Alexander Payne Quotes

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.
But it's just that the whole country is making generally lousy films these days and has been for quite a while. That's the big problem that we all have to think about.
Hollywood films have become a cesspool of formula and it's up to us to try to change it... I feel like a preacher! But it's really true. I feel personally responsible for the future of American cinema. Me personally.
I mean, look, I love movies, not just the ones I make... In fact, I don't like the movies I make very much.
I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.
I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.
That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further.
You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
'Independent' means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director's voice is extremely present. It's such a pretentious term, but it's auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist... Whatever word you want.
A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.
Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part, you're a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which you're trying to get a film financed.
As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.
Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground.
Even if we die at 100, we're still dying young. I want at least 700 years. There's a lot of travelling and books to read and movies to see. I'm not going to squeeze it all in in 85 years.
I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.
I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.
I don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth.
I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.
I get asked, 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well, what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.
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AuthorName
Alexander Payne
Profession
Director
BirthDate
10 February, 1961
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