The Joy Of Directing
From Sharon Waxman’s NYT piece…
July 31, 2003: Candid Camera
The production has moved from the dried-up swamp to the set of the detectives’ office. It is hot and cramped, and the hour is getting late. To pass the time while a shot is set up, Mr. Russell treats the crew to a description of a baby passing through the birth canal.
And then Ms. Tomlin is berating Mr. Russell again.
This time, the director turns on her angrily, calling her the crudest word imaginable, in front of the actors and crew. He shrieks: ”I wrote this role for you! I fought for you!” Mr. Russell ends his tirade by sweeping his arm across a nearby table cluttered with production paraphernalia. He storms off the set and back on again, continually shouting. Then he locks himself in his office, refusing to return. After an uncomfortable, set-wide pause, Ms. Tomlin goes in to apologize, and Mr. Russell returns to the shoot.
Unbeknownst to both of them, a member of the crew has videotaped his tirade. The recording makes its way around the Hollywood talent agencies. Asked about the incident later, Mr. Russell says: ”Sure, I wish I hadn’t done that. But Lily and I are fine.” For her part, Ms. Tomlin admits that both she and Mr. Russell lost control. ”It’s not a practice on his part or my part,” she says. ”I’d rather have someone human and available and raw and open. Don’t give me someone cold, or cut off, or someone who considers themselves dignified.”
This must be the Zen part.
And now… the video
And the preview of that lovely moment…
July 24, 2003: The Car Trip
So far, the actors have been remarkably tolerant of Mr. Russell’s mischief. As Ms. Huppert later observed in a phone interview, the actors knew Mr. Russell was intentionally trying to destabilize them for the sake of their performances. ”He is fascinating, completely brilliant, intelligent and very annoying sometimes, too,” she said. They also know he has created superb films from chaotic-seeming sets before. Besides, he’s the director and the writer; now that they’ve cast their lot with him, they really don’t have a choice.
But on what is meant to be the last take of the day, Ms. Tomlin, who recently ended an exhausting run of her one-woman play, collapses into Mr. Hoffman’s arms crying and doesn’t stop. As he embraces her, the wails grow louder and louder, and finally it becomes clear that she is not in character. After long moments, Ms. Tomlin breaks the tension by shouting at Mr. Hoffman: ”You’re driving a hairpin into my head!” Everyone collapses in laughter and the take is trashed.
But the drama is not over. The car scene takes several more hours to shoot, and as the sun fades, the accumulated tension erupts. Ms. Tomlin begins shouting at Mr. Russell: she is unhappy with the way she looks. She wants to try the scene a different way. She taunts him with a few expletives and curses at the other actors too. Their patience worn, the other actors laugh at her outburst.
Later, unfolding himself from the back seat of the Chevrolet, Mark Wahlberg jokes that his next project will be a nice, easy action film.
Tuesday Update: New URL for clip
This one’s kinda talked out by now. I’d be much more interested in getting into David Ehrenstein’s speciously (or perhaps just “murkily”) reasoned essay about Barack Obama fitting into the “Magic Negro” stereotype despite the fact that he’s a real, live, breathing human being whose past *is* a part of his image. When he conflates the real-life con artist David Hampton with John Guare’s version of him in SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (a superb play about people beset by a lack of self-knowledge that transcends race), the dearth of thinking Ehrenstein has done on the subject becomes kind of amusing. Well, amusing until you realize that Matt Drudge and his ilk will use it as more noise to frustrate the American public’s seemingly genuine attempt to truly know their “magic negro” savior.
But, yeah, O. Russell sure can be a psycho.
I still think Three Kings is the best action film a HW Studio’s made in 10 years.
Three Kings is very good until it completely cops out and turns into predictable Hollywood stuff in its last fifteen minutes.
I’ve never understood the point of pissing off your actors – sure they get more emotional, but the line between productive and destructive results is a very fine one. Get actors that can give you the performance you need without external agitation.
That said, Lily was acting kinda like a c*nt…
Obviously none of us were there on set, but it seems likely that Lily’s behavior is based on strain for director-induced agitation.
Well, I Heart Huckabees is great so it all turned out fine in my eyes.
The clips have been put up, taken down, put up again by someone else and taken down again. Ugh.
Both videos have been removed by “the user.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzqjimUs2RU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z-qOKF0jmg
ffffffffuckabee’s…
I’m sorry, but when he comes back in through the door… that’s a funnier beat than anything he could have directed. Fucking gold.
Dunderchief, gotta agree that it was gold. That being said, the movie did turn out great. Still one of my favourite comedies of the last few years.
I’m with Dunder….that was so perfectly, comically timed, I thought it had to be fake.
didn’t Clooney get physical with DOR on the set of Three Kings? I love the man’s work from the beginning, but he seems to be developing a history of assholishness.