Alexander Payne Quotes
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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.
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I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.
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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.
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This is how good movies get made and always have: from the gut instinct of the financiers, not just by committee and research.
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The better a novel is, in literary terms, the more you can't be faithful. 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.
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If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.
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There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.
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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.
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Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.
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I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.
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I want studios to be financing director-driven, auteurist cinema, as they did in the '70s. I think it's starting to happen now. Plus, because of how our world has changed politically, I think audiences are demanding more realism. We need to have more stuff in our culture about what is really going on right now.
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Somewhat dramatic things happen, and you don't even always notice them — that's what life is.
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A lot of people get stuck, like, "Oh, if it's made by a studio, it can't be independent." Often they link it to the source of financing, or how it's distributed, but I don't really know how you can. A filmmaker will take his money from anywhere. It doesn't matter.
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I like action films, not exclusively, but I like Samurai films. I like Westerns. Not so much war pictures, but a few. I like kinetic cinema.
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I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
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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.
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Just because I make films doesn't mean I think they're great. I just make them and then when I'm done with them I'm just a filmgoer like I always am. They're all lessons. I'm still in film school, honestly. And this one is just a dry run for whatever the next one is.
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A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.
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I spend a long time casting, but once I've cast a film there's a reason why I selected those people. So I'm hands-on in selecting the cast, hands-off to see what they do with their characters, and hands-on again to offer suggestions.
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I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.
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I'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't.
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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!
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The worst thing for people to say about your movies is, "Yeah, it was pretty good, but it was too damn long.".
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The thing is, right now the films don't need to be overtly political to be about our times. We also need films that are just human, that are about people. People need that, too. It's like we need to reconnect to what it is to be human. Not just what our political situation is. That's not what I'm thinking about exclusively. Human content is needed again, as it was in the '70s. I think films were more human than they've been since then.
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In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.
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What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?
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I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.
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I'm considered to some degree a successful director working in Hollywood, making films my way but using studio financing. But with almost every single one, I get praised up the wazoo by people who never would have financed the films. It's: "Gee, this movie is so new and different - what do you want to do next?" "This." "Oh, that's too new and different."
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If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema.
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In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.
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