The video of David O. Russell flipping out on Lily Tomlin on the set of I <3 Huckabees is pretty amazing footage. Anybody who has been following Russell’s career (as I have; I think he’s one of our great modern directors) has heard stories about how ‘difficult’ the guy can be; ie, how he got into a fistfight with George Clooney over the treatment of an extra (Clooney, being The Best Guy In Hollywood, was defending the extra).
Happily, that video isn’t going to be the only thing we see of Russell in the future. It was many, many years between Three Kings and Huckabees, and now I’ve heard that Russell’s next film, the radio talk show movie The H-Man Cometh, has been pushed back. So it’s good news that he has another project on the horizon: Sammy’s Hill, an adaptation of a novel by Kristin Gore, Al’s daughter.
It’s an inside-the-beltway story, about congressional aide who tries to find time for love. Gore was a staff writer on Futurama, and you can be sure that she knows her inside-the-beltway stories, so this actually has the possibility of being an interesting and insidery look at how our politicians mate (if you’re Newt Gingrich you do it with a mistress while you’re trying to impeach Bill Clinton for doing it with a fat girl).
Russell is working closely with Gore, Dave Jesser and Matt Silverstein on the screenplay. No word yet if he has made any of them cry.