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I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. 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.

David O. Russell

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David O. Russell
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: August 20
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Film
Figures
Trying
Couldn
Going
Short
Bartender
Make
Office
Sat
Taught
Frustrated
Class
Various
Making
Figure
Jobs
Films

More quotes by David O. Russell

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That's the most beautiful thing that I like about boxing: you can take a punch. The biggest thing about taking a punch is your ego reacts and there's no better spiritual lesson than trying to not pay attention to your ego's reaction.
David O. Russell
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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.
David O. Russell
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If you just work on your craft hard, that's your only hope of doing anything worthwhile.
David O. Russell
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The investigation of consciousness has come to be regarded suspiciously by most smart people and by most scientists. That's a legacy that began with the Inquisition, which considered non-Christian spiritual inquiry as blasphemous.
David O. Russell
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You can't force a movie to happen. Movies happen when they're supposed to happen. Everything happens in God's time. I really believe that.
David O. Russell
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The great lesson about filmmaking is never take no for an answer, especially if you have a lot of passion and inspiration to do something.
David O. Russell
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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.
David O. Russell
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Bush was in a shithole on September 10th. 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to him.
David O. Russell
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And that is also what the movie's about, going beyond success, what is success 'cause I think success is misperceived as just a cake and it isn't. There is many things inside that success. There's a maturity and a heartbreak and sadness and broken glass.
David O. Russell
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There's nothing better than having a collaborator that you have a great shorthand with and a great comfort with who's shepherding the project along. I mean, that's the best thing that can happen in cinema where there's many cooks in the kitchen.
David O. Russell
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The cinema that I make is a cinema about people, emotion, humanity and passion. It's not just about what they struggle through, but what they live for. That's what I love. The music they love, the people they love, the clothing, the hair and the life that they love
David O. Russell
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That's just how I see things. I think things that are the most dramatic or tragic can also look the most ridiculous and funny. That's part of being human.
David O. Russell
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There's always hope. Never give up. Walk slowly and drink lots of water. It ain't a sprint.
David O. Russell
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The gift of life is the gift to suffer sometimes and to embrace it, heartbreak and all.
David O. Russell
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I did a dance sequence in my second short film, which was my best short film, called 'Hairway to the Stars,' and I think Chris Wink, the founder of Blue Man Group, was in that. It's a black-and-white dance sequence. We were Glorious Food waiters together.
David O. Russell
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The endings for all my characters seem sufficiently human and messy for me to feel comfortable with them. In some ways they have only moved an inch, but sometimes an inch is a great distance.
David O. Russell
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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.
David O. Russell
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When most people turn on their TVs, they don't expect a frank discussion of philosophical ideas in their practical context. Or any context.
David O. Russell
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I think any spiritual experience that's worthwhile is not about ego and it will humble you in some way. And also, a Zen monk once said to me, 'If you're not laughing, then you're not getting it.'
David O. Russell
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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.
David O. Russell