A new David O. Russell film is in production, which must mean that the notoriously prickly filmmaker isn’t getting along with somebody. George Clooney was the first to report that Russell might not be all sunshine and roses on the set; actor and director famously had “creative differences” while making Three Kings. Clooney elaborated in an interview with Playboy in 2000. “David is in many ways a genius, though I learned that he's not a genius when it comes to people skills…He yelled and screamed at people all day, from day one…he screamed at the script supervisor and made her cry. I wrote him a letter and said, 'Look, I don't know why you do this. You've written a brilliant script, and I think you're a good director. Let's not have a set like this. I don't like it and I don't work well like this.'…He turned on me and said, 'Why don't you just worry about your fucked-up act? You're being a dick. You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Come on, pussy, hit me.' I'm looking at him like he's out of his mind. Then he started banging me on the head with his head. He goes, 'Hit me, you pussy. Hit me.' Then he got me by the throat and I went nuts. I had him by the throat. I was going to kill him. Kill him.”
So that went well, and although it’s sad that there’s no video evidence of this dust-up – at least, none that’s surfaced so far – the same can’t be said for I Heart Huckabees. Anyone reading this has no doubt seen the infamous footage of Russell flipping out on Lily Tomlin, but we’ll take any excuse to post it again.
The good times roll on, as the New York Post blog Popwrap reports. Russell's romantic comedy Nailed, co-written with Kristin “daughter of Al” Gore, concerns a small-town waitress who gets a nail lodged in her head, then finds a “clueless young senator” to champion her cause. The cast includes Jessica Biel, James Marsden, Jake Gyllenhaal…and, until last week, James Caan. According to Caan’s publicist, the actor “did amicably part ways with this production due to creative differences. He wished all of the actors and production crew well when he departed.” One wonders if these creative differences took the form of knuckle sandwiches and, more importantly, whether video evidence exists. It does kind of seem like Russell was asking for trouble in casting the similarly hot-headed Caan in the first place. But apparently even seemingly mild-mannered Gyllenhaal has been infected by Russell’s good vibes. “The crew was filming at the South Carolina State House on Wednesday when Jake began acting like a diva, according to one report. ‘He was complaining that the room was too small, complaining about the temperature, complaining about his chair,’ the source says. ‘It was like watching a two-year-old having a meltdown every five minutes.’ ”
You know the Cloon is loving it. As he told Entertainment Weekly after the YouTube clips from Huckabees surfaced, “I felt bad for Lily but I also felt a little vindicated for anyone that thought that that had anything to do with me on [Three Kings]. But, you know, the last thing in the world I would have done is stick it on the Internet. I don't even know how to get onto YouTube.” The question is: does James Caan?
