Quote

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

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
Planet
Gift
Planets
Straighten
Positive
Hosts
Leave
Host
Nice
Contribution
Made
Send
Something
Useful

More quotes by Alexander Payne

Image
I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.
Alexander Payne
Image
I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
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
I'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
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
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
Image
I mean, look, I love movies, not just the ones I make... In fact, I don't like the movies I make very much.
Alexander Payne
Image
The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.
Alexander Payne
Image
I spend a long time casting, but once I've cast a film there's a reason why I selected those people. So I'm hands-on in selecting the cast, hands-off to see what they do with their characters, and hands-on again to offer suggestions.
Alexander Payne
Image
I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
Image
You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.
Alexander Payne
Image
I've always approached screenplays and so forth with, How would it really happen? Not What's the movie version? but What's the real-life version? Then I just follow my nose.
Alexander Payne
Image
What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?
Alexander Payne
Image
The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.
Alexander Payne