It is always heartening to hear that David O Russell has another film in the works. You never know with this guy – he works slowly, he’s difficult with his actors, and his latest film, Nailed, had highly publicized, almost fatal, budget issues. It’s never a sure thing that Russell will get another project off the ground.
Now he does. It’s called The Grackle, and it’ll star shirtless wonder Matthew McConaughey as a barroom brawler who hires himself out to people who can’t afford a lawyer. For $250 he’ll solve your legal woes by whatever means necessary. The script, which is described as an R-rated comedy in the vein of Wedding Crashers (uh?), was the source of a pretty big bidding war a couple of years ago.
The Grackle sounds sort of Dr. Seussian, but it’s actually a bird – according to All About Birds, The Common Grackle is an opportunistic forager, taking advantage of whatever food sources it can find. It will follow plows for invertebrates and mice, wade into water to catch small fish, and sometimes kill and eat other birds at bird feeders.
This week I caught some of Three Kings on TV. It’s well known that Russell and Clooney almost came to blows on that film (totally worth it, considering how fucking good it is), and we all saw that Lily Tomlin blow-up video from I <3 Huckabees, so you can’t help but wonder how Russell and McConaughey are going to get along.