Alexander Payne

I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.

You begin a film more with questions than with direct intentions. It's more of an exploration and discovery.

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.

I never wanted money worries to slow me down or make me take a job I didn't want.

As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.

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.

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

Independent' means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director's voice is extremely present. It's such a pretentious term, but it's auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist... Whatever word you want.

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.

The most heinous shift in American films is that they reinforce good things like 'couples' and 'relationships.'

When you watch a movie, you don't want to feel like a machine made it. You want to feel a soul.