Written Interview: David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook”)

A WGA.org interview with writer-director David O. Russell. An excerpt about the new movie Silver Linings Playbook:

Why choose this book to adapt when all your other projects have been originals?

I’d been waiting a long time for something with characters who have dealt with the many issues my son has dealt with, so he could feel a part of the world, and Matthew Quick’s book hit on it. So I was able to make it very personal. While I was waiting the five years to make it, I probably rewrote the script over 20 times, and I was able to plumb new depths of it in terms of calibrating the nature of the challenges the main character faces. I also wrote Robert De Niro’s character for him because we had spoken for years about my son and schools that helped kids who faced some of these issues. So it came around in a better way than it would have five years before, and The Fighter made me want to dig into that specific local neighborhood family dynamic more.

How did you approach the adaptation and what did the book give you?

I didn’t have as much personal insight into the character in the book, who had been away for four years, not eight months. I made it more about what I knew: the families, my son’s friends, my son. I wanted to make the De Niro character into a more subtly emotional father, who had issues about being obsessive about the Eagles, like in the book. But to me, the key to the whole thing was how specific the world was, because that’s what I loved about The Fighter. De Niro’s character was so specific, and the thing that evolved over time was to turn him into a bookie. That was something that happened in the forth or fifth year of rewriting, to take this obsession and make it a practical thing that was part of his life; and then to take the 2008 football season, which gave us a very specific year of the games being played. That was also the year the economy collapsed. People like De Niro’s character lost not only their jobs but their pensions, and had to turn to ways to support themselves, including bookmaking. So things fit together in that respect, and went to the heart and stakes of the household.

For more of the interview, go here.