one, I think, is helpful to anyone who feels like they have writer's block and that is to embrace the research and not feel pressure to rush the thesis. As stressed as I've been about not feeling like I was making enough progress in the last two weeks, I realized today that I'm actually about where I had hoped I would be at this point.

The other is perhaps more unique to my style--that constantly coming back to literal blank pages (so, in a particular sense, "starting over" with a new Word document, whether I'm starting a whole new chapter or just a new section) is just as often helpful as trying to work with and within everything that's already been written.

In sum, I plan to have the current chapter done by the end of this month. My hope for July is one more chapter, and hopefully two if I really get back into that rhythm. It probably looks like I am being overly ambitious, but the truth is I have until the end of July to get as much done on this as possible, as my primary focus will turn back to teaching once August arrives.

Moreover, I also just found out that my subsequent winter break from teaching at the end of this year (roughly, parts of November and December 2021) will most likely be taken up with doing the index for my book on Hawai'i and Hollywood, which will be out some time next spring. There will definitely be more news on that front in the next month or so--I've seen rough drafts of the various promotional text and blurbs that SUNY has written for marketing purposes (which I pass along once they roll it out), and I know that a cover is currently being designed.

So, the point is, after next month, it could be awhile before I have the luxury of turning my attention back to the Payne project again. That said, my "big picture" writing goal for this summer has always been to have a big enough portion of the manuscript done by the end of this summer (2021) to be able to then turn around and finish a complete rough draft of the manuscript by the end of next summer (2022). And I don't see why that's not a reasonable goal at the moment . . .