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I think I land somewhere between Scorsese and Capra in what I'm drawn to emotionally I'm drawn to very intense emotion. Capra freaked people out when they saw Jimmy Stewart lose it in 'It's a Wonderful Life.

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
Land
Emotionally
Wonderful
Drawn
Think
Intense
Thinking
Somewhere
Capra
Life
Saws
Freaked
People
Emotion
Scorsese
Lose
Stewart
Loses
Jimmy

More quotes by David O. Russell

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You learn by trying and failing. Just a lot of hard work and mistakes.
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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.
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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.
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I just love real characters they're not pretentious, and every emotion is on the surface, they're regular working people. Their likes, their dislikes, their loves, their hates, their passions they're all right there on the surface.
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The closer you stay to emotional authenticity and people, character authenticity, the less you can go wrong. That's how I feel now, no matter what you're doing.
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Every day, when my feet hit the ground, I have a story that I'm telling myself that I choose to make a positive story. I know people who don't do that, and there's a heavy energy around them. So I guess there's that kind of hustling.
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If you just work on your craft hard, that's your only hope of doing anything worthwhile.
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There's always hope. Never give up. Walk slowly and drink lots of water. It ain't a sprint.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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I think sometimes you have to handle things delicately at work or at home. You know, you can find yourself in situations that are like opening a closet filled with bowling balls that are going to fall out of it, but if you handle things graciously, then that's not going to happen.
David O. Russell
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David O. Russell's best films are thrilling high wire acts that run the moment to moment risk of tumbling to the ground. In his latest, Joy, Russell has more trouble than usual keeping his balance on the wire.
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.
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That's what takes people out of the fight half the time. They get hit and half the reaction is your ego is saying, 'I cannot believe that person just lit me up - how humiliating.
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It's a closing of the mind that happens when you want to be lazy and go with the easiest answers, like the media do all the time in their sound bytes.
David O. Russell
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You know, you have Scorsese who worked with De Niro and - or DiCaprio. You have William Wyler who worked with Bette Davis. You have George Cukor who worked with Katharine Hepburn. I just - people get to be friends and then there's a - that's a - you can take risks together and each time out you take a different risk.
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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Some of Jimmy Stewart's performance in 'It's A Wonderful Life' is some of the most disturbing performance he ever did, when he falls apart and when he breaks down.
David O. Russell