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If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema.

Alexander Payne

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Alexander Payne
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 10
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Films
Level
Levels
Making
Archetypal
Film
Wasting
Great
Epic
Think
Cinema
Thinking
Potential

More quotes by Alexander Payne

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If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.
Alexander Payne
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The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.
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 editor and I remain very disciplined. It's just sometimes when you're making a film, you get into the cutting room and you see a scene that's slowing you down in a certain section, but if you remove that scene then, emotionally or story-wise, another scene a half-hour later won't have the same impact. You just get stuck with it.
Alexander Payne
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Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.
Alexander Payne
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I think about what movie I would like to see. I don't think of them as a correction or palliative. I certainly am irritated by anything that's shot in the Midwest and filled with these noble people. Oh, they're so good, and they're so honest... I'm not interested in that. I just think of what's right for a movie.
Alexander Payne
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The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.
Alexander Payne
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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
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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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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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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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I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.
Alexander Payne
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I want all of my films to belong to me.
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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In real life, I myself am kind of a rambling guy. I like to travel.
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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Somewhat dramatic things happen, and you don't even always notice them — that's what life is.
Alexander Payne
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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!
Alexander Payne
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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.
Alexander Payne
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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.
Alexander Payne