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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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David O. Russell
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: August 20
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Challenges
Laziness
Ways
Questioning
Looking
Challenging
Past
Teachers
Way
Insight
Like
Suppose
Constantly
Teacher
Sloppiness

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.'
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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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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.
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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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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.
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Unhappy endings can be as cheap as happy endings.
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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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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.
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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.
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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