Alexander Payne Quotes

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

I like Spike Lee a lot. He's incredibly gifted and I don't think he gets the credit he deserves as a filmmaker.

I think indie films are really important, because they show the studios and the audiences when they see them, great stories. Really interesting, small stories.

The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.

Cinema is not just a medium of entertainment. Yes, it should entertain, but cinema is made to convey a message, to say something.

There's always this debate about how we need more good films but how many are willing to be part of such films.

My films are personal-voice-driven films about human characters and the place we live. Technically, I'm an independent filmmaker.

I started out with V Shantaram. But my favourite director has been Gulzar, with whom I did intelligent cinema in movies like 'Khushboo,' 'Kinara' and 'Parichay.'

No movie can claim to be a work of philosophy. They fulfill a totally different need in people.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

There's a positive side to film and television, the sense of feeding into the theater... Your fans will follow you, hopefully, and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

Movies have power. Power to impact society and the choices we make. I want to entertain, but I also want to say something to the world.

Always when you are doing films, the themes swallow you in one way or another.

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.

There are movies where we are interested in seeing people's lives without agreeing with what they're doing.

A lot of more modern films seem to just be out for violence or sex or what have you, without relating it to what's going within human beings. But every now and then one comes along that does that, and it's a joy.

I learned a lot about morality from fiction, from movies.

Nature is full of drama. I know nothing about biology, about birds, about insects, about the details of politics. I just make movies about human interest stories.

The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Film is the only language I speak, and I have been lucky to be involved in some great stories. You don't want to preach to people, but you want them to think about why things are the way they are, the history that is there as well as the possibilities.

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