Writer and director David O. Russell has made some good movies, including Flirting With Disaster in 1996 and Three Kings in 1999. His most recent film, I [Heart] Huckabees, was released in 2004 and got mixed reviews. But a film clip showing Russell blowing up at actress Lily Tomlin on the Huckabees set—sweeping props off a desk, kicking a wastebasket, and spewing language deemed abusive and obscene even in hard-to-shock Hollywood—is already a YouTube classic. The Huckabees distributors are ordering copies of the clip removed almost as quickly as they’re posted online, but as of this writing at least 20 versions, including one parody re-enactment, are retrievable on YouTube and Google Video. (If the link provided here goes dead, just enter “Huckabees” or “David O. Russell” on the search engine for one of those two sites.)
Russell’s Huckabees tantrum must look familiar to actor George Clooney, who had his own falling-out with Russell while filming Three Kings in 1998. Clooney spoke about their fight in a July 2000 interview published in Playboy magazine. The relevant excerpt is reprinted below, with permission (see Page 2) from Playboy Enterprises.
For her part, Tomlin says she’s patched up her differences with Russell. “I just have great affection and regard for David,” she said on the syndicated TV program Extra. “There was a lot of pressure in making the movie.” No word whether she’ll work with him again, a question Clooney answers below with regard to himself.
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