David O. Russell, child of book publishing

Neal Gabler: Most filmmakers talk about how they were weaned on movies. You don’t seem to have been a movie geek from birth.

​David O. Russell: I always knew that I wanted to be a writer, because of our home, because of my dad. My dad was a C.C.N.Y. student who worked at Simon & Schuster in the stockroom and then became a salesman — his whole life was at Simon & Schuster. My mom was a Brooklyn girl from Queens College who worked as a secretary there. When we moved to the suburbs, there were books everywhere. I started a newspaper in high school, and I always wrote short stories. As a young man, I never thought I would be a filmmaker.

​-- "David O. Russell - In Conversation"