Alexander Payne's Quotes

I'm so not interested in producing, other than doing my own work, producing my own films. I only do it as favors, for other people to get their films made.

If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day.

'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.

It seems that our politicians see the world in black and white, so why not our artists? Did Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' have to be in black and white? No. But is it fantastic that it was? To see New York like that? Yes!

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.

The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'

There's a bizarre insistence on how a story should be. 'The protagonist must be sympathetic!' they say. Whatever that means. I never engage in that discussion. I never use that word, 'sympathetic.' I just know 'interesting.'

They say you can do honest, sincere work for decades, but you're given in general a 10-year period when what you do touches the zeitgeist - when you're relevant. And I'm aware of that, and I don't want my time to go by.

Well, that's what life is - this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments. We just need to pay attention to them all. Wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is.

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.

As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.

The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.

What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?

Marketing has supplanted story as the primary force behind the worthiness of making a film, and that's a very sad thing. It's film only as a function of consumerism rather than as an important component of our culture, and that's everywhere around the world.

When you're a houseguest and you leave, it's nice to straighten something up or send your hosts a useful gift. And when you leave the planet, it's nice to have made a positive contribution.

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

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.

Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground.

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 want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

I like to think of film-making not just as an act of personal self-aggrandisement but rather as an act of public service.

I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.

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 never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn't want.

I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.

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 cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.

I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.

I want all of my films to belong to me.

I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.