Whose comeback excites you more?

I knew I was slipping when one of the movies I'm looking forward to most this fall -- The Descendants -- hit theaters without me even knowing it.

Perhaps because it's got Oscar aspirations, I assumed a December release date -- you know, about the time when George Clooney's Up in the Air became available two years ago. (Clooney did not direct Up in the Air or The Descendants, but he appears in both.) But it actually hit theaters here in Los Angeles on Wednesday, a fact I discovered, oh, the previous Sunday. So much for getting myself psyched up for it over the course of a couple weeks. Now I can and will go see it this weekend.

The reason The Descendants excites me and so many other film fans is not that it features Clooney, but rather, that it marks the long-awaited feature return of writer-director Alexander Payne. Payne had the most acclaimed movie of his career (Sideways) and then promptly went into a seven-year period of inactivity.

Oh, Payne has done things since 2004. He's had a bunch of producing credits, and I was shocked to learn just now that he was one of four credited writers on I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. (Which I haven't seen, but can I just assume it's bad and move on?) He even has a directing credit, having contributed the memorable closing piece to the otherwise forgettable collection of short films called Paris Je T'Aime. But a director with Payne's heat after Sideways should have directed at least two features since then, not zero. Woody Allen has directed like eight features since then.

The one time I intended to look into Payne's absence more seriously in order to write about it on The Audient, I didn't get very far in terms of finding a smoking gun. He did divorce from Sandra Oh, who appeared in Sideways, during that time. But that's not exactly unusual territory for Hollywood types, and they usually keep working right through it.

But Payne is not the only beloved director making a comeback of sorts this fall. The great Cameron Crowe is also directing his first feature since Elizabethtown crashed and burned in 2005. In fact, this will be only Crowe's second feature in the past ten years. I guess 2001's Vanilla Sky, a polarizing film that I happened to love, did more to hurt him professionally than I like to admit. Like Payne, Crowe has not exactly spent the intervening years eating bon bons. In fact, his love of rock n' roll has informed a prolific amount of recent documentary work. Pearl Jam Twenty was a well-liked doco released this fall, and I also see his name associated with a rock documentary called The Union, though I don't know anything about that beyond the fact that a 2011 release year is listed. Oh okay, it's about Elton John and is going to air on HBO starting in January.

So to welcome messieurs Payne and Crowe back to the director's chair, I thought I'd do a little comparison between the two, with the theoretical end result being to determine whether we should be more excited about The Descendants or We Bought a Zoo. (I say "theoretical" because I already know which one I'm more excited about.) On the surface, their careers may not necessarily invite comparison -- many of Crowe's works are informed by nostalgia and popular culture, whereas Payne is much more motivated by the quirkiness of Americana. Still, they are both directors who have made few missteps and have a comparable number of features to their credit. To add to this artificial rivalry I'm creating between them, the two films star buddies George Clooney and Matt Damon, giving the comparison a hint more relevance.

So let's take a look. We'll start with Cameron because he's been around longer.

Cameron Crowe
Age: 54
Total number of features as director (including current): 7
First feature as director: Say Anything ...
Best feature: Say Anything .../Almost Famous (gah, I can't decide)
Worst feature: Elizabethtown
Why we should be excited to have him back: Crowe has a knack for creating a sense of unforced nostalgia in his viewer, even when the subject matter is not overtly nostalgic. For example, when you saw Singles, didn't you kind of think you were already feeling nostalgic for grunge? Certainly this has something to do with his heavy reliance on rock music, which naturally reminds us of the associations we have with that music in our own lives. Crowe's movies are big in a way that doesn't make you feel suffocated by their ambitions. What you might call his most ambitious film -- Vanilla Sky -- likely turned some viewers off because of its dark subject matter, and turned some purists off because it was a remake. Me, I was enthralled by the pastiche of music, memory, states of awakening and existence, joy and melancholy he incorporated into one film. At his best, Crowe has the ability to make films that stay with you for years.

Alexander Payne
Age: 50
Total number of features as director (including current): 5
First feature as director: Citizen Ruth
Best feature: Election
Worst feature: Citizen Ruth (but it's still really good)
Why we should be excited to have him back: Payne is the cinematic equivalent of teflon. Yeah, he's only directed four films that most of us have already seen, and that's a pretty small sample size. But he has yet to make a misstep, and it could be argued that he just keeps getting better and better (if, that is, he didn't make his best film second overall). For awhile I compared him not to Crowe but to David O. Russell, who was making movies in lock-step with Payne and also hadn't make a misstep ... until Russell made I Heart Huckabees and changed all that. Payne's record remains unblemished, and he's got a wicked eye for satire. His career has become increasingly less satirical and increasingly more character-oriented with every film, but each film has a sharp sense of humor as it addresses confused people trying to sort out their lives and relationships. He's also going from more to less rural, as he's traded Nebraska for Santa Barbara and now Hawaii. But with an Alexander Payne film, you know you're getting something that looks deeply into the hearts of human beings while making you laugh, sometimes in spite of yourself.

Conclusion?

Although Crowe has made more films that I hold dear, I think that Payne is poised to please us more with his next feature. This conclusion is somewhat unfair, since it's not made in a vacuum -- the early returns are in on The Descendants, and people seem to be through-the-roof enthusiastic about it. But I think I would have said that even three or four months ago, when not that much was known about either film. And I haven't heard any buzz on We Bought a Zoo, but if you can get a gut feeling from a title and a plot alone, my gut feeling is not particularly hopeful. Besides, Payne has at least had a hit in the past ten years -- in fact, he's had two of them. Not the case for Crowe. As I was going through Crowe's wikipedia page, it mentioned that both Vanilla Sky (which I loved) and Elizabethtown ("hate" is a strong word) had Metascores of only 45. Ouch.

Fortunately, going to the movies is not an either/or proposition. Personally, I welcome both of them back, and look forward to what they have to offer me -- starting as soon as this weekend.

The all-too-brief feature directing career of Daisy von Scherler Mayer

Hollywood is a pretty tough place to work, if you can direct two really great comedies out of four movies, and you still have to spend the rest of your career settling for TV work.

Such is the case with Daisy von Scherler Mayer, a director who caught my attention as much for her lengthy name (second in length only to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck?) as for the fact that she's the pride and joy of Wesleyan University, where a close friend attended college.

I've had the pleasure of revisiting Mayer's two really great comedies -- Party Girl (1995) and The Guru (2003) -- in the past year, The Guru as recently as Monday night. I'm glad to say they both hold up. Her other two movies -- Woo and Madeline, both released in 1998 -- are not so great. But nobody's perfect.

Still, you'd think her two successes would have earned her a fifth theatrical feature, especially since her best film, The Guru, was her most recent one. Unfortunately, when it comes to the world of movies, "best" is a decidedly subjective term. I love The Guru, but I'm the only source I really have for that love. I mean, I've showed it/recommended it to other people, and they've confirmed that it's good, but I've never spoken to anyone who has independently offered up their affection for The Guru. I'm still waiting for someone to mention The Guru to me, rather than the reverse. And even though I gave it a glowing review on my website, predating that review was the 2 1/2 star rating the staffers gave it, based on a general critical consensus. Despite my review, that rating still stands.

So since 2003 Mayer has been directing TV episodes -- just a handful here and there, shows such as Emily's Reasons Why Not, The Loop and Aliens in America. Remember those? I thought not. (Actually, Aliens in America was good -- I can't speak to the quality of the others.) Okay, so she's also directed Mad Men and Chuck -- maybe she's fine with this being the new focus of her career. But as a guy who prizes the value of the feature film over the value of the TV episode any day of the week, I tend to doubt it.

At this point I should probably tell you a little bit about why I think Party Girl and The Guru are so great.

Remember when Parker Posey was not yet "Parker Posey"? In other words, was not yet essentially a caricature of herself (even though she still manages to be plenty lovable on occasion)? Party Girl provides a wonderful example of that. In this light indie comedy that also features fellow up-and-comers Liev Schrieber and (to a lesser extent) Guillermo Diaz, Posey plays Mary, the party girl of the title, who doesn't realize that she yearns to do more than attend parties in Manhattan lofts and shop at thrift stores. Under the influence of her aunt Judy, a librarian -- who, I've just learned, is the director's mother, actress Sasha von Scherler (R.I.P.) -- Mary decides to pursue library sciences, while also courting the salesman at the falafel stand where she orders her baba ganoush. There ain't a lot more than that in terms of plot -- but it's what Mayer does with these characters (especially Posey, but several darling secondary characters as well) that makes this such a joyous little slice of deliciousness. It's one of the standouts of the indie comedy movement that emerged in the mid-1990s, which also featured some prominent directors who are still going strong -- Nicole Holofcener with Walking and Talking and Noah Baumbach with Kicking and Screaming, just to name the first two that come to mind. (Quite possibly, because their titles are very similar). For the record, Party Girl falls in between those two, with Baumbach's movie coming out on top.

Then there's The Guru, which is probably Mayer's "biggest" movie in terms of its cast. Although the lead, Jimi Mistry, is essentially unknown (and what a shame it is that he can't get more work, because he's charming as hell), he's flanked by two pretty big names: Marisa Tomei and Heather Graham. (Not to mention a hilarious cast of side characters, including Michael McKean, Dash Mihok, Bobby Cannavale and Christine Baranski.) The film is about an Indian dance instructor (Mistry) who comes to New York to pursue the American dream of becoming a famous actor -- spurred on by a childhood love of American movies, which was awakened the moment he snuck out of the Bollywood movie his parents were watching and into the screening of Grease in the neighboring theater. While living with three other Indian nationals who have more "typical" immigrant jobs -- cab driver, waiter in an Indian restaurant -- the naive Ramu applies for a part in a movie, not realizing it's a porn shoot. On the shoot he meets Sharonna (Graham), who is trying to fool her firefighter fiance (Mihok) that she's actually an innocent school teacher -- though she's only doing porn to help them afford their dream home in nearby Throg's Neck. Meanwhile, Ramu also gets accidentally hired to serve as a guru at a party of Manhattan socialites (Tomei and her family), which accidentally becomes a full career as a sex guru. He needs Sharonna's wisdom on the art of sexual gratification to peddle his new trade.

Whether the previous synopsis sounds kind of off-the-wall or counterintutively delightful, you'll just have to trust me it's the latter. The movie has several dance numbers that infuse the spirit of Bollywood with the spirit of Hollywood, and they are absolutely wonderful. The whole movie is light and sweet. Crucially, the movie loves its three crazy dreamers -- the dance instructor with Hollywood hopes, the porn star who wants to live out her suburban fantasy, and the loopy socialite seeking her purpose in Eastern religion. A mean-spirited satire would have made a laughingstock of them all, but this gentle satire loves them, and the love is contagious. The movie has some really funny moments, as well as some touching ones -- and the dance numbers, oh, the dance numbers! See it.

In between Party Girl and The Guru, Mayer made an urban romantic comedy (Woo) and an adaptation of a beloved children's book (Madeline). Both have their positive bits -- Jada Pinkett Smith is pretty delightful as Woo, a little firecracker who was probably modeled on Posey's Mary, and Madeline is harmless if forgettable fun, featuring a very game Frances McDormand, playing a nun. But neither of these films is worth a second look.

I've now seen Party Girl either twice or three times, and The Guru four times. I own the latter and I wouldn't mind owning the former.

And this has made me a big Daisy von Scherler Mayer fan. It's made me root for Daisy von Scherler Mayer, and made me heave a sigh of disappointment to see that she can't get feature directing work anymore.

But who knows what it is. Maybe Mayer found directing films too stressful. Maybe she preferred the short-term commitment of TV. Maybe she's independently wealthy and doesn't need to work, and maybe she just dabbles in TV because it keeps her professionally sharp and feeds her remaining creative impulses.

I should just be glad for what she's given me so far, and not worry about whether she has the long and illustrious career I think she should/could have. You never know with directors. Sometimes they just disappear, and you may never get a satisfactory explanation of what happened. For example, I am still trying to figure out when we're going to get another movie from the great Alexander Payne, whose last film was Sideways, way back in 2004. Oops, scratch that -- I just checked wikipedia, and his film The Descendants is due out this year. But the point is, when I looked about a year ago, there was nothing on the horizon for this indisputably talented and successful filmmaker, who had given us the excellent quartet of Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and Sideways. Neither could I find anything when I googled the words "What happened to Alexander Payne?" I'm just thankful that the existence of another movie finally came along to give me my answer.

As for Mayer, or Scherler Mayer, or von Scherler Mayer, maybe she's got a third great comedy in her, maybe she doesn't. Or maybe she now finds the Madison Avenue board rooms of the 1960s to be her thing.

Either way, I wish her well.