Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part, youre a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which youre trying to get a film financed. – Alexander Payne
I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative, a contemporary American vernacular. – Alexander Payne
Hollywood films have become a cesspool of formula and its up to us to try to change it… I feel like a preacher! But its really true. I feel personally responsible for the future of American cinema. Me personally. – Alexander Payne
I get asked, How can you have such failures in your films? Well, what else is life about? Theres some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it. – Alexander Payne
Its important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art. – Henry Louis Gates