David O. Russell Quotes
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There's nothing better than an actor who is really, really hungry to show everything they've got.
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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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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.
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I feel profoundly blessed. I feel it's a great privilege to make any motion picture.
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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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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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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It's not easy to follow Jesus' example, and if you go to church it doesn't mean you're automatically doing it.
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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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Unhappy endings can be as cheap as happy endings.
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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.
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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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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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Anything you could ever want or be you already have and are.
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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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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.
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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.
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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 that everybody does hustle in order to survive. That doesn't mean lying - it's more about how you handle situations.
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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.