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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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Alexander Payne
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 10
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Bring
Actors
Tell
Back
Much
Really
Always
Push
Like
Easier

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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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 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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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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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
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The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.
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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The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.
Alexander Payne
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I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.
Alexander Payne
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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
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I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.
Alexander Payne
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The best cinema is about ethics.
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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Comedy is a wonderful device for distance that allows us to look at what we're talking about with some degree of distance and hopefully with a bit more perspective and honesty. With many exceptions, a movie with no jokes is far less appealing to me.
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
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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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If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.
Alexander Payne