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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.

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
Life
Feet
Like
Movie
Lasts
Stakes
Last
Stands
Death
Cinema
Every
Treat
Way
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More quotes by David O. Russell

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Christianity has been responsible for plenty of horror and death in the world, all supposedly in God's name.
David O. Russell
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I suppose what I like about Zen is that the teachers are constantly questioning your insight and challenging it, looking for sloppiness or laziness in it, and ways you can go past that.
David O. Russell
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Sadly, this picture [ Joy] does not go from strength to strength. It sinks into a morass of tedious obstacles to this woman's success. Joy the person may be able to surmount all barriers, but the film with her name on it is not so fortunate.
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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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.
David O. Russell
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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.
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 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.
David O. Russell
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Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.
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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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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I hadn't made that movie before and when I ever met the real Joy Mangano, which happened because De Niro insisted we meet her and her father, that's what she felt like to us. She impressed us with her quiet, serene authority with herself.
David O. Russell
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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.
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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It's absurd that we're so quick to criticize Muslims for being fundamentalist when Christians can be just as extreme and fanatical and frightening.
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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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
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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 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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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