Alexander Payne teased post-The Holdovers projects to an audience at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday (August 18), providing an update on the Election sequel and saying he wants to make “a car chase movie.”
“Jim Taylor and I are conceiving what the sequel would look like now,” said Payne of the Election sequel, which is in the works at Paramount+. Taylor is a regular collaborator with Payne, including as co-writer on Downsizing and Sideways.
The film will be based on the 2022 sequel novel Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta, who wrote the first book Election on which Payne’s 1999 black comedy was based. Reese Witherspoon is slated to reprise her role as Flick.
Payne also teased the western he is “conceiving” with David Hemingson, who wrote and produced Payne’s most recent film The Holdovers. “It would be nice to take a realistic, naturalistic approach to a western, also using landscapes,” said Payne of the idea.
He added his inspiration for the project is coming from the films of Anthony Mann, the US director who made several westerns with James Stewart in the 1950s including Winchester ’73 and Bend Of The River. “You can really study the connections between the characters and the drama in the foreground, and how the shifting landscape reflects the story,” said Payne, adding that “a sense of place, using landscape, is important to the films I do”.
Asked by an audience member if he would be interested in making genre films, Payne said, “I’d like to do a good car-chase film, like Bullitt.” He also cited Henri Verneuil’s The Burglars starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point as inspirations.
He reiterated his desire to make a car-chase film later in the session, when refuting a question that asked why his films are about “middle-aged men in crisis”.
“I don’t want to be limited by that definition,” said the director. He also pushed back against the need for him to have a film in the works so soon after The Holdovers. “New project?!” exclaimed Payne to a question about his next work. “I haven’t put my butt down to write a script yet! Without a chair, there is no film.”
Old movies, low budgets
Payne will receive the honorary Heart of Sarajevo at the festival tonight (Sunday, August 18) before a screening of his 2004 comedy-drama Sideways, 19 years after it first played at the event.
The 70-minute masterclass showed clips from Payne films including Sideways, Nebraska and The Holdovers. The director said he has no set rules for filmmaking, but does find more inspiration in films from decades past, rather than recent work.
“I mostly watch old movies. I’m really behind on series,” said Payne, who later added that he never writes with particular cast in mind because “I don’t really know contemporary actors very well”.
“For me, the answers are found in old movies,” said Payne, who said he prefers it to the cinema of today. “I find more consistently enriching things in old movies – from the US, Japan and Italy.”
He also spoke about deliberately keeping budgets low on his films, to avoid interference from financiers.
“I want low budgets. Freedom lies in lower budgets,” said Payne. “The more expensive a movie is, the more the people who control the money are going to be nervous and want to influence you. Even if you’re strong and try to stop their influences, still they seep in.”
“The way you [stop the influences] is by purposely keeping your costs low,” he continued. “Stanley Kubrick kept his budgets low so people would leave him the hell alone.”
The Sarajevo masterclass programme continues with Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman on Monday.
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