On the heels of their first two films -- Citizen Ruth, a comedy set in the world of abortion protesting, and Election, a savagely funny look at high school student council politics-comes About Schmidt, a wryly observed tale of an alienated sixty-six-year-old man. When Election was released in 1999, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor were recognized as "perhaps the only true social satirists now working in American movies" (David Denby, 4/26/99). Payne and Taylor's characters would stick out like sore thumbs in a line up of major motion picture heroes. They don't even qualify as anti-heroes -- they're just people like everyone else, normal people with selfishness, petty ambitions, and uncertain ethics. "I know that Jim and I feel very acutely the pathetic side of our own lives, and we try to turn it into the stuff of comedy," says writer/director Payne. Co-writer Jim Taylor adds, "Most true comedy comes out of pain, out of some uncomfortable situation."