Alexander Payne on Citizen Ruth

Free Press Houston classic interviews goes back to 1996 and a lunch interview with Alexander Payne and his debut feature Citizen Ruth.
When asked about any socio-political importance concerning his abortion satire Citizen Ruth, director and co-writer Alexander Payne just grins a wide, Cheshire Cat kind of smile. To Payne's mind, any disbelief or discontent, or the joy and happiness of sardonic humor, is best left up to the viewer. When asked towards whose side of the fence he straddles, Payne's smile is as vague and elusive as ever.
"Jim [writing collaborator Jim Taylor] and I just try to look at people how they are, which is neither positive or negative," Payne, as boyish looking a director as has ever come through Houston on a press junket, said. "We just like, in general, really pathetic situations, and the humor derived therein. Nothing should be sacred. I hate to think there's a statement, everything has to be a statement.
"I hate it when they try to make oppressed people look noble, the only time it's been pulled off is in Buñuel's Los Olvidados," says Payne, one of his many movie references during the lunch. Citizen Ruth was positioned by Miramax for Oscar consideration and released for a week in L.A. and Gotham at the end of last year. Now in a platform style release pattern, Citizen Ruth, stars Laura Dern as spray paint-inhaling mom-to-be Ruth Stoops.
Certainly, Dern's perf is in the same league, if not same ballpark, as any of the femme thespians who garnered noms, and positioning a film for Oscar benefits can possibly backfire if the film is overlooked by the Academy and then dumped by its distribber during an already congested weekend. (Of course, every weekend there's, like, four or five films opening anyway.) The flip side of the coin is that the smaller, indie-financed Ruth can open on any weekend (its word of mouth being in the air) rather than, say, The Devil's Own opening on the given day towards which its studio spent $20-million plus on advertising.
All of that hype fails to mention the subject and style of baby Ruth, a take-no-prisoners, org-skewer in the tradition of Paddy Chayefsky's Network or The Hospital, as well as sci-fi related takes on totalitarian lifestyles, like The Handmaiden's Tale. Payne's tale is derisively comic with an edge that reveals right-to-life Christian fanatics and pro-choice snobs to be in the sack together, if that bed is made with the sheets of scheming hypocrisy.
"It's dangerous to say all pro-lifers think like this or that," Payne says. "I've got liberal friends who've seen it and think it's great, and pro-choice liberal friends who're saying it's irresponsible – you can't group anybody."
Payne mentions Ring Lardner and Sinclair Lewis as models of the kind of satire Ruth strives for while also recalling the sloven yet sympathetic characters from early Milos Forman films like The Fireman's Ball and Loves of a Blonde. Like Lardner and Lewis, Payne hails from the Midwest. Citizen Ruth was lensed in Payne's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
It appears to be a tight stretch that an audience could meld with Dern after the first few minutes in which we see Ruth go from being a debauched sex freak to sucking paint fumes out of a paper bag. The ring of black paint around her mouth is like a gothic letter of mental unbalance. Her tongue and lips stained by her toxic drug of choice are a truly disgusting sight. "It's a real low-life drug," reminds Payne, "It's cheap and you can get it legally." Yet sympathize you will after watching the pregnant Ruth taken in by a pro-life family (Kurtwood Smith and Mary Kay Place) who mean to use her to politicize her situation. Meanwhile, an undercover pro-choicer (Swoosie Kurtz) kidnaps Ruth back to a liberal safe house. But, with the conniving going on in the pro-choice circles about how to utilize Ruth, is she really safe?
It's not surprising to hear Payne discuss how he'd like to shoot a biopic of the life of St. Paul. Payne explains how Paul was far from sympathetic: "He was a Christian hater, then he fell from his horse and had this epileptic vision; then he became Christ's biggest spokesman. He's just a crazy guy who never met Christ, who became his agent." Payne knows that Paul was formally called Saul and worked as a tent-maker. With the hint of a smile Payne envisions Jean-Claude Van Damme as St. Paul. Hey, Payne cast Burt Reynolds as the pervert preacher for Ruth, and it's a far superior turn than Burt's portrayal of a pervert senator in Striptease.
"Here's one for you," Payne throws out as the entrées are led away. "Name a film that after you saw it you didn't feel like you'd seen it, but felt like you'd dreamt it."