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So what made the ever cautious one bite? вЂњEvery May I get a couple offers to direct a pilot and IвЂ™ve never done so until now because the scripts werenвЂ™t good or at least I didnвЂ™t like them, or I was busy.

The new HBO series equates AmericaвЂ™s desperate new straits to the plight of ex-golden boy Ray Drecker, a one time athletic hero turned high school basketball coach whose life has soured after a run of bad luck that leaves him feeling worthless.ДЄs Payne noted in a recent interview at mid-townвЂ™s Caffeine Dreams, this is the first television pilot he said yes to after years of courting by producers. Until last year he hadnвЂ™t found anything conducive enough with his sensibilities and schedule to compel him to shoot again. He would only break this pact with himself in the event the right assignment came along at the right time. So, he entered a self-imposed hiatus from shooting. It all got to be a bit much and in typical Payne fashion he didnвЂ™t want to compromise his principals by just jumping into anything that came along or feeling pressured into a project he really wasnвЂ™t passionate about. He discovered what itвЂ™s like to be a hot commodity. Amidst all that, he moved, he had knee surgery, he did a ton of press and he fielded multiple directing offers. It didnвЂ™t help that in the wake of the film taking off he was reeling from his and Sandra OhвЂ™s divorce. Things came at him so hard, so fast after Sideways blew up that he lost his equilibrium there for awhile. Thus, the last five years was about regaining his personal/artistic bearings.

Given the choice of rushing to follow up Sideways or stepping back to survey his options, he chose the latter course. HeвЂ™ll only shoot after a scriptвЂ™s gone through endless permutations, revisions, vettings, drafts.

Anyone who knows him understands how particular he is when it comes to his work. But Payne is nothing if not a considered, deliberate study. He presumably could have had he really wanted. Paris notwithstanding, the gap between Sideways and Hung was interminable for this celluloid junkie who once said, вЂњEvery day IвЂ™m not directing I feel like I die a little.вЂќ OK, maybe he was being over-dramatic, but the point is he went a long time not making cinema. The opening episode Payne helmed premiered last Sunday. Thomas Jane stars as a typical middle-class American man driven by economic distress to offer his gift to women as a high class escort.

All those commitments kept him busy, which is how he likes it, but they also made it more difficult to launch a new feature of his own.Д«esides the Paris short, heвЂ™d actually exposed no film for six years from the time Sideways wrapped in 2003 until last summer, when he shot the pilot episode for the new HBO comedy series Hung. Payne hopes to direct that script, Downsizing, next year.ДЄlso, Payne helped produce two films, the disappointing King of California and the sublime The Savages. In 2007 the pair also began work on a script that turned into an unusually arduous process. He and writing partner Jim Taylor took passes at the scripts for I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Baby Mama. He did write and direct the short, 14e Arrondissement, for the 2006 omnibus film, Paris, Je TвЂ™aime ( Paris, I Love You). What did he do with it? From a crass POV, he squandered the opportunity when instead of leveraging that critical-commercial hit to make some dream project, he chose not to make anything. Originally published in a 2009 issue of The Reader (Has it really been five years since Sideways? The 2004 filmвЂ™s success gave its director and Oscar-winning co-writer Alexander Payne the kind of career momentum few filmmakers ever enjoy. Size matters: The return of Alexander Payne, not that he was ever gone

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