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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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David O. Russell
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: August 20
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
High
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Keeping
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Ground
Russell
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Balance
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Joy
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More quotes by 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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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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Anything you could ever want or be you already have and are.
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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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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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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I feel profoundly blessed. I feel it's a great privilege to make any motion picture.
David O. Russell
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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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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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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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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 if religion closes discussion or exchange of ideas or curiosity about other views, it's not true to its core.
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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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 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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As people, [my parents were] very colorful, very talkative, passionate, they really loved each other. But that also meant heated, it meant there was a lot of drama in the house. Which is good for a filmmaker, I think.
David O. Russell
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You're not supposed to become something else so you can get more. You're supposed to stay you and get through as yourself, because at least then you can count on that, and you don't have to ask yourself who you are half the time.
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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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
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It's not easy to follow Jesus' example, and if you go to church it doesn't mean you're automatically doing it.
David O. Russell