I don’t feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope. Alexander Payne Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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.’ Alexander Payne Read Quote
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. Alexander Payne Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Alexander Payne Read Quote
The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They’re the most important cinematic component. Alexander Payne Read Quote
