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