David O. Russell
David O. Russell
David Owen Russellis an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His early directing career includes the comedy films Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, Three Kingsand I ♥ Huckabees...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth20 August 1958
CountryUnited States of America
writing thinking house
When I write an email where I outlined a whole scene, it just came out of my unconscious, it comes from a deeper place. The same thing happens when the actors go, take after take, and just get lost in it. When you're in a house, you don't think about being in the house; you're just there.
real writing people
The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.
jobs writing class
I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films. I got grants from NYSCA and NEA for an idea, which later became 'Huckabees,' about a guy in a Chinese restaurant who had microphones on every table and heard every personal conversation and would write perversely personal fortunes.
writing duty jury-duty
I got put on jury duty, which is where I learned how to write.
family initially mood overcome script struggling written
'The Fighter' was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.
best good humility looking shoulder start work
I've done my best to work from a place of humility - always looking over your shoulder saying, 'Does this suck?' and I think that's a good way to work. The other way to work is where you start to think, 'I'm on fire, I'm amazing!' and I don't think that's the way to work.
jobs passion thinking
I think it [films] was my passion without it being declared like a job that I could have, or a career that I could have.
character trying movement
The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.
feet life-and-death cinema
I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes.
fate reality often-can
What we assert, very often can become our reality. To some degree, everybody can try to shape and control their fate. Everybody picks an identity.
crafts worthwhile hard
Just work on your craft hard - that's your only hope of doing anything worthwhile.
struggle moving people
The romance is essential. I love the love. I don't love just people struggling. I love what people are struggling for. That moves me. I love watching people be loving, and I find it enchanting, magical and transporting. It's one of the reasons that I go to the movies, and that's why I like putting it in movies.
real trying might
You should always make it like it's your last film. That's my personal belief. Every filmmaker is going to have another belief. That's the only way I know to try to make a film that might be good. You got to take it real seriously like it's your last thing.
way happens
Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.