Fruit of the womb

Citizen Ruth

(1996)

With The Descendants hitting town in a month or so, I've decided to make this a house of Payne. Having watched Election just a couple of months ago, I have only two to go; maybe I'll be down to pinot-eligible weight by the time I get to Sideways.

But seriously, how does a 30-something with scarcely any previous credits assemble this sort of cast? And how does he make such a perfectly wicked film? Dude sprang fully formed from Zeus's forehead, methinks.

I keep forgetting to look when I see the trailer, by the way, but I've just established that Jim Taylor is not in on the script of The Descendants, which will make that Payne's first feature without Taylor's collaboration. I guess the divorce is final. Oh, wait, no: Taylor is a producer of the new one, and of Payne's long-in-development Fork in the Road, which probably isn't a Yogi Berra biopic, but should be.