Jason Sperb
Alexander Payne's films are all set in the "existential present" (Hooks) (at least until his latest--his first period piece--appears in theatres later this year or the next), yet they are deeply consumed with the past.
I've been thinking about that idea often lately as my book-length project on his body of work begins to acquire a history of its own. It was only a year ago that I returned from a week of "set-jetting" across Nebraska to view some filming locations and other significant sites related to the Omaha-based filmmaker.
How different my own life was in the moment--how many things came and went since the beginning of last summer (many have argued that regret is a key theme in Payne's films, but I argue in the conclusion that they are more importantly about moments of catharsis and grace).
I often think about where my life was exactly a year earlier, and the hope is to appreciate the growth and change in-between. On that note, I'm happy to announce that I finished a first draft of the Payne manuscript earlier this month. In less than a year I went from a pile of research fragments and travel notes to a pretty cohesive and solid (albeit, still pretty rough) first complete draft:
The Tourist
So what is the manuscript actually about? Hopefully, I haven't found myself down the rabbit hole of my own "Day After Yesterday" and the project is finding its focus. Of course, on the one hand, it is an auteur study of the films of Alexander Payne, though I tend to follow Bazin's notion that authorship is best thought of as the personal voice that some films speak through, in spite, or also because, of the collaborative and social processes from which they emerge during production.
The original subtitle of the book was "the cinema of Alexander Payne," which was always more a placeholder. In revising the chapters this past week, I realized a better idea was the "travel narratives of Alexander Payne" (though it fails to account for the cinematic aspect of the book, so I might still tinker with it)--which is a nod to not only the number of road trips/sidetrips/vacations that have appeared in his films (About Schmidt, 14th Arrondissement, Nebraska, Sideways, The Descendants), as many have noted, but also to the aforementioned fascination with time. So "travel" here is as much temporal and spatial.
"Travel" in this sense is also playing off a key idea from Dean MacCannell's The Tourist, which probably remains the most influential academic book I've read in the last decade-plus (it was the primary theoretical influence on Hard Sell of Paradise, but also made an important intellectual contribution to Flickers of Film, particularly in how his notion of touristic "work displays" connects to Hollywood's obsession with "self-theorizing" ).
In his book, MacCannell famously noted that "the tourist is one of the best models available for modern-man-in-general," by which he means that--rather than only account for people literally traveling across the globe--the figure is as much a metaphor for how many people attempt to negotiate the work-leisure balance of their everyday lives, the dissatisfaction with work routines, the consistent desire for "escape" (which smartphones offer as much as a plane ticket), how the shift to a leisure-based society has created a cycle wherein the obsession with leisure time exacerbates as much as alleviates frustrations with everyday life, and can lead to an increasingly alienation with the value of our own labor, work becomes something we can only understand through leisure (i.e., other people's work), and so on.
I'm getting a little sidetracked there--the point is I see a lot of MacCannell's "tourist" in Payne's main characters, whether they are literally on the road or not, thus adding another layer to the spatial and temporal "travel" in his "travel narratives."
The Seven-Act Structure
Of course, I could call the manuscript the "travel cinema of Alexander Payne" (to make it more appropriately medium-specific), but narrative is almost as important a concept here as tourism and traveling. So another reason the title works better is because the manuscript was always organized as a "travel narrative" itself, and it was only in rereading the entire draft from start to finish the last couple weeks that I realized how tightly that structure works.
Basically, the following are the different chapters of the book if you are looking at from the standpoint of the various "acts" of a classical narrative structure:
The introduction is basically a "tour" of Payne's Omaha, and to some extent Nebraska in general, using various aspects of the region's geography to introduce briefly the subject and some of the key angles of the book (class, masculinity, tourism, whiteness).
The next chapter ("Keen Powers of Observation") introduces the "backstory" of the travel narrative, going through the some more of the biographical context for Payne's success, in particular his film school days, the state of "indiewood" Hollywood the last thirty years and his approach to collaboration.
Then, I establish the setting ("The Weak Died Along the Way") by reviewing some of the main attributes of Payne's films explored by previous film critics and scholars (tone, intention, etc). Both this chapter and the prior afford me the opportunity to revisit the strengths and limitations of classic auteur theory (which is a topic I've never really touched on in my two previous such books).
After setting the scene, I introduce the conflict that sets the story in motion ("Takes the Pressure Right Off") by exploring the key points of tension in Payne's films, which often return to issues of class (particularly work, but also family).
Once a character's equilibrium has been disrupted in a narrative, they then proceed to go on a journey (figuratively as often as literally) with the hopes that at the end of their quest they will find a solution to the conflicts introduced in the previous act. So this is the chapter that focuses explicitly on representations of travel and tourism in Payne's films--not only the road trips but also the representation of iconic tourist sites (as well as unpacking the useful distinction between "traveler" and "tourist").
At the end of their journeys, characters must confront an obstacle that prevents them for achieving the balance that disrupted their lives. Yet I argue it is the past which they were trying to flee, and it is the past which still awaits them in the end. This is the chapter that focuses on negotiations with personal (nostalgic) and collective (historical) pasts in Payne's films.
Finally, I move to the resolution. As many critics have noted, Payne's characters rarely grow in any major ways, let alone achieve the triumph over major obstacles. The ultimate irony of Payne's travel narratives is that while characters are constantly moving they are in the end still confronted with the same personal circumstances with which they started. Yet, in the end, the power of Payne's films is often in moving finales that still find small moments of grace and catharsis for their characters nonetheless.
"Stranger"?
So, that's why the book both is and is about, "travel narratives." But what about the "stranger from Omaha"? The title is taken from a line in a profile about Payne nearly a decade ago--also, appropriately about a road trip! His friend recounts the anecdote of the two of them passing through one of Nebraska's many small towns:
I immediately loved that description because it made me think of the title of a classic Hollywood western (The Stranger From Omaha), which is not only the ultimate white masculine "travel" genre but also the only major genre that Payne has repeatedly expressed interest in working with one day (along with documentaries, an important context I also make amble use of).
On a deeper level, though, Payne is the "stranger from Omaha"--he is, particularly from a class standpoint, both an insider and an outsider in his home state (geographically, culturally, economically). He is an observer as much as a participant. His gift for empathy with both actors and with characters is rooted in the separation from them (see above his interests in documentaries, or early in, a career in journalism). Payne is himself still another tourist in this travel narrative, both as a citizen and as a filmmaker (hence the Susan Sontag quote which opens the book).
In short, my project makes the counter-intuitive claim that Payne's cinema both is, and is not, about Nebraska or the Midwest, which the title reflects.
What's next?
Hopefully, I've given a nice snapshot--in words and images--of what The Stranger from Omaha is shaping out to be. The ideas are solid and this exercise has been a helpful reminder of how all that work the last year is paying off. But the work is still far from done.
There are a lot of sources I still need to go back and look over. I haven't even watched any of the films themselves in the last year, because I was focused on just getting the research and ideas organized. So that's next on the itinerary. I've no doubt a wealth of details will emerge from that.
Moreover, the writing itself is still pretty rough--some ideas are probably there but underdeveloped, or way overdeveloped. Passages will need to be re-framed, trimmed, expanded, etc.
But the book is there--I plan to spend the next three weeks shifting away from revision (my focus since the beginning of June) for now and back to adding new content based on re-viewings, new research and new brainstorming sessions.
After that, I'll probably set it aside again for a few months as I prepare for the new school year again. By then, I hope to have a manuscript that I can begin tightening and polishing here and there until next summer, when I will begin to put together book proposal materials.
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