It’s been a long year for anyone involved with Nailed, the David O. Russell film starring Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal. First there was the wave of elation as a project as insane as this one got off the ground at all. (Biel plays a waitress who starts acting overtly sexual after a nail is lodged in her head, then takes up with Congressman Gyllenhaal when she goes to Washington to lobby for health care reform.) Then James Caan quit, and finally there were several prolonged death rattles as financing failed and the movie was shut down not once or twice, but four times.
We’ve wondered if the movie would ever be finished, as the next to last word was that it might be able to make it to the end of principal photography. Months later, we heard the movie was in post — that was in November.
Now Jessica Biel tells the Orlando Sentinel (via The Playlist) that the movie is indeed unfinished. With the fortunes of financier Capitol Films still in the negative, David O. Russell attached to three, perhaps four other films (The Fighter, Aaron & Sarah, The Silver Linings Playbook and possibly still The Grackle) and persistent reports that some scenes have yet to be shot, the outlook can’t be good.
“That was definitely an experience, something I could NOT say no to,” Biel says. “I am a huge David O. Russell fan. It’s just heartbreaking that so many people put so much work into this particular project only to have it sit there, unfinished…If I’d had an idea that it might happen, would I still have done it? I don’t know. Probably. I had an incredible experience with David and the rest of the cast. It made me a better actor. For all that, I’m devastated that it’s not finished and who knows when it will be and will come out. I still have my fingers crossed that something good will come of it, that it will be finished.”
That’s not quite a statement that we’ll never see the film, but with Russell’s current schedule and the need to not only go through post, but perhaps shoot scenes, chances seem pretty low. Nailed may go on the short, sad list of film curiosities we’ll never get to see.