Alexander Payne Quotes
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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.
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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 most heinous shift in American films is that they reinforce good things like 'couples' and 'relationships.'
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Omaha, like Rome, is built on seven hills.
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You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
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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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In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.
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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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I want all of my films to belong to me.
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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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.
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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 cinema is about ethics.
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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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The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.
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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.