Film: Excerpt: The Passion of Martin
Directed by Alexander Payne
Biography:
Alexander Payne was born in Rome, the son of a sculptor father and professor mother, and was raised largely in Scotland and Benin. He left Harvard after two years to work as a longshoreman, a bus driver, a pool man and a translator. A lifelong asthmatic, he moved to Nebraska for the air but found himself so fascinated by rituals and customs on the plains that he picked up a movie camera as a way of documenting them before they vanished forever. After four feature films, he is currently at work on his second volume of poetry. His first, Shadings and Shadowings, was published in 1991.