David O. Russell Quotes
-
I'm always looking for a way to surprise audiences. That's, I feel, my job as a director. I felt that Amy Adams playing a tough woman in 'The Fighter' was a surprise. People saw her as a princess.
-
Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I think Jennifer Lawrence is that inside of herself. As long as I've known her she's been both 10 years old and 50 years old. And we've watched her grow up since she walked on "Silver Linings Playbook" as a 20-year-old and had not been - "Hunger Games" had not come out. And I've watched her have to take on and deal with a great deal of attention and resources and people.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
And if you can come through that and still have some connection to your joy you felt when you were a child that's a very mature kind of a joy that I find inspiring. And Jennifer Lowrence has all that in her, and I've watched her have to go through it even in the last few years.
-
Unhappy endings can be as cheap as happy endings.
-
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.
-
There's nothing better than an actor who is really, really hungry to show everything they've got.
-
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.
-
Anything you could ever want or be you already have and are.
-
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.
-
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.
-
It's not easy to follow Jesus' example, and if you go to church it doesn't mean you're automatically doing it.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
You know when you're hungry and excited and you feel humble about it? I like that. In the past, when things were not clear, I think I wasn't ... I didn't have my feet on the ground as much, maybe, 10 years ago. So I just feel like this is a good place to be now, to feel that you want to tell stories from this place and that you're excited to tell stories from this place because you know what you love. I know what I love right now.
-
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.
-
I think that everybody does hustle in order to survive. That doesn't mean lying - it's more about how you handle situations.