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I've always approached screenplays and so forth with, How would it really happen? Not What's the movie version? but What's the real-life version? Then I just follow my nose.

Alexander Payne

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Alexander Payne
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: February 10
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Movie
Real
Approached
Really
Screenplays
Always
Nose
Would
Version
Life
Forth
Follow
Happen

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The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.
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I never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn't want.
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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.
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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.
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In real life, I myself am kind of a rambling guy. I like to travel.
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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.
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The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They're the most important cinematic component.
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I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.
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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.
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In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.
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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.
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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.
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If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.
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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.
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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.
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I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.
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