The movie David O. Russell hated making: “This has been a painful process for me”
There’s no rule that stipulates everybody on a film set has to get along at all times, with David O. Russell taking that to heart by cultivating a habit of repeatedly rubbing his cast, crew, and even industry peers the wrong way.
George Clooney happily admitted that he was ready to inflict grievous bodily harm upon his Three Kings director after Russell ended up going nose-to-nose with the star, a time when he’d stepped in to defend a crew member who was on the wrong end of a verbal tirade.
His belittling of Lily Tomlin on I Heart Huckabees gained him even more notoriety, while Amy Adams confirmed that Russell’s intense and emotionally damaging approach on American Hustle reduced her to tears “most days” of the production. There’s really no need for that sort of behaviour, especially for an established, talented, and five-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker.
And yet, from a personal and professional perspective, the worst experience of Russell’s career came on a movie that he ultimately abandoned and disowned, even if it was released anyway five years after his departure and in drastically different form.
Originally titled Nailed, Jessica Biel starred as a waitress who ended up with a nail embedded in her skull, which caused various psychological side effects, including sexual promiscuity, fits of anger, and random outbursts of Portuguese. When she catches wind of Jake Gyllenhaal’s ambitious senator and his plans for reform, she heads off to Washington, where he agrees to promote a healthcare bill in her name.
Shooting began in April 2008, but financial troubles – which extended to 14 separate shutdowns and repeated walkouts – left Nailed incomplete. After failing to strike a deal with financier Ronald Tutor to return for reshoots, Russell officially left the project in July 2010.
Sharing a statement with The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker explained his reasons for dropping out. “This has been a painful process for me,” he said. “The multiple production delays and stoppages, which were caused by David Bergstein and preceded Ron Tutor’s direct involvement with me, have now spanned two years, and the circumstances under which the film would now be completed are much different on several fundamental levels than when we embarked several years ago.”
“I, unfortunately, am no longer involved in the project and cannot call it ‘my’ film,” he continued, permanently drawing a line under his association with Nailed. Sort of, anyway, after it emerged four years later following the purchase of the bankrupt Capitol Films that the film was set to be completed, released, and retitled as Accidental Love.
Moving swiftly, Russell contacted the Directors Guild of America to have his name replaced by the pseudonym Stephen Greene. In the end, Accidental Love was vilified by critics and widely criticised for quite clearly being an unfinished feature that wasn’t reflective of its original creative team, but at least Russell managed to distance himself from it beforehand.
