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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

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Alexander Payne
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 10
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Always
Financiers
Committee
Guts
Instinct
Research
Movies
Made
Good

More quotes by Alexander Payne

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I'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't.
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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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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Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground.
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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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The better a novel is, in literary terms, the more you can't be faithful. The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies.
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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I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.
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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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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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
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Cinema really lends itself well to big, archetypal stories, you know, classic old stories and you need kind of a weird, big terrain like the Japanese plains for Samurai movies or the West. You need that for these giants to walk around.
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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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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I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.
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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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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I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.
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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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