A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.
– Alexander Payne
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
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
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
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
I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.
– Alexander Payne
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
To be fair-not that I really care about being fair to anyone, ever-but to be fair, I'm sure that same ratio of bad films to good probably exists in every studio.
– Alexander Payne
You can point to them: Rupert Murdoch, and Sumner Redstone, and Barry Diller-these robber barons, essentially, who buy and sell our culture like it's pig's feet. Not just the cinema, but news media-this ultra-conservative, super-rightwing.
– Alexander Payne
You know, in the '80s I was at UCLA, so I was able to watch older films on nitrate prints that the film and television archive had. Even now, four out of five films I see are old films-why see new films, new American films, y'know?
– Alexander Payne
You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
– Alexander Payne
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
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, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'
– Alexander Payne
The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.
– Alexander Payne
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
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
I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative, a contemporary American vernacular.
– Alexander Payne
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
I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.
– Alexander Payne
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
Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground.
– Alexander Payne
Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part, you're a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which you're trying to get a film financed.