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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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Alexander Payne
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 10
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Ideas
Hardest
Whole
Findings
Real
Finding
Shingle
Always
Movie
Shingles
Looking
Flag
Goal
Flags
Making
Endeavor
Part
Flying

More quotes by 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 kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.
Alexander Payne
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A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.
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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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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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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I never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn't want.
Alexander Payne
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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
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I love comedies. I take comedy very seriously as a form. It's a serious form, involving a certain way of looking at life, specifically the painful aspects of life. 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
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I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.
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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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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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
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Just because I make films doesn't mean I think they're great. I just make them and then when I'm done with them I'm just a filmgoer like I always am. They're all lessons. I'm still in film school, honestly. And this one is just a dry run for whatever the next one 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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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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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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In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.
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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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