Alexander Payne
Alexander Payne
Alexander Payneis an American film director, screenwriter, and producer, known for the films Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, and Nebraska. His films are noted for their dark humor and satirical depictions of contemporary American society. Payne is a two time winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and a three time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth10 February 1961
CityOmaha, NE
CountryUnited States of America
To be fair-not that I really care about being fair to anyone, ever-but to be fair, I'm sure that same ratio of bad films to good probably exists in every studio.
If you're trying to recreate life, the life that you best know is the one you grew up with.
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.'
'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.
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.
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 watch a movie, you don't want to feel like a machine made it. You want to feel a soul.
You begin a film more with questions than with direct intentions. It's more of an exploration and discovery.
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.
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.
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.
I'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't.
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.
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.