A bored office worker decides to use a new process to abandon his stressed-out life in Director Alexander Payne’s new satirical sci-fi comedy-drama, Downsizing.
Payne’s film tells the story of Paul (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) who make the life-altering decision to use a newly-discovered process that can shrink humans to five inches tall on the promise that their money goes much further in a miniaturized world. While the process is viewed as a solution to over-population, the drawback is it is irreversible. But after Paul undergoes the procedure, he finds that there's even more to existence when there's less of him.
Following the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles on December 1, Payne sat down with Director Taylor Hackford (The Comedian) to discuss the making of Downsizing.
In addition to Downsizing, Payne’s credits include the feature films Nebraska, The Passion of Martin, Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt. Payne is a two-time nominee for both the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film and the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing for his 2011 feature The Descendants and his 2004 feature Sideways. He has been a member of the DGA since 1997.
You can listen to Payne's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.