On Movies: 'Descendants' director bristles at 'flawed characters' comment

The lights came up after the gala screening of The Descendants at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and Alexander Payne and his star, George Clooney, trotted onto the stage - greeted by an especially rapturous standing ovation.

And then Cameron Bailey, the festival's codirector, led off the audience Q&A with a seemingly innocent comment about Payne's movies - Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways - and how they all seem to center on "flawed characters."

The filmmaker clearly did not appreciate this approach. For a moment, Payne's rather sharp response threatened to turn the whole lovefest sour. Clooney even mockingly took a few steps away from his director as Payne delivered his testy reply, gesturing as if to say, I don't know this guy.

"I was thinking about it overnight," Payne said the next morning. "I was thinking, God, was I being a jerk to that guy? I don't know. And I guess my films are a little bit about people who create crises based on their own limitations. The films are about somehow overcoming, or accepting, one's own limitations in life and trying to transcend them that way. I guess I can see that. But heck, Hamlet - a flawed protagonist, right? Or Oedipus. I don't know, it just seems rampant.

"You know, would you say to Stanley Kubrick, 'Yeah, your Clockwork Orange, why do you have such a flawed protagonist?' He's a psychopath!"

In The Descendants, a smart, funny, and emotionally turbulent film set in Hawaii - and opening Friday at the Ritz East, the AMC Neshaminy, and Rave Motion Pictures at the Ritz Center/NJ - Clooney does, indeed, play a man struggling to overcome his limitations.

In fact, he needs to do so, urgently. A well-heeled lawyer who can trace his roots back to the first commingling of native Hawaiians and white settlers, Clooney's Matt King has to deal with a wife in a coma and two daughters - a wild teenager (Shailene Woodley) and a bratty pip-squeak (Amara Miller) - who are understandably distressed. It's one of Clooney's best performances, and Payne knows it.

"I wanted George from the get-go," says Payne. "He's a really brilliant man in many ways, very capable, and he just understood this character intuitively. . . .

"The other thing about George is that he's a genuinely lovely guy. He's not doing an impression of a lovely guy. He really is that guy."

In The Descendants, Clooney has to try to hold things together, reconnect with his girls, deal with the older daughter's goofball boyfriend (Nick Krause), negotiate the sale of a parcel of unspoiled land that's been in the family forever, and track down the cad who has been having an affair with his wife. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Kaui Hemmings, The Descendants is full of comedy and heartbreak. It also beautifully captures the kicked-back culture of the Aloha State. The soundtrack, featuring the great Gabby Pahinui and other Hawaiian musicians, is likewise perfect.

"Early on, as I started work on the screenplay, I went out to Hawaii for 10 or 12 days to meet the writer - Kaui Hemmings. It's her world that I was seeking to represent," Payne says.

"I wanted to see Hawaii and that class of people through her eyes, and acquaint myself with places and individuals that she was thinking about when writing the book. . . . And that informed what I was writing.

"And I would say, too, in finally making the film, one thing that reflects what I was feeling about Hawaii and life there as I saw it is, not so much the locations, as presented, but also the rhythm of the film. There's a certain floaty rhythm - like 'Yeah, we're going to go look for the lover, but we're also going to go to the beach, and you know, if we just walk along the beach, we'll probably run into him.'

"That's very true to the place. You always just bump into people. . . . Everybody knows everybody. And if you tell somebody something in the morning, it's going to come back to you in the afternoon from a completely different source.

"They call it the Coconut Wireless."

Note: The Philadelphia Film Society is hosting an Alexander Payne retrospective this weekend, which was to begin Saturday with screenings of Citizen Ruth (1996) and Sideways (2004). The event continues Sunday with About Schmidt (2002) and Election (1999). All screenings are at the Bossone Theater, Drexel University, 33d and Market Streets. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $5 to the nonprofit PFS.

Attendees will also receive passes to an advance screening of The Descendants on Monday at Rave Motion Pictures in University City.

Info on the Payne retrospective and Descendants screening: www.filmadelphia.org.

First Person films. Three exceptionally strong films are featured in the 10th-anniversary First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art, going on around town as we speak.

On Sunday, Troubadours, Morgan Neville's doc about the halcyon days on the singer/songwriter scene in Southern California, where the likes of Carole King, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and David Crosby took to the stage of the famed Troubadour club in West Hollywood, trying out new material that went on to become classics of the era. First Person hosted its own concert after the screening, at the Khyber in Old City.

On Thursday, look for My So-Called Enemy, Lisa Gossels' hopeful doc about a group of Palestinian and Israeli teenage girls who first meet over a summer leadership program in New Jersey. Metaphorical bridge-building ensues.

And next Sunday , A Small Act, from filmmaker Jennifer Arnold, examines how a young Kenyan's life is changed - drastically - by the generosity of a Swedish woman who finances his education.

Info: www.firstpersonarts.org.

or srea@phillynews.com.

Read his blog, "On Movies Online," at http://www.philly.