Jen Yamato Interviews David O. Russell

Jen Yamato interviewed David O. Russell for The Daily Beast and the whole thing is just wonderfully quotable. Let’s see if we can distill it down to just one, shall we?

What goes into the cocktail of your mind, and how does it present itself to you?

Or maybe two:

If you want to make a movie, it’s just like when you made your first movie. It never changes.

One more:

Talent doesn’t always pick a race or a sex or a class, it just is.

Oh and I almost totally glommed over this:

The first half-hour of Don’t Mess With The Zohan is kind of bordering on art filmmaking. So I appreciate that.

Russell’s strange path and meteoric resurgence has been great to watch over the years. I Heart Huckabees got me at an impressionable time, and The Fighter just completely knocked me on my back. It may well be his masterpiece, though I’d put money on his still having another one up his sleeve.

I’ve always liked his work, but this summer Quentin Tarantino said something I wasn’t expecting about Russell, that so many of today’s mid-budget independent films will be forgotten, but “…The Fighter or American Hustle — those will be watched in 30 years.” The more I think about it, the more that may turn out to be the case.

Can’t wait to see Joy, his latest.