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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

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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

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I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
Alexander Payne
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Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.
Alexander Payne
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When you're a houseguest and you leave, it's nice to straighten something up or send your hosts a useful gift. And when you leave the planet, it's nice to have made a positive contribution.
Alexander Payne
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You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
Alexander Payne
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I want studios to be financing director-driven, auteurist cinema, as they did in the '70s. I think it's starting to happen now. Plus, because of how our world has changed politically, I think audiences are demanding more realism. We need to have more stuff in our culture about what is really going on right now.
Alexander Payne
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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
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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.
Alexander Payne
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I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.
Alexander Payne
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Joe E. Lewis said, 'Money doesn't buy happiness but it calms the nerves.' And that is how I feel about a film being well-received.
Alexander Payne
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I like action films, not exclusively, but I like Samurai films. I like Westerns. Not so much war pictures, but a few. I like kinetic cinema.
Alexander Payne
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There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.
Alexander Payne
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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.
Alexander Payne
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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.
Alexander Payne
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What science-fiction premises do is it gives you a what-if prism to look at the contemporary world with a wack on the side of the head.
Alexander Payne
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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
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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.
Alexander Payne
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A lot of people get stuck, like, Oh, if it's made by a studio, it can't be independent. Often they link it to the source of financing, or how it's distributed, but I don't really know how you can. A filmmaker will take his money from anywhere. It doesn't matter.
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.
Alexander Payne
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Somewhat dramatic things happen, and you don't even always notice them — that's what life is.
Alexander Payne
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In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.
Alexander Payne