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
Each one of my movies becomes easier to get off the ground. – Alexander Payne
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