Top 40 Alexander Payne Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

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

— Alexander Payne

3. “In real life, I myself am kind of a rambling guy. I like to travel.”

— Alexander Payne

4. “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

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

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

7. “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.”

— Alexander Payne

8. “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

9. “If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that’s probably not a very good movie.”

— Alexander Payne

10. “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.”

— Alexander Payne

11. “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.”

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

14. “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

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

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

18. “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

19. “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.”

— Alexander Payne

20. “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

21. “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.”

— Alexander Payne

22. “I always wanted ‘Sideways’ to be like a great 1960s Italian film.”

— Alexander Payne

23. “The best cinema is about ethics.”

— Alexander Payne

24. “What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?”

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

26. “Somewhat dramatic things happen, and you don’t even always notice them – that’s what life is.”

— Alexander Payne

27. “I’m attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don’t.”

— Alexander Payne

28. “I want all of my films to belong to me.”

— Alexander Payne

29. “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.”

— Alexander Payne

30. “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

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

— Alexander Payne

32. “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

33. “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.”

— Alexander Payne

34. “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

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

— Alexander Payne

36. “Acting is a lot easier than people think it is.”

— Alexander Payne

37. “The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.”

— Alexander Payne

38. “If you’re not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you’re wasting a great potential of cinema.”

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

40. “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

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

— Alexander Payne

42. “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

43. “I don’t feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.”

— Alexander Payne

44. “I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.”

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne

46. “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

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

— Alexander Payne

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

— Alexander Payne