Quote

The worst thing for people to say about your movies is, Yeah, it was pretty good, but it was too damn long..

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
Long
Good
People
Damn
Yeah
Movies
Pretty
Worst
Thing

More quotes by Alexander Payne

Image
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
Image
You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
Image
A lot of documentaries have been made very quickly, but I think they're like frogs in an ecosystem: They're harbingers. Film is always two or three years behind, because it takes so long to write a script, get financing, and get it made. It just takes a while. But I think it's coming. It has to.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
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
If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.
Alexander Payne
Image
I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.
Alexander Payne
Image
The best cinema is about ethics.
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
I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
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
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
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
Image
Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.
Alexander Payne
Image
Somewhat dramatic things happen, and you don't even always notice them — that's what life is.
Alexander Payne
Image
When I'm introduced as a two-time Oscar winner, I'm happy that a film of mine has found an audience and some acclaim because that keeps me in business. A filmmaker's greatest concern is the ability to make future films, so it helps keep me in business.
Alexander Payne
Image
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
Image
I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.
Alexander Payne