Alexander Payne Quotes
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You begin a film more with questions than with direct intentions. It's more of an exploration and discovery.
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The most heinous shift in American films is that they reinforce good things like 'couples' and 'relationships.'
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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.
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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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Omaha, like Rome, is built on seven hills.
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I mean, look, I love movies, not just the ones I make... In fact, I don't like the movies I make very much.
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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.'
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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.
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I like to think of film-making not just as an act of personal self-aggrandisement but rather as an act of public service.
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As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.
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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.
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You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
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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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The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.
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When you watch a movie, you don't want to feel like a machine made it. You want to feel a soul.
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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.'
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The best actors are always the ones who've directed as well, as they understand all the problems you face.
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The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.
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'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.
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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.
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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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What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?
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I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.
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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.