Top 45 Alexander Payne Quotes

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

My flag is always flying. My shingle is always out. I’m always looking for movie ideas.

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.

I want all of my films to belong to me.

The best cinema is about ethics.

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.

I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what’s going on.

You just never know when you’re living in a golden age.

What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?

When I’m shooting, I don’t care who the star is. I have an actor playing a part, and I’m serving the script, not serving anyone’s career.

You look at how many years you have left, and you start to think: ‘How many more films do I have in me?’

You begin a film more with questions than with direct intentions. It’s more of an exploration and discovery.

I don’t think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I’m always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking – although I want good talking. I’m much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth.

The most heinous shift in American films is that they reinforce good things like ‘couples’ and ‘relationships.’

In a sense, ‘Schmidt’ is the most Omaha of my films. But have I gotten it right? I’m not sure. Did Fellini get Rome right? Did Ozu get Tokyo right?

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.

I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.

There’s a bizarre insistence on how a story should be. ‘The protagonist must be sympathetic!’ they say. Whatever that means. I never engage in that discussion. I never use that word, ‘sympathetic.’ I just know ‘interesting.’

A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

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.’

Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground.

‘Independent’ means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director’s voice is extremely present. It’s such a pretentious term, but it’s auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist… Whatever word you want.

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.

It seems that our politicians see the world in black and white, so why not our artists? Did Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan’ have to be in black and white? No. But is it fantastic that it was? To see New York like that? Yes!

I think that Peter Jennings is the only decent one of the big three.

If you’re trying to recreate life, the life that you best know is the one you grew up with.

In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.

As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.

There is an audience out there for literate films – slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

Well, that’s what life is – this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments. We just need to pay attention to them all. Wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is.

The actors are the greatest executors of tone in a film. They’re the most important cinematic component.

I never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn’t want.

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.

Jesuits encourage an intellectual rigor in a way that I like.

The hardest part of this whole movie-making endeavor is finding ideas.

I’m hoping one day I can make one really good film.

I like to think of film-making not just as an act of personal self-aggrandisement but rather as an act of public service.

I mean, look, I love movies, not just the ones I make… In fact, I don’t like the movies I make very much.

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.

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.

I don’t want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.

Life mixes tones all the time.

When you watch a movie, you don’t want to feel like a machine made it. You want to feel a soul.