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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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As The Years Go

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.

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I Like Action Films, Not Exclusively, But I Like Samurai Films. I Like Westerns. Not So Much War Pictures, But A Few. I Like Kinetic Cinema.

I Like To Think Of Film-making Not Just As An Act Of Personal Self-aggrandisement But Rather As An Act Of Public Service.

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.

A Lot Of People Get Stuck, Like, "oh, If It's Made By A Studio, It Can't Be Independent." Often They Link It To The Source Of Financing, Or How It's Distributed, But I Don't Really Know How You Can. A Filmmaker Will Take His Money From Anywhere. It Doesn't Matter.

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. My Goal Is Always What Chuck Jones Wanted His Warner Brothers Cartoons To Be, Which Was If You Turn Down The Sound, You Could Still Tell What's Going On. I Think If You Watch Most Of My Films With The Sound Off, You Could Still Tell What's Going On.

Just Because I Make Films Doesn't Mean I Think They're Great. I Just Make Them And Then When I'm Done With Them I'm Just A Filmgoer Like I Always Am. They're All Lessons. I'm Still In Film School, Honestly. And This One Is Just A Dry Run For Whatever The Next One Is.

Were "a Clockwork Orange" Or "blue Velvet" Released Today, Would They Have The Same Power To Shock That They Had When They Came Out? Are We Too Inured By That Torrent Of Images And The Ridiculousness Of Modern Political Life, So That Nothing Shocks Us Anymore? What Does It Take To Shock Someone Today - Or At Least Jolt Them? I Don't Have An Answer. I'm Just Asking The Question.

Each One Of My Movies Becomes Easier To Get Off The Ground.

There Is An Audience Out There For Literate Films - Slower, More Observant, More Human Films, And They Deserve To Be Made.

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.

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.

I Never Wanted Money Worries To Slow Me Down Or Make Me Take A Job I Didn't Want.

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. It's Where You Feel The Director, Not A Machine, At Work. It Doesn't Matter Where The Money Comes From. It Matters How Much Freedom The Director Has To Work With His Or Her Team. That's How I Personally Define Independent Movies.

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.

My Editor And I Remain Very Disciplined. It's Just Sometimes When You're Making A Film, You Get Into The Cutting Room And You See A Scene That's Slowing You Down In A Certain Section, But If You Remove That Scene Then, Emotionally Or Story-wise, Another Scene A Half-hour Later Won't Have The Same Impact. You Just Get Stuck With It.

The Best Cinema Is About Ethics.

I Mean, Look, I Love Movies, Not Just The Ones I Make... In Fact, I Don't Like The Movies I Make Very Much.

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.

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.

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.

Hollywood Films

I Think That Peter Jennings Is The Only Decent One Of The Big Three.

In Real Life, I Myself Am Kind Of A Rambling Guy. I Like To Travel.

I Make Comedies And I Always Try... I Don't Try But I Allow To Have At Least 5% Of The Jokes Or Have Some Jokes That I Know Will Be Understood By Only About 5% Of The Audience. It's That Guy In The Corner Who Gets It And Laughs. But He Has To Have His Jokes Too. That's Part Of My Audience. Part Of My Audience Is The People Who Will Only Get Certain Things.

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!

Black And White

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.

If You're Not Making Epic, Archetypal Films On Some Level, I Think You're Wasting A Great Potential Of Cinema.

What Is Filmmaking But Groping In The Dark?

I Like Actors Who, When You See Them On Screen, You Sense A Person, Not Just An Actor.

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.

I'm Considered To Some Degree A Successful Director Working In Hollywood, Making Films My Way But Using Studio Financing. But With Almost Every Single One, I Get Praised Up The Wazoo By People Who Never Would Have Financed The Films. It's: "gee, This Movie Is So New And Different - What Do You Want To Do Next?" "this." "oh, That's Too New And Different."

All Three Parts Of Filmmaking [writing, Shooting, Editing] Contribute To Rhytm. You Want The Script To Be A Tight As Possible, You Want The Acting To Be As Efficient As Possible On The Set, And You Have Enough Coverage To Manipulate The Rhythm In The Editing Room, And Then In The Editing Room You Want To Find The Quickest Possible Version, Even If It's A Leisurely Paced Film. I Definitely In Filmmaking More And More Find Writing And Directing A Means To Harvest Material For Editing. It's All About Editing.

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.

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. My Goal Is Always What Chuck Jones Wanted His Warner Brothers Cartoons To Be, Which Was If You Turn Down The Sound, You Could Still Tell What's Going On.

I'm Hoping One Day I Can Make One Really Good Film.

I Want All Of My Films To Belong To Me.

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.

Acting Is A Lot Easier Than People Think It Is.

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.

Falling In Love

Go Back In Time

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.

If You Have Your Movies So That Everyone Understands Everything, I Think That's Probably Not A Very Good Movie.

In The Moment Of Making Films, I Want To Share My Observations Of Life, Not Of Other Films.

A Lot Of Documentaries Have Been Made Very Quickly, But I Think They're Like Frogs In An Ecosystem: They're Harbingers. Film Is Always Two Or Three Years Behind, Because It Takes So Long To Write A Script, Get Financing, And Get It Made. It Just Takes A While. But I Think It's Coming. It Has To.

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.

I Definitely In Filmmaking More And More Find Writing And Directing A Means To Harvest Material For Editing. It's All About Editing.

A Book Suggests A Whole World And Story That I Could Have Never Thought Of In A Million Years.

I'm Attracted To Short Screenplays. Nobody Really Wants A Film To Be Over Two Hours, Or At Least I Don't.

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.

As The Years Go By And I Make More Films, I Am Increasingly Interested In Capturing Place As A Vivid Backdrop For My Films.

The Biggest Fear I Have Is To Die With Regrets, And Of Course That Will Come True.

The Thing Is, Right Now The Films Don't Need To Be Overtly Political To Be About Our Times. We Also Need Films That Are Just Human, That Are About People. People Need That, Too. It's Like We Need To Reconnect To What It Is To Be Human. Not Just What Our Political Situation Is. That's Not What I'm Thinking About Exclusively. Human Content Is Needed Again, As It Was In The '70s. I Think Films Were More Human Than They've Been Since Then.

I Love Comedies. I Take Comedy Very Seriously As A Form. It's A Serious Form, Involving A Certain Way Of Looking At Life, Specifically The Painful Aspects Of Life. 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.

You Just Never Know When You're Living In A Golden Age.

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.

The Worst Thing For People To Say About Your Movies Is, "yeah, It Was Pretty Good, But It Was Too Damn Long.".

I Don't Feel Despair Because I Am Able To Make The Films I Want To Make, And That Gives Me Hope.

In A General Sense, To Convert Any Short Story, Novel, Play, Or Opera Into A Movie, You Have To Re-rig It. Even Though They're All Narratives Over Time, They're Very Different Forms.

What Science-fiction Premises Do Is It Gives You A "what-if" Prism To Look At The Contemporary World With A Wack On The Side Of The Head.

Whenever I'm Asked About Independent Cinema, I Think Of What Fidel Castro Said During The Cold War About The League Of Non-aligned Nations. He Said That Really, There Were Only Two Non-aligned Nations: The U.s. And The Ussr. The Rest Of Us Have To Be Aligned Somewhere. I Say Similarly, In A Way, Paramount, Sony, And Warner Bros. Are The Only True Independents, Because They're The Only Ones Who Can Do Whatever They Want And Have Distribution For Their Films Built In.

I Want Studios To Be Financing Director-driven, Auteurist Cinema, As They Did In The '70s. I Think It's Starting To Happen Now. Plus, Because Of How Our World Has Changed Politically, I Think Audiences Are Demanding More Realism. We Need To Have More Stuff In Our Culture About What Is Really Going On Right Now.

I Always Wanted 'sideways' To Be Like A Great 1960s Italian Film.

I Could Never Be A Part Of An Adaptation Of A Film Where There's Pressure To Not Disappoint The Immense Fan Base. In Those Cases, They Often Wind Up With Filmed Books On Tape, Quite Uncinematic. Having Said That, I'd Say All The Adaptations I've Done Are Quite Faithful To The Original... You Have To Pick And Choose Which Storylines And Plot Threads, Because You Don't Have The Time To Kill In The Film As They Have In Novels. All Those Pages With Detours And Plots And Different Storylines. But Films Add A Lot, And You Gotta Keep It Moving.

I Think Cynicism Lasts. Sentimentality Ages, Dates Quickly.

I Like Voice-over In Films, And Most Of My Films Have Been Voice-over Films.

This Is How Good Movies Get Made And Always Have: From The Gut Instinct Of The Financiers, Not Just By Committee And Research.

Forgiving Yourself May Be For Many People, At Least For Myself, Extremely Difficult. And Then In A Larger Context, I Will Say That I'm Constantly Astonished By Those Who Pray Daily, "forgive Me My Sins As I Forgive Those Who Sin Against Me," And Beat Very Loudly The War Drum.

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.

I'd Love To Be A Director-for-hire And Get A Nice Paycheck And Captain One Of Those Big Ships, But I Think Studios Mistakenly Think I Want To Write What I Direct - Which I Don't. I Write Out Of Desperation, Because I Never Get A Script I Like, Other Than "nebraska." It's A Matter Of: What's The Screenplay? Is It Intelligent? Is It Human? I Don't Care What Genre, What Scale. I'm Here For The Movies.

I Spend A Long Time Casting, But Once I've Cast A Film There's A Reason Why I Selected Those People. So I'm Hands-on In Selecting The Cast, Hands-off To See What They Do With Their Characters, And Hands-on Again To Offer Suggestions.

The Actors Are The Greatest Executors Of Tone In A Film. They're The Most Important Cinematic Component.

I Still Have Energy And Some Degree Of Youth, Which Is What A Filmmaker Needs.

I Think If You Watch Most Of My Films With The Sound Off, You Could Still Tell What's Going On.

I Read Reviews Of Critics I Respect And Feel I Can Learn Something From. Right Now There Are A Lot Of Bottom-feeder Critics Who Just Have Access To A Computer And Don't Necessarily Have An Academic Or Cinema Background That I Can Detect, So I Tend To Ignore That And Stay With The Same Top-tier Critics That I've Come To Respect. I Like Reading A Good Review - It Doesn't Have To Be Favorable, But A Well-thought-out One - Because I Very Much Appreciate The Relationship Of Directors And Critics.

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.

I Don't Want All Of American Cinema To Be Big Cartoons That Are Just Made To Be Digested By The Entire World.

The Kindest Thing A Director Can Do Is Look With Open Eyes At Everything.

Somewhat Dramatic Things Happen, And You Don't Even Always Notice Them — That's What Life Is.

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.

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