Zitat des Tages von Alexander Payne:
You just never know when you're living in a golden age.
The best cinema is about ethics.
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.
In a sense, 'Schmidt' is the most Omaha of my films. But have I gotten it right? I'm not sure. Did Fellini get Rome right? Did Ozu get Tokyo right?
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.
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.
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!
The most heinous shift in American films is that they reinforce good things like 'couples' and 'relationships.'
I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.
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.
I mean, look, I love movies, not just the ones I make... In fact, I don't like the movies I make very much.
When you watch a movie, you don't want to feel like a machine made it. You want to feel a soul.
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.
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.
What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?
A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.
Omaha, like Rome, is built on seven hills.
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, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'
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.
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.
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.
Jesuits encourage an intellectual rigor in a way that I like.
I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.
You look at how many years you have left, and you start to think: 'How many more films do I have in me?'
I always wanted 'Sideways' to be like a great 1960s Italian film.
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 I'm shooting, I don't care who the star is. I have an actor playing a part, and I'm serving the script, not serving anyone's career.
As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.
Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground.
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.
Life mixes tones all the time.
I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.
The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.