Quotes from 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.

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.

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.

The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.

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

I think cynicism is more enduring than sentimentality.

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'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.

The best actors are always the ones who've directed as well, as they understand all the problems you face.

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

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.

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

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.

Somewhat dramatic things happen, and you don't even always notice them — that's what life is.

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.

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.

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

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.'

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

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!

'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.

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

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

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.