Russell: What I Really Want to Do Is Write Sidebars
Sure, it's great working with Jude Law, Naomi Watts, and George Clooney, but apparently I ♥ Huckabees writer/director/semi-nudist David O. Russell aspires to write short magazine pieces. Probably because it's more rewarding than the whole highly-acclaimed filmmaker racket.
In the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly (aka, the only magazine published outside of New York worth reading), Russell pens a books section sidebar titled "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Humankind." He reviews, among others, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's character in Huckabees and Russell's Columbia professor (not to mention Uma progenitor—for which we are eternally grateful) Robert Thurman and leaves us with the biggest thought anyone who's ever lived in Hollywood has ever thunk:
Consciousness can be neither created nor destroyed—a thought as frightening as it is encouraging.
This isn't Russell's first foray into to non-screenwriting. He also penned the first ever Slate 'Diary' way back in that site's paleo-Kinsley period in 1996, which was memorable for this pre-Huckabees comic zen riff:
Meditations on the number 99:
A good, anticipatory tension standing next to 100.
99 says: "It's happening."
But 99 is its own location.
The guy's not half bad. We foresee big things from him.
