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Alexander Payne Quotes - IQDb - Internet Quotes Database

Quotes from Alexander Payne


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


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.


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.


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.


You look at how many years you have left, and you start to think: 'How many more films do I have in me?'


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


I want all of my films to belong to me.


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


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


In a sense, 'Schmidt' is the most Omaha of my films. But have I gotten it right? I'm not sure. Did Fellini get Rome right? Did Ozu get Tokyo right?


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


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


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


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.


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


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.


The most heinous shift in American films is that they reinforce good things like 'couples' and 'relationships.'


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.


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.