Alexander Payne Quotes

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Collection, Extraordinarily

• They say you can do honest, sincere work for decades, but you’re given in general a 10-year period when what you do touches the zeitgeist – when you’re relevant. And I’m aware of that, and I don’t want my time to go by.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Touches, Decades

• 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.’

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in They Say, Discussion

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cinema, Succeeds

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Too Much, Push

• 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!

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in White, Black And White

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Weep, Falling

• ‘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.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cinema, Personal

• I’m so not interested in producing, other than doing my own work, producing my own films. I only do it as favors, for other people to get their films made.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Films, Not Interested

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Contemporary, Narrative

• 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

  Topics in Humor

  Tags in Distance, Gives

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Cinema, Bodies

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Famous, Whoever

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

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Look, Films

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

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Exploration, Intentions

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

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Machine, Watch

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Script, Anyone

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

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Deserve, Audience

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

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Films, Reinforce

• The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.

  Alexander Payne

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Eyes, Director

Alexander Payne (58)

Birth:	10th February, 1962
Nationality:	American, Greek
Profession:	Director, Screenwriter

About

Alexander Payne is a Greek American film director and screenwriter, known for the films Sideways 2004, Election and The Descendants. His films are noted for their dark humor and satirical depictions of contemporary American society. Payne was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Peggy and George Payne, restaurant owners. He is of Greek descent. He was the youngest of three sons and grew up in the same neighborhood as billionaire Warren Buffett. Payne attended Creighton Preparatory School high school and later Stanford University, where he double majored in Spanish and History. As a part of his Spanish degree, he studied at the University of Salamanca. Payne got his MFA in 1990 from the UCLA Film School.

 

Related Authors

• Amine Ayad
• Bill Bixby
• Matthew Perry
• Michael Showalter
• John Derek
• Alan Parker
• Julie Taymor
• Serge Gainsbourg
• Mel Brooks
• Alicia Markova

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 21st December

Births

• 1969 - Julie Delpy
• 1974 - Karrie Webb
• 1967 - Mikhail Saakashvili
• 1949 - Thomas Sankara
• 1925 - Paul Kurtz

Deaths

• 1958 - Lion Feuchtwanger
• 1889 - Joseph Barber Lightfoot
• 1935 - Kurt Tucholsky
• 2001 - David Swift
• 1992 - Stella Adler