Quote

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.

Alexander Payne

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Payne
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 10
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Ideas
Badly
Better
Script
Wells
Scripts
Well
Mistakes
Great
Mistake
Think
Times
Crafted
Thinking
Idea
Spelling
Film
Stale

More quotes by Alexander Payne

Image
I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.
Alexander Payne
Image
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.
Alexander Payne
Image
In real life, I myself am kind of a rambling guy. I like to travel.
Alexander Payne
Image
My flag is always flying. My shingle is always out. I'm always looking for movie ideas. The hardest part of this whole movie-making endeavor is finding ideas. That's the real goal.
Alexander Payne
Image
A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.
Alexander Payne
Image
I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.
Alexander Payne
Image
I want all of my films to belong to me.
Alexander Payne
Image
The best cinema is about ethics.
Alexander Payne
Image
If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.
Alexander Payne
Image
A book is a book, but a movie is a movie. The more faithful you are, the more you'll come up with Harry Potter #1 and #2, which are like filmed books on tape. They're so petrified of turning off the readers that they make no concessions to the fact that they're trying to make a piece of cinema.
Alexander Payne
Image
I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.
Alexander Payne
Image
Adult movies with any artistic credit are released in the last quarter of the year and expected to gird for battle for Globes and Oscars. So the films aren't being seen just for themselves, but rather in a competitive context.
Alexander Payne
Image
This is how good movies get made and always have: from the gut instinct of the financiers, not just by committee and research.
Alexander Payne
Image
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.
Alexander Payne
Image
Cinema really lends itself well to big, archetypal stories, you know, classic old stories and you need kind of a weird, big terrain like the Japanese plains for Samurai movies or the West. You need that for these giants to walk around.
Alexander Payne
Image
The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.
Alexander Payne
Image
I never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn't want.
Alexander Payne
Image
Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.
Alexander Payne
Image
Forgiving yourself may be for many people, at least for myself, extremely difficult. And then in a larger context, I will say that I'm constantly astonished by those who pray daily, Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me, and beat very loudly the war drum.
Alexander Payne
Image
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.
Alexander Payne