Alexander Payne Quotes About Film

Quotes about: Film

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

  Alexander Payne

  Film, Made, Audience

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• 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

  Mistake, Thinking, Ideas

• 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

  Marketing, Important, Culture

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

  Alexander Payne

  Voice, Film, Voice Over

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Mean, Writing, Editing

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Character, Hands, Long

  Source: deadline.com

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Distance, Giving, Serious

  Source: www.avclub.com

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

  Alexander Payne

  Thinking, Sound, Watches

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. November 15, 2011.

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Brother, Thinking, Talking

  Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. November 15, 2011.

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Years, Battle, Adults

  Source: deadline.com

• 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."

  Alexander Payne

  Successful, People, Different

• I want all of my films to belong to me.

  Alexander Payne

  Want, Film

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Wise, Cutting, Editors

  Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. November 15, 2011.

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Two, Oscars, Helping

  Source: deadline.com

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Running, School, Mean

• 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

  Nerves, Calm, Film

  "'The Descendants' won't bring Alexander Payne down". Interview with Susan Wloszczyna, www.usatoday.com. November 15, 2011.

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Moving, Book, Wind

  Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. November 15, 2011.

• 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

  Country, Thinking, Problem

• 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

  Years, Vivid, Film

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. November 15, 2011.

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

  Alexander Payne

  Important, Actors, Tone

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  War, Cinema, Samurai

  Source: www.moviesonline.ca

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  Faithful, Good Movie, Literature

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.

  Alexander Payne

  Italian, Film, Sideways

• If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema.

  Alexander Payne

  Epic, Thinking, Cinema

  Source: www.moviesonline.ca

• 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.

  Alexander Payne

  War, Independent, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

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