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
Joe E. Lewis said, Money doesnt buy happiness but it calms the nerves. And that is how I feel about a film being well-received. – 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
The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. Thats why so many bad novels can become good movies, like Jaws or The Godfather. – Alexander Payne
There is hardly a place where, in the course of a year, some things are not purchased and never used, and where spring cleaning does not unearth them. Spring is the time when the good housewife puts all doubtful things into the trash barrel. – E.F. White, “Spring Soda Fountain Thoughts,” 1908 [a little altered —t^