Alexander Payne Quotes

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.
Alexander Payne

Positive, Nice, Made

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

Place, Interested, Films

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.
Alexander Payne

Movies, Die, Young

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

Book, Thought, Whole

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.
Alexander Payne

Tired, American, Making

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.
Alexander Payne

Famous, Someone, Trying

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.
Alexander Payne

Country, Problem, Big

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

Movies, Off, Ground

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.
Alexander Payne

Change, Future, True

I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.
Alexander Payne

Great, Wanted, Film

I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
Alexander Payne

Writing, Find, Means

I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.
Alexander Payne

Hope, Able, Despair

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.
Alexander Payne

Good, Thinking, Comedy

I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.
Alexander Payne

Made, Big, American

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.
Alexander Payne

Life, Humor, Failure

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative, a contemporary American vernacular.
Alexander Payne

Life, Movies, Real

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

Person, Sense, 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.
Alexander Payne

Service, Rather, Personal

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

I mean, look, I love movies, not just the ones I make... In fact, I don't like the movies I make very much.
Alexander Payne

Love, Movies, Mean

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

Money, Job, Down

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

Energy, Youth, 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.
Alexander Payne

Great, Mistakes, Idea

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.
Alexander Payne

Cynicism, Dates, Lasts

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

Tell, Off, Sound

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Biography

Nationality: American

Born: February 10, 1961

Links

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