The Next 25

Where Alexander Payne has been the last few years isn't nearly as interesting to him as where he's going. (NYT)

Where, everyone wants to know, did he go? The answer is nowhere in particular and everywhere in between. He got divorced, he got delayed, he worked on projects that still haven’t come to fruition, he worked on the pilot for HBO’s “Hung.” He traveled, near and far, with and without specific purpose. He lived. Time flies, but the movie industry lumbers. In that context, he hastens to say, seven years isn’t an eternity. Still. He turned 50 in February, and if you ask him to do something that he has demanded of many of his movies’ protagonists — take unsentimental stock of his progress and remark on what hasn’t gone as envisioned — he will concede that he thought he would have directed more than five movies, including “The Descendants,” by now. And he will pledge a brisker pace from here on out.