Screenwriting 101 — Alexander Payne

“I don’t think you can have drama without comedy and vice versa. I mean you can. You can watch Peter Sellers in The Party and have a great time, but that is a different type of comedy. The comedy that [co-writer] Jim Taylor and I do, we find specifically in the human experience, often the most painful and embarrassing and sometimes morally corrupt things.”

 — Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways)