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When I walked into the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Seattle to interview director David O. Russell, I thought I was prepared. A friend had warned me that the man behind the philosophical existential comedy I ♥ Huckabees could be a tough interview. "Don't get too attached to your own questions or agenda," she warned me. "Russell likes to take the conversation and run with it."

Related: • I ♥ Huckabees Review

Russell also likes to use his ideas to jar people—including his characters—off balance. Two troubled men in Huckabees, Tommy (Mark Wahlberg) and Albert (Jason Schwartzman), hire "Existential Detectives" to help them learn the meaning of life. The detectives give them a large inflatable red ball and instruct them to smack themselves in the face with it. The impact stuns them momentarily and leaves them starry-eyed, knocking them out of coherent thought. Boom! Albert bops Tommy in the nose until he's dazed and confused. Whap! He returns the favor. Their momentary disorientation reminds them that it's possible to be set free from their ego and their angst.

Russell at the Hollywood premiere of his new film

In my interview with Russell, I was about to get smacked in the face.

Russell, who looks a lot like Albert, is energetic and restless. Seated next to him, Huckabees co-writer Jeff Baena patiently fielded my questions and filled in the gaps while Russell fidgeted, paced, made phone calls, and sometimes left the room entirely.

Here are some highlights from the periods in which Russell actually participated. (The complete transcript is posted here.)

I think Christian readers might find the ideas going on in I ♥ Huckabees very interesting. I suspect some will be uncomfortable with the movie, but I think it a great conversation-starter. Jesus was an idea man who liked to get his listeners to see a "bigger picture," and you seem similarly interested in getting audiences to ask big questions.

David O. Russell: I couldn't say it any better than you just said it. Do you want me to take a crack at introducing the ideas that drive the movie?

First, Mark Wahlberg is a very dear friend of mine and a very serious Catholic. There's a scene in I ♥ Huckabees where Mark's character [mentions] Father Flavin. Father Flavin is Mark's priest [in real life]—I encouraged him to mention him. That's the priest who pulled Mark off the streets. And he's passionate about that. As a result, he's always raising money for those inner city kids.

There's plenty of stuff about Jesus that I think [is true.] So Mark Wahlberg and I really get down about all this stuff, and we're quite serious about it.

Director David O. Russell on the set

Wait, let's back up even further—my mother's Catholic and my dad's Jewish, but I grew up in a home that was atheist. That's how I became a closet spiritual person. Later, I hung out with some Jesuit monks at a monastery in Virginia, and then I became an activist and worked for the Cardinal Christian Center for the Spanish-speaking in Boston. That's where I first made a documentary.

In college, I took courses from Robert Thurman, Uma Thurman's dad, who is the chair of religion now at Columbia University. Dustin Hoffman's character, the Existential Detective, is based on Thurman. Thurman always wore rumpled suits. At that time he was at Amherst College. Some of his classes were comparative religion classes, which he taught with David Wills, a professor of Christian ethics and theology. All of that stuff interests me.

Huckabees … is [illustrating] the ideas that were most compelling in my studies with Thurman … Eastern ideas. This may be hard for Christians to accept, but there's something deeply ecumenical about Eastern spiritual ideas. They say, "Come one, come all! You can be a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, or a Buddhist. We're not going to say, 'This is the Way and there's only one Way.' We're going to say, 'Let's talk. Let's talk about all of these ideas.'" So, Huckabees is talking about all of these spiritual ideas and putting them in a context without a church. The ideas are "departure points."

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