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More on the David O’Russell videos

More bloggers are commenting on those videos from the set of I Heart Huckabees.

Dennis Cozzalio has a very detailed take on his site that is well worth a look. It has excerpts from a Playboy interview George Clooney gave after working with David O’Russell on Three Kings.

As Clooney put it at the time:

It was a dangerous time. I’d sent him this letter. I was trying to make things work, so I went over and put my arm around him. I said, ‘David, it’s a big day. But you can’t shove, push, or humiliate people who aren’t allowed to defend themselves.’ 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. Finally, he apologized, but I walked away. By then, the Warner Bros. guys were freaking out. David sort of pouted through the rest of the shoot and we finished the movie, but it was truly, without exception, the worst experience of my life.”ย ย 

Anne Thompson chips in on her Variety blog:

The internet is giving director David O. Russell a nasty spanking right now. Some of us at the office were looking at these YouTube clips that wouldn’t die–after years circulating on the web. Look at it this way. We all know George Clooney is a Very Good Guy. We wrote about what happened on Three Kings at Premiere and fact-checked the story to a faretheewell. Clooney stood up against Russell to protect the folks he thought he was abusing on the set. And Lily Tomlin is a Great Comedienne. In this video from the set of I Heart Huckabees, she protests the way she is being treated by her director, and he goes ballistic. And Russell? You fill in the blank.

Maybe Russell (who I still think is a very talented director) should post a video to YouTube explaining his behaviour?

> David O’Russell at the IMDb
> Sharon Waxman of the NYT reported from the I Heart Huckabees set in 2004

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