Three Kings

When George Clooney read the script for 1999’s ‘Three Kings’, he knew it was the kind of project he wanted to be attached to. Even though Clooney was a bonafide TV star, he hadn’t found his footing as a leading man yet, so he practically begged director David O. Russell to cast him. Little did he know he had just signed up to work for his worst enemy. This week Lizzie and Chris dive into the madness of ‘Three Kings’, from a disastrous desert shoot, to the truth behind Clooney and Russell’s infamous knock-down drag-out fight. *CORRECTIONS: Lizzie mistakenly calls cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel "Newton Thomas Howell". Our apologies to Mr. Sigel. Go to surfshark.com/wrong http://surfshark.com/wrong or use code WRONG at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

  12 celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series coming to Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus on October 26. In this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey, 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family. For two weeks in a lavish Italian villa, they'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a Don. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out, who makes money, and who walks away with nothing. In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency, will the most powerful

• 1:16Lizzie Bassett?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch the new Hulu original series The Mob premiering October 26 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone, I would say, a very good one, shot in the desert with kids, and also maybe Hollywood's bitchiest director. As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, where are we going? And who are we maybe gonna have to hit in the face when we get there?

• 2:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Thank you so much, Chris. I'm actually not sure that bitchy is a strong enough word to describe the director we're talking about today. And we are, of course, talking about Three Kings. I'm very excited to get into this movie. It's a great movie, and it's an absolutely wild story. But before we get into this, if you're enjoying this podcast and you want more of it, you can have it. You can now subscribe in both Apple and Spotify, where you can get bonus episodes, at least one bonus episode every month, usually it's more. We've been really enjoying these. We're covering new movies that are coming out. We're talking about our opinions on them. It's been really, really fun. You can also now get an ad-free feed. Just so you know, if you do subscribe in Apple, that ad-free feed will come up a little bit later than it will on Spotify and on Patreon.

• 3:10Lizzie Bassett?

  And of course, you can, for $5 a month, join our Patreon community, where you will get everything I just mentioned and more. So if you like the show, please consider becoming a subscriber. It's worth it, I promise. All right. Now, Chris, I have to ask you, what was your experience with Three Kings prior to today? And then what was it re-watching it for the podcast?

• 3:29Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, I think I had actually only seen this once fully through before. I watched it in high school. It's one of the many phenomenal films, in my opinion, to come out of 1999.

• 3:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, crazy year.

• 3:40Chris Winterbauer?

  And I have distinct memories of a lot of the cinematography, which we can talk about in this movie. There is a sort of bleach bypass, speed ramp, time lapse, you know, music video punk rock quality to this movie that I really appreciate. And so re-watching it, I wondered if it might feel dated as a result, because so much of it felt of the time. Obviously, it's set against the first Gulf War, so the beginning of the 1990s. I gotta say, I thought it held up really well. I think the performances are really good in this movie. I think these actors are all being used to their respective strengths in a lot of ways, which is really smart. I think the writing is surprisingly incisive for the time.

• 4:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I in particular think the first half of this movie to two-thirds is pretty exceptional. And then in the final third, I just find that some of the payoffs to some of the plans earlier start to feel less inspired and perhaps a little more predictable as the movie kind of rounds the corner. I also think as it moves from sort of dark-biting, black comedy satire into something somewhat more idealistic. It's not that I mind it. I always like an optimistic movie, but it does feel like the message starts to muddle slightly towards the end of the film. Totally fine. All to say, though, I think visually the movie holds up really well. And my hot take is that I actually think this is David O. Russell's best movie. And I know a lot of people would disagree because of the run he went on much later

• 5:05Chris Winterbauer?

  in his career, 10 to 15 years later, with, you know, The Fighter and-

• 5:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Silver Linings Playbook and then American Hustle.

• 5:11Chris Winterbauer?

  And American Hustle. And my takeaway is I think American Hustle is really good. I'm not as high on The Fighter or Silver Linings Playbook as other people are.

• 5:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you. I could get behind this being his best movie 100%. And I really like his movies.

• 5:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, generally speaking, I wasn't a huge fan of Joy or Amsterdam, although I think those are-

• 5:28Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 5:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I think actually, like, if you were to put them in a different director's filmography, we would perhaps look at them slightly differently. I think in part, like, it felt like a bit of a downturn from, again, the Oscar-Batey stuff you'd done prior. But all to say, I really enjoyed re-watching this movie. I do think it's still, it's one of the best movies to explore the intersections of the export of American consumerism into, you know, the Middle East and then the, you know, import of oil, it's all these kind of conflicting interests that we had at the time. I love the interrogation scene-

• 5:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 5:57Chris Winterbauer?

  -that is done by Sayyid Taghmaoui, the French actor from Lehane, and-

• 6:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, French Moroccan. He's amazing.

• 6:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Dude, broski, my main man. The way he uses the American colloquialisms in interrogating Mark Wahlberg, I think is brilliant. And so, yeah, I really like this movie. I think it's really good.

• 6:14Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you 100%. Very similar experience. I actually don't even know if I had ever seen this all the way through. I think there was a period where this was running on, like, TNT or TBS somewhat frequently, not Shawshank Redemption level, but I know I had seen bits and pieces of it, because there are certain scenes from the certain visuals that I remembered very clearly, but I don't think I'd ever sat down and watched the whole thing. And I just loved it. I thought, beginning to end, this movie is excellent. The pacing is great. I agree with you that it starts to fall apart a little bit as they kind of are grappling with, you know, whether or not they're doing the right thing and how to do the right thing. But I still think the whole thing works incredibly well. I love Spike Jonze in this movie.

• 6:56Chris Winterbauer?

  He's so good.

• 6:56Lizzie Bassett?

  He's so good.

• 6:57Chris Winterbauer?

  When Spike Jonze is driving the luxury vehicle up toward the bunker and Chicago is playing on the speaker is one of the most- That's the absurd tone I liked most in this movie, was that, like, a moment like that, for example.

• 7:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 7:10Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so good.

• 7:11Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I think that that tone, the way that they were able to achieve this weird liminal space across this whole movie, I think is done so exceptionally well. And of course, we cannot leave out that quite a bit of that is due to, I think, our favorite production designer, Catherine Hardwicke, back again on this. She's really good at this. She's really good at, you know, building these almost otherworldly spaces that still feel very real and grounded, like, just the painting of Saddam in the cave with the graduation cap on and-

• 7:43Chris Winterbauer?

  The one where he's kissing the little kid.

• 7:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 7:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, there's so many, yeah, kind of disturbing ones.

• 7:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's so strange. You know, we'll talk about this a bit in the episode, but they really did, both David O. Russell, to his credit, and also people like Catherine Hardwicke, Below the Line crew members, really went above and beyond in terms of speaking to a lot of Iraqi refugees and trying to get this to feel as true to life as they possibly could without, of course, being able to visit the region themselves. And I think that that comes across very clearly. I think this might be Mark Wahlberg's best performance.

• 8:16Chris Winterbauer?

  It's one of my favorites, because I think they play well into, he's not quite a tough guy-

• 8:22Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right.

• 8:23Chris Winterbauer?

  -even though he is kind of a tough- He's like a good guy, but he's not quite a tough guy. He's not really a hero.

• 8:28Lizzie Bassett?

  No, he's a little dumb.

• 8:29Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a little dumb, but he's smarter than Spike Jonze by a country mile.

• 8:32Lizzie Bassett?

  But I mean, who's not?

• 8:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, it feels self-aware. I may still put The Departed, like, above it technically, because it's so ridiculous. But yeah, it's a great Wahlberg role.

• 8:43Lizzie Bassett?

  He's very fun in The Departed.

• 8:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Or Boogie Nights.

• 8:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, that's true. Boogie Nights, he's wonderful. The Departed, he's so much fun. But there's something about this, maybe it's because he had the confidence from having done Boogie Nights that he was not, still was not, you know, a bona fide movie star when he made this movie, that I feel like he let himself be more vulnerable in this than I really see him be in other performances. And it's just a reminder that he is a good actor.

• 9:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he's very guileless in this movie.

• 9:10Lizzie Bassett?

  He is, yeah. It doesn't feel like watching Mark Wahlberg. It feels like actually watching a character. And, you know, I understand he is also a problematic person, but we're gonna deal with another problematic person over the course of this episode, so join the club.

• 9:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Did you, were you gonna shout out the Arrested Development, pre-Arrested Development reunion, prequel?

• 9:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Judy Greer and who?

• 9:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Please tell me you recognize Amir's daughter, Cliff Curtis's daughter, in this movie.

• 9:34Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 9:34Chris Winterbauer?

  That's all he has a shot at.

• 9:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Ah!

• 9:36Chris Winterbauer?

  That's maybe.

• 9:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 9:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, my God. No, I did not realize that. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, there you go. It's Kitty and maybe.

• 9:43Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right.

• 9:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Judy Greer, always fun. Also, we're watching The Five Star Weekend, in which she has a bit of a villain turn, which is fun for her. And then, obviously, Ice Cube, who is just like-

• 9:54Chris Winterbauer?

  He's really good in this movie.

• 9:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Ice Cube is such a good actor, and that, I mean, should go without saying at this point, given the work that he's done, but he really-

• 10:01Chris Winterbauer?

  We should also mention George Clooney, like-

• 10:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, we're gonna get to George Clooney.

• 10:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I love a slightly dirtbag George Clooney.

• 10:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 10:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Who's deep down a good guy. I like that. I was thinking of Out of Sight, the Soderbergh movie he did with Jennifer Lopez around this time. He's so good in these types of movies.

• 10:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, he is. He is. That movie, actually, as we're gonna learn, played a big part in him getting Three Kings.

• 10:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, cool.

• 10:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I was saving George Clooney, because George Clooney's performance in this is one of his best.

• 10:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 10:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I understand it, as we will learn, was quite a miserable experience for him, but he does such a good job. He is so understated and just compassionate and emotional, and doesn't overplay his hand at any point over the course of this movie, and was maybe a bit of a hero in real life as well. So, let's get into all of it. All right. Three Kings was released in 1999. It was written and directed by David O. Russell with a story by John Ridley. Let's not forget that. It stars George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jones, Nora Dunn, by the way, a drop-dead gorgeous repeat back here, Judy Greer, Michael T. Williamson, always good, Cliff Curtis, Jamie Kennedy, Said Tegmawi, and many, many more. Also, Jamie Kennedy, I think, is very funny in this.

• 11:12Lizzie Bassett?

  I know he's doing his schick, but he's good at it. And the IMDb logline is, as always, "In the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, four soldiers set out to steal gold that was stolen from Kuwait, but they discover people who desperately need their help."

• 11:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 11:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. That's basically it. Our main sources for today are a piece that was published in Slate, written by Brian Rafferty, but it's from the book Best Movie Year Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, and that is called Desert Storm: How Three Kings Almost Fell Apart, a creative screenwriting interview with David O. Russell, Entertainment Weekly's coverage, and then, of course, Rebels on the Backlot by Sharon Waxman, and many, many more. All right, let's start with a little bit of context on the Gulf War, and more specifically, Operation Desert Storm, because, I'll be honest, this was happening essentially when we were like one year old, and I have an enormous gap, I think, in an understanding of this period of history, maybe because we were so young that we were aware it had happened, but it wasn't really being taught in schools. I don't know about you,

• 12:09Lizzie Bassett?

  but I felt like that for myself. So, the Iran-Iraq war lasted from September of 1980 to August of 1988. Basically, what happened here, Saddam Hussein had decided to take advantage of the chaos that erupted following the Islamic Revolution in Iran and around 1979. So, he invades Iran, tries to gain control of the Shat al-Arab waterway, and also the oil-rich area along the border between the two countries. It doesn't go great for anybody. The war ended with a UN ceasefire, but the damage that had been done had absolutely devastated Iraq, both in terms of human casualties and also the actual money that they had spent on the war, because they had to borrow an enormous amount of cash from countries like Kuwait,

• 12:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Saudi Arabia, and yes, the US and Soviet Union in order to keep fighting. This is why, when, you know, Said Tegmawi, as the interrogator, is saying, "I was trained by US soldiers," that is true. So, with the war over, Kuwait obviously wanted their money back. And instead, Iraq basically said, "Uh, no, you're exceeding your oil production quotas. You're producing too much, you're selling it too cheaply, you're undercutting Iraq's oil revenue." And also Saddam Hussein was like, "Surprise, you're also an Iraqi territory." And Kuwait was like, "What? Wait, no, what? We lent you money." And so, he then sent 30,000 troops to the border to kind of hover threateningly. And this is in 1990-ish. And in July of 1990, Kuwait said, "Okay, fine, we will limit our oil production, you know, leave us alone."

• 13:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Saddam said, "That's great. We'd also like to accuse you of drinking our milkshake, AKA stealing oil through cross-border slant drilling." So, they demanded Kuwait pay them $10 billion. Kuwait said, "How about $500 million?" And then Iraq invaded Kuwait. So, within two days, Iraq had installed a puppet government. Just a few days after that, Hussein announced that Kuwait was a province of Iraq. The UN denounces the invasion. They tell Iraq to get out of there. Iraq refused. So, this is when a Kuwaiti resistance movement formed, to which the Iraqi military responded by very brutally torturing and murdering people who resisted, most of whom were civilians. By November of 1990, the UN authorized the use of all necessary means against Hussein

• 14:20Lizzie Bassett?

  if he did not stop the war on Kuwait. And of course, US President George H. W. Bush was getting increasingly anxious that Hussein may eventually move on Saudi Arabia, which would obviously be bad for business. So, he got permission to increase our troops' presence in Saudi Arabia. He gets Congress's permission to intervene in the war on Kuwait. Saddam Hussein just keeps on keeping on. He ignores everybody. And so, this is when a coalition led mostly by the US began actually bombing Iraqi forces from the air. That is Operation Desert Storm. Meanwhile, over about half a million US soldiers poured into the Persian Gulf region, of course, along with soldiers from at least 28 other countries. And they were discovering that airstrikes weren't quite enough.

• 15:01Lizzie Bassett?

  So, on February 24th of 1991, the coalition enters Kuwait. They are able to overwhelm and basically destroy the Iraqi forces quite quickly. I believe it's within like four days, I think, a ceasefire took place.

• 15:15Chris Winterbauer?

  I think the bombing run ran, I wanna say like the last four months of-

• 15:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 15:20Chris Winterbauer?

  1990, and then, you know, the beginning of 91, and then, yeah, the boots on the ground was basically a week.

• 15:26Lizzie Bassett?

  It's nothing. It's not even. It's like half a week, yeah.

• 15:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is, in part, what led to, obviously, the false sense of confidence with our-

• 15:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 15:33Chris Winterbauer?

  -second incursion into the Gulf and the whole "Mission Accomplished: FOPA" and whatnot that would haunt Bush's son, so.

• 15:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, exactly. And on their way out, the remaining Iraqi troops, and you see this in the movie, they burned at least 700 oil wells. And some of those kept burning for 10 months, which caused unbelievable pollution in Kuwait and also cost Kuwait upwards of $1.5 billion. Now, as you can probably tell from that very short and oversimplified retelling of the war, things in the region were an absolute hot mess after this. And in the midst of all of that residual chaos, it became clear that millions of dollars of Kuwaiti gold and valuables had gone missing. And of course, they were being hidden by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Now, one soon-to-be TV writer on shows like Martin and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

• 16:20Lizzie Bassett?

  was pretty interested in this story about how the Middle East got flipped, turned upside down. And for a few years, he kept mulling over an idea for a movie. This is, of course, John Ridley. He would become a celebrated novelist, as well as eventually Academy Award-winning screenwriter for 12 years a slave. But by the mid-'90s, he had become a staff TV writer, who in his spare time decided to write a script about American soldiers in Iraq hunting for gold. He said, "I wanted to see how fast I could write and sell a screenplay. So, I came up with the most commercial and visually interesting story I could think of." He pulled inspiration from the treasure of the Sierra Madre, something that comes up often on this podcast. And in just one week, Chris, he had written a screenplay called The Spoils of War, and he sold it to Warner Brothers less than a month later.

• 17:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow.

• 17:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And just to double down again, this was not, you know, pulled out of nowhere. As we've said, there were millions of dollars' worth of gold and valuables that had been looted by Saddam's forces. It was also a lingering point of contention, even at this point, I think, because in addition to the gold, Hussein had absconded with valuable artifacts that Kuwait wanted back. I believe they did eventually get the gold back, but I don't know if they got everything. So, one day, a young indie director hot off his second feature film came across the logline for The Spoils of War in Warner Brothers' logbook of purchased but unproduced scripts that they had just been sitting on. And this director immediately knew that this would be his next movie. So, let's talk about David, oh, boy, Russell. He was born in 1958 in an affluent suburb of New York. Both of his parents worked at Simon & Schuster, his father as VP of Sales,

• 17:47Lizzie Bassett?

  and his mother as a secretary. Simon & Schuster, of course, is a publishing company. His father, whose original name was Markowski and changed it to Russell, traveled a lot, and according to Rebels on the Backlot, was known to be both physically and emotionally distant. His mother, on the other hand, may have been better if she was a little distant. According to the same book, she was an alcoholic who pushed David very, very hard to succeed. And this evidently included both emotional and, at times, physical abuse. At 13 years old, he made his first film for a school project, but he didn't ever really think he wanted to be a filmmaker, because both of his parents had worked in the literary world. So, he always dreamed of being a writer. And in 1981, he graduated from Amherst with degrees in English and political science. He then traveled to Nicaragua and taught in a Sandinista literacy program,

• 18:31Lizzie Bassett?

  which evidently left him pissed off at both President Ronald Reagan and the leftist Sandinistas. They were a Nicaraguan political organization. They'd overthrown the Samosa dictatorship in 1979, which I think actually came up in our Out of Frame episode on the Cotton Club murder. So, they had launched a campaign to increase literacy in the country. But can you imagine having David O. Russell as your English teacher?

• 18:52Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 18:52Lizzie Bassett?

  No, especially if English is not your first language. Yikes. Feeling disillusioned with basically everything, he returned to the US and took up a series of odd jobs, including waitering, catering, bartending, sometimes at the homes of Uber riches like Rupert Murdoch and Jackie O. And one fun fact, Chris, some of the guys he worked with during this time were the founders of the Blue Man Group, Chris Wink, Phil Stanton, and Matt Goldman.

• 19:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Very odd.

• 19:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 19:17Chris Winterbauer?

  One of my film school classmates, who's a director now, was an actor for a long time. And he was a touring member of one iteration of the Blue Man Group, I believe.

• 19:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Blue Man Group's pretty cool.

• 19:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Lizzie Bassett?

  He then turned to community organizing in some of the rougher neighborhoods of Boston, but found himself burned out pretty quickly. Not a surprise there. I can't imagine the rougher parts of Boston being welcoming.

• 19:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Walking into my neighborhood?

• 19:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. What are you organizing? And finally, he realized the only thing that seemed to still give him joy was movies. So he thought, fuck it, I'm gonna try and make them. But he didn't know how. He did not go to film school. He just watched movies over and over and over. And he was particularly inspired by the morally murky American films, in quotes, of the 70s like Chinatown and Dog Day Afternoon. So he kicked off his own directing career with a documentary short. In 1985, he directed a short which followed the daily lives of Panamanian immigrant workers in Boston. And around the same time, he also lands his first real gig as a PA on the PBS series Smithsonian World. Then between 87 and 1990, he got a couple of shorts screened at the Sundance Film Festival, which Chris has also done, and David.

• 20:24Lizzie Bassett?

  He also worked there as a ticket taker. So just remember, you never know who's taking your tickets. Be nice to your ticket takers. This was all happening, of course, as Operation Desert Storm was kicking into full swing. David O. Russell said, quote, "I remember I was at Sundance when the war started, and to me, it was better than any of the movies that were there. It was just this weird thing that was going on. It made you nauseous and excited at the same time." So next, he raised about $80,000 in private funding, and he also got some grants. And this was for a feature that he had pitched as being about a fortune cookie writer. But then, he decided, ah, I'm gonna make a comedy about an incestuous mother-son relationship instead. And this became...

• 21:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Have you ever seen Spanking the Monkey?

• 21:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I have not seen Spanking the Monkey.

• 21:06Chris Winterbauer?

  It's good. It's funny.

• 21:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Chris Winterbauer?

  It's super weird. It almost, at the time, I saw it later, obviously, but you could see a different world where he goes in a more Todd Solons direction, potentially.

• 21:17Lizzie Bassett?

  That makes sense.

• 21:17Chris Winterbauer?

  But yeah. You just tell us what it's about, Lizzie.

• 21:20Lizzie Bassett?

  It's about an incestuous mother-son relationship.

• 21:22Chris Winterbauer?

  But the whole movie's a will they, won't they sort of tension building between Jeremy Davies and his mother.

• 21:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 21:27Chris Winterbauer?

  He's the caretaker of her as well. It's very, very strange.

• 21:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Naturally, he did have to go ahead and hand that money back that he'd gotten from the private funding and grants. But it didn't matter, because this won the Audience Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. It also helped that back in 92, he had married New Line executive Janet Grillo, who had helped him get distribution after the film's success at Sundance. Spanking the Monkey's indie success led to a deal with what company that snapped up indie filmmakers and made them bigger?

• 21:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Miramax.

• 21:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Miramax, which led to the Ben Stiller indie film Flirting with Disaster in 1996. And that loops us back around to where we are in our story. So David O. Russell is a hot new indie filmmaker. Naturally, that means that two Warner Brothers co-presidents of production, Bill Gerber and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, said, "Come on over to us and make your next film with us." Now, Russell was very surprised. He said, "Because I always thought of Warner Brothers as being the least independent of the studios. In fact, I think they were one of the only major studios that didn't have an indie division at this time." Bill Gerber would end up leaving Warner Brothers before Three Kings got off the ground, but Di Bonaventura was in it for the long haul with Russell.

• 22:42Chris Winterbauer?

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• 23:24Chris Winterbauer?

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• 23:45Lizzie Bassett?

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• 24:29Lizzie Bassett?

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• 24:51Chris Winterbauer?

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• 27:06Lizzie Bassett?

  So Russell's sitting there. He's flipping through WB's logbook of unproduced scripts, and he comes across the logline for John Ridley's The Spoils of War. And he said, "I couldn't stop thinking about it. In fact, I was researching another script, a turn-of-the-century story, and I didn't feel like I had cracked it. So I started buying books about the Gulf, photojournalist books that had amazing images in them, like hundreds of soldiers being stripped in the desert, and Bart Simpson dolls on the grills of cars. All this incongruous stuff. There was once a scene where they ate animals in the zoo." Yikes. And this all made Russell say, I think I want to do this. And he said, everybody's eyebrows went up, including my agents. They were all like, what? I said, I think it's going to be crazy texture with all the politics and everything. To me, the heist is the least interesting part.

• 27:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I think that's right. Now, as you pointed out, this is not a natural fit for the work that David O. Russell had done up to this point. How would you describe the two movies that he had made up to this point in his career?

• 27:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Family sex comedies.

• 28:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure. Very low budget, offbeat.

• 28:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Low budget indie, offbeat, family sex comedy. I mean, Spanking the Monkey feels closer to like a Mike Mills movie to me in a lot of ways. If you were to go watch like Thumb Sucker or something like that.

• 28:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally.

• 28:12Chris Winterbauer?

  And then Flirting with Disaster, it's a road trip movie at the end of the day, but it's a sort of, it's not It's Too Mama Time, but you know what I'm saying? It's there's a threesome sort of sex tension to it with Taileon and Ben Stiller and Patricia Arquette, you know, going to find his adopted parents.

• 28:27Lizzie Bassett?

  They're very small. They're very contained.

• 28:29Chris Winterbauer?

  They're very small. Little Miss Sunshine is like kind of a comp and scale to that movie, I would say. Yeah, they're like 90s indie movies through and through.

• 28:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 28:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Not war movies.

• 28:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 28:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Action movies.

• 28:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Big time. And he said, I want to make something big and muscular. He also wanted to respond to what he felt like he saw as gun lust that was taking hold of American culture in the 1990s. He'd said, I'd played army, I'd had G.I. Joes, I did all that stuff. But because of the Vietnam protests, I did end up really, really hating war. So I think he kind of wanted to do the same thing for the next generation. And from 97 to 98, he spent 18 months rewriting the spoils of war into the script that would become Three Kings. But his rewriting process, Chris, was interesting because he claims he never really read John Ridley's script because he didn't want it to pollute his own idea. According to him, the only thing he kept was the log line.

• 29:21Chris Winterbauer?

  It's possible.

• 29:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's possible.

• 29:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know. I will say, for example, Alex Garland, we just talked about Annihilation on our Patreon a little bit with some folks. And, you know, he read Jeff Vandermeer's book once, and then he wrote the adaptation effectively from memory. And he didn't, he never went back to it. I will also say, I wrote a script. I cannot say anything more about this, but I wrote a script for a studio. And I believe David O. Russell's name was one of the names being bandied about as the director to approach for this movie. I don't think they ever did. I don't think it worked out timing wise.

• 29:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Which script?

• 29:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Redacted. It like makes a lot of sense for him.

• 30:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it does.

• 30:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Anyway, I don't think they ever approached him about it for, I don't know why. But one of the producers basically said, like, if this happens, like, you should be aware you'll be rewritten.

• 30:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Completely rewritten. Yeah.

• 30:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Completely rewritten. Which is fine. Like, that's the job of a writer ultimately is, you know, to get out of the way when you need to.

• 30:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. But hold that thought. Let's talk about this a little bit more because you actually have a lot of experience. I think it's going to come in very handy talking about this movie.

• 30:22Chris Winterbauer?

  So. And to be clear, I don't know. I'm just saying I could see it either way with maybe he didn't read it, maybe he did and he's lying about it. Who knows?

• 30:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know that he's lying. I think what we're going to start to see about David O. Russell is that he is quite hyperbolic.

• 30:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 30:34Lizzie Bassett?

  And he sees things in extremes.

• 30:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. It's like, oh, wait, do you mean read it? Of course I read it, but I just never went back to it. You know, like that sort of, yeah.

• 30:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I think that is a lot more accurate, would be my guess. So, he also started talking to veterans of the Gulf War who told him, quote, "It was a very strange and confusing period. They didn't know if they were supposed to be shooting people. They didn't know if they were supposed to be eliminating Saddam Hussein. Many special forces guys I interviewed said they cried about having to walk away and let Hussein's brutality take over the country again." And I think you do see a lot of that in the finished product.

• 31:05Chris Winterbauer?

  I think the first scene sets the tone perfectly.

• 31:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Chris Winterbauer?

  The first line, are we shooting?

• 31:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, exactly. Now, I want to read this quote from Russell about his process because I think it's going to be pretty illuminating as we head into the actual production of the film a little bit later. He said, quote, "I read papers, talked to veterans and Iraqis, then I sewed together the quilt of this script. It was liberating because it was blank as the desert, a palette where I could do a lot of different things, including action, which I hadn't done before. I wanted to click on lots of information, like click on their day jobs, click on the wife at home, click on how this punk sees violence as opposed to how violence really is. I'll do it and see how it works in the editing." So what stands out to you about that quote?

• 31:43Chris Winterbauer?

  He's experimenting.

• 31:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Experimenting heavily and also anticipating that the actual filming of the movie will be the experimental period and that post-production is where he will be really crafting the story.

• 31:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And when he says, you know, he's going to click on something, he does this literal cutaway style that's very reminiscent of like Nicholas Rogue. Did you ever see Don't Look Now, for example, with Donald Sutherland? Or did you ever see Angel Heart with Robert De Niro from 1987, the Alan Parker movie?

• 32:12Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 32:12Chris Winterbauer?

  I had to watch them recently because I got to do the DVD commentary on Memento.

• 32:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, you did.

• 32:17Chris Winterbauer?

  In Australia. But.

• 32:19Lizzie Bassett?

  In Australia.

• 32:20Chris Winterbauer?

  In Australia. We love Australia.

• 32:22Lizzie Bassett?

  We do.

• 32:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I would love to go. But Christopher Nolan talks about the way that flashbacks and cutaways are used in those movies. They're very stylistic and they're very abrupt. And I would imagine those are actually two references very much that O. Russell's pulling from in this movie. When you cut to, you know, Mark Wahlberg imagines, for example, his wife and child being bombed in their home.

• 32:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I will say it's very effective in this movie. I do think the end product works really, really well. So 12 weeks into this writing process, into this rewriting process, though, Chris, WB, Warner Brothers had come knocking, asking, hey, where's our first draft? It's, you know, standard timing after 12 weeks for them to see a first draft. And they were a little confused when David O. Russell said, I don't have one. And he replied to them, that's why most of your movies suck, and then told them to kick rocks. He had a 200-page draft at six months, which he then shelved and came back to many months later. And finally, after 18 months, he had what he considered a whole new script. But according to John Ridley, quote, "Russell may have rewritten it word for word, but it's still

• 33:21Lizzie Bassett?

  my story." And speaking of John Ridley, no one bothered to tell him that his script was going into production. He actually had to read about this online. And he was not happy about that.

• 33:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Unfortunately, not that uncommon.

• 33:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe it. Shitty.

• 33:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, not polite, but not that uncommon.

• 33:41Lizzie Bassett?

  In 1999, Ridley told Entertainment Weekly of David O. Russell, quote, "This is a guy who every step of the way has tried to grab credit. I never heard a word while he was shooting the movie, never saw any of the script changes. And then finally, a year later, I get a copy of the script and my name isn't even on it. It's by David O. Russell. My name is nowhere."

• 34:00Chris Winterbauer?

  That is rude. He should have left his name on the front page.

• 34:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 34:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, from an etiquette perspective, he should have left his name on the front page.

• 34:05Lizzie Bassett?

  So David O. Russell, though, told Creative Screenwriting, quote, "Yeah, he sold his script like every other writer. I don't understand what his whining is about because it's the most common experience in Hollywood. You write a script, you sell it and get paid. Goodbye. You're lucky you're not rewritten 700 times." He said, "I thought we had an amicable agreement. He was all friendly when we made the credit agreement." Now, this is referring to the agreement the two eventually negotiated directly instead of going to a WGA arbitration. This is what gave Ridley a story by credit on the film. More on Ridley and Russell a little bit later. But I can see both sides of this. I mean, I think David O. Russell's pretty rude, the way that he's handling this. But he's correct. You know, this is what happens. You sell your script. Like, to your point, you do relinquish control

• 34:48Lizzie Bassett?

  when you do that. I just don't like the way that he's implying that it's entirely his own story. It's not. You found this story in Warner Brothers' logbook. So in 1998, Russell had a finished script in hand that was much bigger and more action-heavy than anything he'd ever made. This, plus the political implications of the script, did make Warner Brothers very nervous. But they still gave him the go-ahead and forked over almost $50 million for the budget. And he couldn't believe it. He said, "I kept waiting for them to go, how did this guy get in here? I just figured I had the ball and was going to keep going with it until someone said, wait a minute, he's only made a $7 million movie before." Now, the big reason for this is that Warner Brothers was coming off of

• 35:28Lizzie Bassett?

  a string of big-time flappers. Batman and Robin, Steel, The Postman. And they were basically throwing spaghetti at the wall to try and figure out what the new direction of the studio should be. What's another big film from 1999 who benefited from the same?

• 35:43Chris Winterbauer?

  The Matrix.

• 35:43Lizzie Bassett?

  The Matrix. Yes.

• 35:45Chris Winterbauer?

  So the Wachowski sisters had done Bound, which is a very good movie. It's very well-made. But it's a small indie at the end of the day. A small lesbian crime drama, and probably budgetarily smaller, I would guess, than O. Russell's second film, than Flirting with Disaster, is my guess. And The Matrix was a, I believe, 50 or 60 million dollar movie.

• 36:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, at least.

• 36:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I'll have to double-check the budget. Now, in part, they proved it. They did, I believe, a 500 or so page, that's not going to be the right number, book that was every shot of the movie storyboarded as if a comic book in beautiful black and white. But yeah, credit to Lorenzo de Bonaventura and the folks at Warner Brothers. They took some swings at the end of the 90s.

• 36:23Lizzie Bassett?

  They really did. And as soon as the film got greenlit, Russell did travel to Dearborn, Michigan to, again, interview the large Iraqi community and make sure the portrayal in the script felt accurate to them. So now that he was seemingly happy with his script and he had money in hand, he spent the entire summer of 1998 trying to cast the right actor for Major Archie Gates. It should be noted that this part was originally written quite a bit older than George Clooney and more grizzled. So who are some names? Big names at the end of the 90s, but who would be at least a decade or maybe even 15 years older than George Clooney that might have been considered.

• 37:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, De Niro came to mind because he's, he is a lot older, but that may not have been, you know, trying to think like Costner's a lot older. He's a bigger name. 15 years older. How old is Clooney here? 35?

• 37:13Lizzie Bassett?

  He's in his 30s. Yeah.

• 37:14Chris Winterbauer?

  He's in his 30s. So we're talking about in their like 50th Harrison Ford?

• 37:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Probably. So here's the thing.

• 37:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 37:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Almost every like major older leading man was considered. There were two big names that did seem to be of major interest to David O. Russell. These were Clint Eastwood.

• 37:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, that makes sense.

• 37:29Lizzie Bassett?

  And Jack Nicholson.

• 37:31Chris Winterbauer?

  That makes less sense to me, but Eastwood makes sense. I was about to mention Mel Gibson, too.

• 37:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think Nicholson could make sense, given the sort of morally gray elements of the character.

• 37:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Feels less gray, a little more in just one direction, but I'm colored by his later work. I'm thinking of older Jack Nicholson. Obviously you think about Chinatown, which O. Russell was inspired by. That makes a lot of sense.

• 37:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. But Chris, there was a problem, which is that none of them wanted to do anything with this movie because of the politics.

• 38:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 38:01Lizzie Bassett?

  They were all very scared of it, except for one George Clooney. So a little bit about George Clooney at this time, he had, of course, been on ER since 1994. So huge TV star at this point, but he was pretty stuck in a filmography. He was not very happy with things like The Peacemaker, One Fine Day. And of course, particularly Batman and Robin had made him a lot of money, but they had not made him happy, nor had they gotten him particularly good reviews. However, Out of Sight was a rare instance in his filmography where he felt like he really got to make a movie that he enjoyed. So here's what he said about first Batman and Robin. He said, "It wasn't a very good movie and I'm not very good in it, but I got wealthy from it.

• 38:45Lizzie Bassett?

  They gave me 3 million bucks and I met with my accountant after it and I said, where do I stand? And he said, "You never have to work again unless you're an idiot." But he did, of course, and after Out of Sight, he made a decision. He said, quote, "I had a really great experience working on Out of Sight because of the script. I figured that now I'm going to work on projects that I would go see, and if I'm wrong, I'll deal with my bad taste." So his friend at Warner Brothers, where Clooney had a production deal, had gotten him a confidential copy of Russell's script and Clooney loved it. There was one problem, though. As we said, the lead was written as too old for him, so he didn't really think that that was going to work. But then he heard word that Russell couldn't get any of the very rich old men to sign on,

• 39:25Lizzie Bassett?

  and he was reworking the role to be younger. So Clooney decided he was going to campaign for this hard. He sent a letter to David O. Russell that began, "To David O. Russell, filmmaker, from George Clooney, TV actor."

• 39:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Good for him.

• 39:40Lizzie Bassett?

  He arranged to show Russell an early cut of Out of Sight. He even turned up at David O. Russell's apartment, trying to make a personal plea, and none of it worked. According to David O. Russell, quote, "My perception of Clooney was as a romantic leading man because he always had a beautiful woman with him in his pictures, whether it was Jennifer Lopez, Michelle Pfeiffer, or Nicole Kidman. But I'd seen a little bit of him in that vampire movie, From Dusk Till Dawn, and there was a little glimmer in there."

• 40:03Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a real shitbag in that movie.

• 40:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I love From Dusk Till Dawn.

• 40:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I do, too.

• 40:08Lizzie Bassett?

  It didn't help that Russell had his heart set on Nicolas Cage.

• 40:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow, he would have been good, too. I think this is particularly suited to Clooney.

• 40:17Lizzie Bassett?

  I think Clooney is the best choice by a mile.

• 40:19Chris Winterbauer?

  I do, too, but Cage was doing some really interesting work around this time. Obviously, O. Russell now has finally crossed paths with Cage with the Madden movie, which is going to come out this fall, which I am optimistic for, although at moments the trailer did look like an SNL version of a Madden movie, so we'll see, but I'm excited.

• 40:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Chris Winterbauer?

  But that's interesting. It helps that Clooney's salt and pepper look, he looks older than he is, to me.

• 40:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, or at least more weathered than some of the other people.

• 40:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 40:44Lizzie Bassett?

  But Cage bowed out pretty quickly in order to make Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead, which basically left David O. Russell with zero options and one George Clooney TV actor. So he, at this point, also deigned to watch Out of Sight, realized there were more dimensions to Clooney than you were getting to see on ER, and so he said, "Fine," and he cast him. Now Warner Brothers was thrilled for two reasons. One is that Clooney wanted in so badly that he had taken a pretty major pay cut to star in Three Kings.

• 41:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, if he was getting 3 million for Batman and Robin.

• 41:14Lizzie Bassett?

  He ain't getting that for this.

• 41:15Chris Winterbauer?

  And if he's willing to do this for a fraction of that, that's a big win.

• 41:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. And also Warner Brothers produced ER.

• 41:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 41:22Lizzie Bassett?

  So they could just finagle Clooney's schedule where he wouldn't miss any work on either project. After all, Burbank, where it's filmed, was just a hop, skip and a jump from Arizona, where Three Kings would be filming. And who needs days off, Chris? Not George Clooney. That's what they said.

• 41:37Chris Winterbauer?

  It really can't be overstated how important scheduling or an actor's schedule is when you're making a movie or a television show. Obviously, in my limited experience, making a couple of movies, we were not able to cast a major actor we really liked in one of those movies because there was a chance they were going to be needed on a bigger movie in the middle of our production. And if we had to go dark for a week, we would have died.

• 42:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Basically, the movie would be done. So it's everything.

• 42:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It's a total puzzle. And I can't imagine how disappointing that would be, that that's the thing that gets in your way. But I know you've been through that several times. So they were a bit less stoked, though, about Russell's insistence that they cast one non-actor, Spike Jones, as Private Conrad Vig. Now Jones, at this point, was, of course, an established music video director. He had done a run of incredible 90s videos, including The Beastie Boys Sabotage, Weezer's Buddy Holly, It's Oh So Quiet by Bjork. I mean, just like some of the best music videos ever made. He was also a personal friend of David O. Russell's, and he had just wrapped up filming his own directorial debut, which was what?

• 42:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Being John Malkovich, right?

• 42:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Being John Malkovich. That's right. He had literally like just finished that. And apparently during the filming of that, David O. Russell would call him and make him speak in a southern accent because he wanted to be sure that Spike Jones could pull off the role, which I actually liked his explanation of this. He was like, "He is a good friend, and if he was going to be bad in the movie, it would have ruined our friendship." So I wanted to make sure.

• 43:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I think that's totally fair. He's a non-actor. You gotta check him. But Spike Jones, he has been in three of my favorite movies of the last 30 years and indecently big roles or decently memorable roles, yet he's a non-actor. So this one, Moneyball, he plays the new husband of Robin Wright, Brad Pitt's ex-wife. And then The Wolf of Wall Street.

• 43:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Chris Winterbauer?

  As he runs the penny stocks and when his line like.

• 43:29Lizzie Bassett?

  He's great. He's a very good actor.

• 43:30Chris Winterbauer?

  He's very natural.

• 43:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 43:32Chris Winterbauer?

  He's very, very, talk about guileless.

• 43:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 43:35Chris Winterbauer?

  He is guileless.

• 43:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Chris Winterbauer?

  That is his superpower. I actually think, I was trying to think of movies where you could swap in the director as the lead and maybe the movie would still work. I think Joaquin Phoenix is perfect in her. I actually think Spike Jones would be pretty good in her as the lead.

• 43:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. There's a real sweetness to Spike Jones in everything he appears in.

• 43:53Chris Winterbauer?

  He is like an illiterate semi-bigot in this movie.

• 43:58Lizzie Bassett?

  And yet.

• 43:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Poor guy, poor guy. Yeah. But I'm also like, Chief, I get it. I get why you don't like this guy.

• 44:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course, of course. Russell, I think, also wanted to use him for this because part of the point of this character was to show the kind of glorification of violence that had appeared in music videos and, you know, video games at the time. So casting one of the biggest music video directors is a very meta-commentary in this role. He also said, "I like the chaos that a non-actor brings to the set. He has a level of realism because he hasn't been through it before. I totally get it." De Bonaventura, on the other hand, said, "Are you serious?" And he made Russell audition other known actors, including Jared Leto and Christian Bale, before giving in on Jones. Now Spike Jones and David O. Russell have remained close friends, and Jones said of Russell, quote, "What makes him great is twofold. One is his brain is incredible.

• 44:48Lizzie Bassett?

  He's got an incredible mind. He's incredibly smart. On the other side, whatever he's feeling, he expresses. Not everyone is so fond of that second quality." According to Mark Wahlberg, quote, "David probably had me in mind because he dislikes me and figured who better to beat the shit out of while he's tied down than Mark Wahlberg. He probably took a poll and asked all guys, especially guys with girlfriends and all of my ex-girlfriends."

• 45:12Lizzie Bassett?

  But Wahlberg was very happy to be offered this role. This is one of the first times he didn't have to fight for something because, of course, he had just broken out in Boogie Nights. And also, it should be noted that obviously Mark Wahlberg continued to work with David O. Russell for several movies after this. I think they did have a falling out, though, I believe, over Silver Lining's playbook.

• 45:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Because he wasn't in that.

• 45:32Lizzie Bassett?

  That's correct.

• 45:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Did he want the lead?

• 45:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I think so.

• 45:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, okay. Yeah. I think Bradley Cooper's kind of pitch perfect.

• 45:37Lizzie Bassett?

  He's incredible in that movie. He has been robbed of an Oscar for several performances. That's one of them. So the same was true for Ice Cube. David O. Russell had been blown away by him in Boys in the Hood. As we said, he's just a great actor.

• 45:50Chris Winterbauer?

  He's really good in Boys in the Hood. We covered that. Listen to our episode. He's very natural in that movie.

• 45:54Lizzie Bassett?

  He is. He also, by this point, had starred in Friday, which, of course, he co-wrote.

• 45:58Chris Winterbauer?

  He's really funny in Friday, like the whole Friday series. He's so funny in 21 John Street. He steals that movie.

• 46:04Lizzie Bassett?

  He's funny in everything. He's funny in this, but he also brings a real gravitas to this role. And I just, he's great. All right. So the core cast is in place, and they were all excited about the film. None more so than George Clooney. But Warner Brothers was again getting cold feet. They are really worried about the politics of the film. They're worried it could get them in big trouble. In particular, the film does blatantly say the US abandoned Iraqi rebels after President Bush told them essentially to rise up against Hussein and then left. Of course, that's true, but you know, they felt that it was risky. And it didn't help that in August of 1998, a Planet Hollywood restaurant in Cape Town, South Africa, was bombed just days after Clinton had ordered American missile strikes on terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.

• 46:47Lizzie Bassett?

  According to George Clooney, some of the executives were genuinely worried that the cast and crew might be in physical danger if they made the film. So Warner Brothers weighed three options. One, offer the film to another studio, try to offload it. Two, rewrite the whole thing, or wait six months and see if some of the conflict could blow over. But at least one executive was still very gung ho on it, and that was, of course, Lorenzo De Bonaventura. And then he made a critical mistake, Chris. He went on vacation for one week. And during this time, Jim Miller, the president of Worldwide Theatrical Business Operations, called George Clooney in and tried to convince him to leave the movie. And George Clooney, to his eternal credit, stood by the movie. De Bonaventura came back from vacation furious at what Miller had done,

• 47:32Lizzie Bassett?

  and it was George Clooney who stepped in to rally for the film and broker some peace between the two of them. In the end, the decision came down to outgoing chairman and CEO Terry Semel, who chose to stand by the film. Clooney said he didn't make a corporate decision, but a creative decision, saying, "I'm not going to be told what kind of movies I can make."

• 47:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats, and I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy-to-make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispie treats and peanut butter M&Ms, and because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all-time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven-layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice, because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog Q.

• 48:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Mars knows he needs a celebration, too, so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors, because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited-time Halloween offerings.

• 49:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Chris, how many days would you ask for to shoot this film, if you could?

• 49:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I would ask for an obscene number of days.

• 49:08Lizzie Bassett?

  How many? In a perfect world, what would you ask for to make this movie?

• 49:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, now, it would be a lot less, but in 1999, I would ask for, like, at least 75 days to shoot this movie.

• 49:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Great, so he requested 80 to shoot the film. So that sounds like that's pretty realistic.

• 49:22Chris Winterbauer?

  That sounds reasonable, yeah.

• 49:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Warner Brothers gave him 68.

• 49:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, that's...

• 49:26Lizzie Bassett?

  It's tight.

• 49:27Chris Winterbauer?

  That's tight for the amount of action that they are shooting in the desert. And the thing about shooting in the desert is, when you're in those wide-open spaces, there is nowhere to hide production. And so anytime you flip camera directions, you have to move your entire goddamn base camp.

• 49:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. He told Entertainment Weekly in 2005, quote, "I thought, I've made movies in 35 days. I can do this. I'll just shoot it like an independent film. It wasn't until I got on the set when I realized, Jesus, what have I gotten myself into? That was when it hit me how big it was." And right away, David O. Russell be fighting, including with his cinematographer, Newton Thomas Sigel, who we talked about on Bohemian Rhapsody. Now, apparently, Russell felt like Siegel had been thrust upon him by Warner Brothers, and David O. Russell had very specific ideas for what he wanted the movie to look like, which it sounds like Siegel was on board with and did. Specifically, they wanted it to look blown out, high-contrast, and oversaturated, so that it would look like the newspaper photos most Americans had seen of the Gulf War.

• 50:25Lizzie Bassett?

  And Chris, can you explain how you might achieve this, in terms of a bleach bypass, I believe is the term that you used?

• 50:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, and this is going to be something that I am not entirely familiar with from a practical perspective. I think I understand the theory behind it, but I've never shot film with cinematography. I've shot film with photography. But basically, so normally, in the development process, there's a step, a bleaching step, that you use to remove the silver halide, which is a photosensitive chemical that's in the film, and you're stripping that away from the film. And in doing a bleach bypass or a silver retention process, you're skipping that bleaching process, so you're leaving the silver halide on the film, which I believe it causes two things to happen. Number one, it's basically like leaving a black-and-white version of the image on top of your color image, in a sense.

• 51:14Chris Winterbauer?

  And so that's going to give you more contrast, and it's going to reduce saturation. And then it's also going to, I think, because you're retaining the silver halide, give you more grain as well. So you're just getting a grittier, punchier image. And then on top of that, I think in many instances, the DP might underexpose the image and then push the exposure in the development stage, which is going to result in a narrower latitude or higher contrast as well.

• 51:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Very contrast, very grainy.

• 51:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Very grainy look. And part of what happens is that with film, the way that film captures light, as opposed to digital, and this is very general, the film actually does an incredible job of retaining highlights, and digital tends to do an incredible job of retaining shadows. And so with film, you actually have to push it like this if you want to blow the highlights out. There are many instances where you can, you can actually overexpose film decently and still retain the information in the highlights in a way that you can't. You will clip in digital. I think, like, great examples of this from the time would be Janusz Kaminski's work with Steven Spielberg. So Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, I think Munich, and even as far as, well, I don't know about Lincoln, but I think all the way through Munich, definitely, they

• 52:25Chris Winterbauer?

  used a modified form of the bleach bypass process. But I do think it works really well in Three Kings.

• 52:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it looks great.

• 52:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's a pretty popular style in the 90s.

• 52:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Warner Brothers was not super stoked about it. He also insisted on shooting nearly half the film in Ektachrome, which is usually found in Instamatic cameras. He liked the way that it made the images look weird, bright, almost otherworldly.

• 52:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 52:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It equated to what he'd been told by so many of the military consultants he'd spoken to, which was that something wasn't right about this. It's a bit incongruous.

• 53:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I think what the studio probably is bumping on is it's a very extreme look. And if you do it at the inner-negative stage, which I think insurance companies will insist you do, that's maybe okay, because you're protecting the original negative. But if you do it on the original negative, that look is locked in. And so therefore, you don't have any latitude to change things after the fact.

• 53:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, they definitely didn't. Because on top of the, you know, very grainy bleach look that we're talking about, they also used a 45-degree shutter, which is what gives the action that kind of, like, staccato, strobe-like effect to it. Spielberg used this in Saving Private Ryan.

• 53:33Chris Winterbauer?

  I was just gonna say. Yeah, and actually Ridley Scott would use it a little bit in Gladiator.

• 53:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Black Hawk Down, too, I think, right?

• 53:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, Black Hawk Down, yeah, yeah. It's pretty popular around this time.

• 53:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. So all these more avant-garde decisions were making the studio pretty nervous, especially because, again, like, he's never done this. But still, Russell plowed ahead, and principal photography kicked off in the fall of 1998 at an abandoned copper mine outside of Tucson, Arizona. And Chris, the area was perfect. It was a short flight from Burbank for George Clooney, and it was so desolate that it absolutely looked like war-torn Iraq. There was just one problem. The reason it was dead is because it was essentially a toxic wasteland. According to production designer Catherine Hardwick, quote, "All the plants were dead, and there was arsenic in the air. And as if that weren't bad enough," she said, "the nicest restaurant nearby was an Applebee's." Which, I like an Applebee's.

• 54:21Chris Winterbauer?

  I love how Hardwick in the 90s cannot escape Arizona, right?

• 54:24Lizzie Bassett?

  No, she's just stuck in the desert.

• 54:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Tombstone, Arizona. Tank Girl, Arizona. Three Kings, Arizona. Just every time, she goes, "Where's it shooting? Arizona, son of a bitch."

• 54:34Lizzie Bassett?

  God damn it. I'm gonna go to the Pacific Northwest and do Twilight. Maybe that's why. Maybe that's why.

• 54:39Chris Winterbauer?

  That may be why.

• 54:40Lizzie Bassett?

  She wanted to get out. In the Arizona desert, obviously, she built an entire Iraqi village, despite, of course, never having been to Iraq herself. She actually found this preacher, who had been carrying a giant cross over the whole world, who was going to Iraq, and she asked him to please take some pictures for her while he was there, which he did. And she used those as reference photos. She also, as we said at the beginning, she spoke to a lot of Iraqi refugees who were living in the US. She talked to many who were hired as extras for the film, because, yes, quite a few of the extras in this movie are actual Iraqi refugees, I believe, including the guy who sells the cars to George Clooney.

• 55:16Chris Winterbauer?

  I wondered if he was a non-actor. He's great. He's very natural.

• 55:19Lizzie Bassett?

  He is. And some of these extras also ended up working for Hardwick. According to her, she said, "I hired them to do the graffiti on the walls. They would get so upset when they saw a huge mural of Saddam Hussein that they would get rocks and start throwing them." Also while filming, a thick, green, mysterious dust covered everything, all of the filming locations and people, which caused a bunch of weird illnesses. They don't even know what it was still.

• 55:42Chris Winterbauer?

  I wonder if it was like some rust or something coming off of something that's bronzed in some way out there, you know, copper.

• 55:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know.

• 55:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 55:49Lizzie Bassett?

  It was also, at times, both extremely hot and cold enough to snow. And they are handling all of this while dealing with a massive shoot featuring, of course, tons of extras, military equipment, vehicles, helicopters, and oil tanker full of fake milk that has to explode. So David O. Russell would arrive on set quite frequently, wearing an orange-and-yellow camo t-shirt, because he himself was ready for battle. And fun fact, this is the t-shirt that inspired Sofia Coppola's outfit for Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, because she was dating Spike Jones at the time, and she visited set. If you look at it, he's dressed the exact same way that David O. Russell was, which is very interesting. And on top of all of this, Chris, David O. Russell was really, really not getting along with his star.

• 56:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Stunningly, it was not Marky Mark who he was butting heads with. It was the guy who had fought tooth and nail to be a part of the film. It was, of course, TV actor George Clooney. And it cannot be overstated how fucking tired George Clooney must have been. He would leave the ER set at 4:30 in the morning and fly straight to Arizona to start filming Three Kings, where he would then discover that David O. Russell had rewritten that day's entire script. Clooney, I think understandably, found this pretty destabilizing. According to Clooney, quote, "David's feeling was, what am I supposed to do? Shoot it the way I don't like it written? And my feeling was, what am I supposed to do? I don't know my lines." He described the shoot as insanity and, quote, "not well-coordinated, to say the least." Which does align with what we know about David O. Russell's filming style, especially

• 57:18Lizzie Bassett?

  since this is kind of the first time he's getting to execute it on a scale like this. He was very much improvisational, not so much in terms of on-set improvisation by actors, but more that he had no organized shot list. He would come up with a new idea mid-take. He would demand longer hours and constant rewrites. According to Hardwick, quote, "David will get an idea in the middle of rolling and will yell out to the cameraman, 'Let's shoot this.'" He's just spontaneously creative. That can rattle some people. According to De Bonaventura, George is a big believer in a benign environment. David is a big believer in getting everything You can for the movie. Those two things are going to collide.

• 57:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 57:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Which person do I want to work with? George Clooney.

• 57:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, but yes and no. I was funny. I was trying to think of, I was thinking about there have been people, why does David O. Russell continue? You know, how does he continue to get opportunities, et cetera? And

• 58:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I think there are people who do work well in the kind of environment that he creates.

• 58:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. I would also suggest, and I'm not saying, I'm not condoning his approach. It sounds miserable for everybody involved. That being said, making a movie is extremely hard under the best of circumstances and it's extremely brief. Even this is, you know, let's say 68 days, right? That they're shooting.

• 58:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. You're not tolerating this person every day for years like you would in an office.

• 58:27Chris Winterbauer?

  But you do have to tolerate the movie for the rest of your life.

• 58:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:31Chris Winterbauer?

  And with David O. Russell, at least at this point in time, well, maybe they didn't know it yet. I guess you'd know it by the time after this movie came out. But there's a pretty good chance the movie is going to be tolerable for a long time and that it's not going to be Batman and Robin, for example.

• 58:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 58:45Chris Winterbauer?

  And I think that's why we have these situations of folks getting away with things that would not, certainly not be permissible, or we would not condone in a normal work environment. I'm also not saying I condone them here. I'm just saying I understand why actors and other creative types and department heads would say, you know what? This is going to be a pain in the ass, but I'm going to do it. You know what I mean? For 12 weeks, because I think there's a pretty good chance this movie turns out pretty good.

• 59:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Now, according to Nora Dunn, who of course plays the reporter, she said, quote, "David's always in the moment, but it's not always going to be the moment you're in. He has this way of staring at you and I always felt like saying, didn't your mother ever tell you that was impolite? Let's talk a little bit about the David O. Russell stare. He apparently had a habit of not looking at you, but more staring through your soul and making you deeply uncomfortable. There were some other antisocial tendencies as well. For example, one time he grabbed a hanky out of the jacket pocket of an older European man, blew his nose in it and then put it back, all while New Line Chairman Bob Shay watched in horror. And apparently when Flirting with Disaster had premiered, Russell's friends had gotten him a nice, very nice bottle of vintage champagne with five stars drawn on it,

• 59:51Lizzie Bassett?

  meaning they were giving him and the movie five stars. But he took this as a serious personal slight because it meant that they didn't have the words to properly congratulate him. So I think it's fair to say he processes things differently. And listen, for all the shit we're about to rain down on David O. Russell, and it is going to pour, he is an incredibly talented writer and director. It's obvious that his improvisational directing style does return some pretty great results. So I think the question that we're going to be asking ourselves over the rest of this episode is, is the juice worth the squeeze? Let's continue further into the desert on this hunt for stolen treasure. So Russell was in way over his head on this shoot, as we've said. He was making it worse by constantly changing the schedule, which then irritated the crew. They were all getting angry.

• 1:00:33Lizzie Bassett?

  And it probably didn't help that he was prone to fits of yelling and screaming. And this started right away, Chris. This was not like a two months into a shoot in the desert thing. This was like a four or five days into filming thing. David O. Russell and George Clooney were riding in a Humvee fitted with a camera. Now, according to Clooney, Russell got enraged at the driver asking him to speed up. He said, quote, "David started reaming this guy. I got off the Humvee and said, knock it off. David was stunned. I'd humiliated him, but I said, this is not the way to do this." Now, Russell claims it was very different. He said, quote, "The crane broke. We were losing the day and I was upset about that. So I jumped off the truck and I was like, fuck. I was just kicking the dirt and everything like that. And then George had this big thing about defending the driver of the truck, whom I hadn't really said anything to."

• 1:01:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh, I'm sure the crane did break. I'm sure the day wasn't going well. I'm sure he was kicking rocks in the desert. I don't think George Clooney is like a completely delusional liar, but whatever, we don't know.

• 1:01:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Doesn't seem likely. No. We should also point out, because this may not be clear, they're almost the same age, but David O. Russell is three years older than George Clooney.

• 1:01:38Lizzie Bassett?

  They are almost the same age and it's also, you have to remember, like, George Clooney is not a movie star the way that he is now at this point.

• 1:01:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I bet you Russell was surprised that Clooney kind of broke rank in the way that he did right there.

• 1:01:50Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:01:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he was very surprised and I think it was destabilizing for him because it's not something he had experienced.

• 1:01:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Still, this is a bit of a he said, he said situation. We can chalk that one up to a misunderstanding, maybe. So let's move on. Another time, an extra had a full-blown epileptic seizure on set. George Clooney immediately stopped filming, rushed over to check on them. This, of course, made the tabloids, Clooney to the rescue in real life ER drama. But much to George Clooney's surprise, and what didn't make the tabloids, is that David O. Russell just kind of wandered back over to the monitor and ordered the crew to continue the shot. Clooney reportedly said, "You can't do that. You've got a man down on your set." But Russell later said it wasn't that he was ignoring it. He didn't realize that it happened. It was 500 yards away from him, he claimed. He was setting up a shot.

• 1:02:38Lizzie Bassett?

  To which I say, sir, 500 yards is 4.17 full regulation size football field, five if you count the 100 yard lines. I don't think you're 500 yards away if George Clooney is responding that way. But again, I don't know. I wasn't there. I'm just saying, David, be honest. Things eventually got so bad as they reached the tail end of the shoot and were set to film the climax of the movie, that George Clooney finally figured he might as well just put it out on the table. So Chris, he decided to write a letter ostensibly to clear the air, but he may want to work on his air clearing tactics because this is what he wrote. Quote, "You have created the most havoc-ridden, anxiety-ridden, angry set I have ever witnessed." He said he had no clue what Russell wanted out of him and he was struggling with his performance.

• 1:03:21Lizzie Bassett?

  He said, quote, "You didn't get Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson or Nick Cage. You got me. Be glad because they would have walked long ago." Probably true. He said, quote, "You use me when you need me, working the budget, the film processing, even to keep them from pulling the plug. But when it's time for my input, the answer is no every time." Again, from what we've seen so far, at least in terms of George Clooney standing up for the movie, that part is true. Finally, he asked Russell to please start over, to be a better communicator, to be more patient and to finally provide a shot list. He said, quote, "I'm holding out my hand and offering you an olive branch and to take it, all you have to do is reach." But what Clooney maybe didn't know is that as he was sending this to Russell, Warner Brothers was adding a few more ingredients to David O. Russell's stress soup.

• 1:04:04Lizzie Bassett?

  They were getting really worried that the film didn't have enough action in it and they were pushing for more, while simultaneously trying to cut some of the more graphic war scenes, including the scene where the cow blows up, which actually George Clooney did step in and convince them to keep in, so he was at least aware of that. They were also pissed about the birds covered in oil. They didn't want the scene where the Iraqi woman gets shot in the head, even though that's literally the axis on which the entire movie's plot hinges. And they really didn't like the bullet POV shot where it rips through a human body and fills the stomach cavity with bile. Basically, they didn't want this movie and they were making that very clear to David O. Russell.

• 1:04:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, they didn't want anything that made it actually question the morality of war at the end of the day.

• 1:04:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Because that's all the moments they're talking about. But even from a plot mechanics perspective, the cow blowing up is very important, not in just establishing the landmines, which will come into play later.

• 1:04:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:04:52Chris Winterbauer?

  But also because the Iraqi soldiers are in part surrendering so quickly to them because these men are covered in blood as they run into this bunker.

• 1:05:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. These are not things you can pull out of the movie without rewriting the entire thing.

• 1:05:04Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 1:05:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, when it came to filming the torture scene with the interrogator, who, as we've said, played very well by a Said Tagmawi, the studio really didn't like this, not because of the torture, but because of the Michael Jackson references. Because originally David O. Russell had written in dialogue, having the torturer ask about Jackson's predilection for little boys, which as you'll notice, is not in the movie. David O. Russell apparently fought this until the day the scene was supposed to be shot. And the studio actually had to show up with a legal document and made him sign this, promising that there would be nothing offensive to Michael Jackson in the movie. So the reference to him remained, but that part was removed, which is interesting because the point that they end up making,

• 1:05:48Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm interested to see what that was originally in the script, in terms of what winds up on screen.

• 1:05:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, they make a race point as opposed to, but I mean, as we saw from the Michael biopic released this year, Michael fans aren't interested in that part of his life. So perhaps

• 1:06:02Lizzie Bassett?

  They sure are.

• 1:06:03Chris Winterbauer?

  This was the, you know, politically expedient and prudent decision.

• 1:06:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Who knows?

• 1:06:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, to add a little sprinkle on top of all of this, Russell was also dealing with the fact that his four-year-old son Matthew had just been diagnosed with autism. Matthew would later be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which of course ended up inspiring Silver Linings playbook. So it was a pressure cooker. Producer Charles Rovin described what happened next as a domino effect, saying, quote, "The first domino was, we need an actor of stature who was willing to cut his price. George fit the bill." There were a number of places along the way where he had every opportunity to bail on the movie because he was advised to for his own personal safety and said no. But he needed to work seven days a week between making our movie in Arizona and ER. Nobody should work seven days a week for months. At the same time, the studio beat the shit out of David to get him to bring the budget down in the $40 million range.

• 1:06:51Lizzie Bassett?

  They tried to get him to take 10 days out of the shooting schedule. I advised him not to do it. I begged him, but he said, "I can run and gun." Well, he couldn't. Even stalwart supporter De Bonaventura was starting to get nervous now that the shoot had stretched to over 78 days. He said, "It was one of the few times I was told this is on you if it doesn't work." But Chris, they were almost done. All they had left to shoot was the climax of the movie, the scene where the soldiers finally, fully choose to relinquish the gold and help the refugees get across the border. De Bonaventura was breathing easy until he got a phone call from a producer on the Arizona set. The voice said, "We've got a problem. George is trying to pound David and David is choking George."

• 1:07:35Chris Winterbauer?

  And not in a good way.

• 1:07:36Lizzie Bassett?

  No. Debona Ventura's response was simply, are you fucking kidding me? So in the shot where a soldier is supposed to throw Ice Cube to the ground, the ROTC recruit playing the part didn't do it quite right. They maybe did it a little too timidly. According to Rebels on the Backlot, Russell stepped in and physically moved the extra instead of telling him what to do, and that was it for George Clooney. And yes, lots of people were watching, so let's hear from them. According to producer Charles Rovin, quote, "Now, we're shooting the climax of the movie. Helicopters, explosions, gunfire, it's chaos, madness." And George sees David talking to the extras, and it looks like he's yelling at him, but he's yelling to be heard. And George comes running over and goes, "I told you, motherfucker. If you're gonna pick on somebody, pick on me."

• 1:08:20Lizzie Bassett?

  And David goes, "Why don't you just fucking remember your lines for once?" And boom, they grab each other and they're tussling. So I pulled George away, that was it. According to Ice Cube, and by the way, I believe this is the version that David O. Russell is most consistent with. He said, quote, "There was this one extra that was kind of out of position. David is running across the desert telling the guy, hey, you're not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be over there." And David's an intense guy, so he grabbed the guy and moved him where he was supposed to be, and I think George just took exception of David actually putting his hands on the guy, which I get. According to Holt McElhenney, David said, "Don't tell me what to do on my set." And George said, "This is not your set." And it just went off from there. "I literally wrapped David up in my arms and pulled him away because they were coming to blows."

• 1:09:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Second AD Paul Bernard apparently just put his gear down and walked away. He quit. He basically quit. He was like, "I'm done."

• 1:09:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, the second AD also manages the extras, you know, to an extent. And so he was probably just like, "Yeah, I'm good. I'm not needed here. I'm gonna just, uh, I'm gonna head out."

• 1:09:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Debona Ventura got them both on the phone and basically told them, "You have to get your shit together." He was like, "We are almost done. Just stay away from each other until we can wrap. That's it."

• 1:09:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I do want to say at this point in my research, I found myself feeling, I think, more sympathy than I had expected to for David O. Russell. Because in a world full of George Cloonies, those who seem to sort of internalize their stress and soldier on heroically, and then David O. Russells, those who tend to take their stress out on other people, I unfortunately probably fall more into the David O. Russell camp.

• 1:09:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I know, there was that time that you were just choking me out. It was like so inappropriate.

• 1:09:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Not in a hot way.

• 1:10:00Chris Winterbauer?

  No. It wasn't even the time I'd asked you to do it.

• 1:10:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I also, and Chris, you know, more than I do, you have two of them. I know how hard it is to have a kid, let alone to be trying to helm a major studio film while dealing with your child's autism diagnosis. You, I mean, you did direct a movie while you had a newborn baby. I don't know how you did it. It should be noted, Chris did not choke anyone out, though, on that set that I know of.

• 1:10:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, David O. Russell might suggest the movie could have been better.

• 1:10:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Had you choked someone.

• 1:10:28Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a better director than I am. But, um, yeah, I will say, I don't like the way he approaches his stress, as you said. Having, again, had the chance to direct a couple of much smaller movies than this, having had a chance to write, you know, some movies for studios. It's crazy stressful, and I have a lot of empathy for everybody involved.

• 1:10:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure. And then I thought to myself, well, you know, I should probably go back, because it's been years since I've seen this, and watch that Lily Tomlin video from iHeart Huckabees one more time.

• 1:11:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm not allowing my brain to contemplate that because it technically took place like five years after this.

• 1:11:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Well...

• 1:11:05Chris Winterbauer?

  But, yes.

• 1:11:06Lizzie Bassett?

  We are gonna listen to it. I know it happens five years after. However, I think it's, uh, it's illustrative of this.

• 1:11:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 1:11:14Lizzie Bassett?

  So this is a leaked video from the set of iHeart Huckabees. I am playing the second half of the video. The first half of the video, Lily Tomlin is getting very frustrated and upset because what's happening is that David O. Russell continues to change what he's asking for, change the lines. She is having trouble understanding what she's supposed to be doing in the scene because of how often he is changing it, which sounds a little familiar. So, let's watch.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Fuck you! I'm just trying to fucking help you. Do you understand me?

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  No, John, you don't.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  I'm being a fucking collaborator. I'm just trying to help you figure out the fucking picture. Hey, bitch, I'm not here to be fucking yelled at. I worked on this fucking thing for three fucking years. Now I'm gonna have some fucking cuss yell at me in front of the fucking crew when I'm trying to fucking help you, bitch. Figure it out yourself.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Well, I have to do that.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, fuck yourself!

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  Good, why don't you fuck your whole movie? Why don't you fuck your whole movie? Because that's what you're doing.

• 1:12:12Speaker 03

  We better get some insurance and get some director.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  You're a fucking grown up. Act like you're grown up. You're not a David. You're a fucking grown up. I'm here to fucking help you. That's all I was doing, was trying to help figure out everything. You're not fucking yelling. Talk to me. You're not fucking yelling. Talk to me. Do I yell at you? Do I not fucking yell at you before right now? No. I never fucking yell at you, you fucking bitch.

• 1:12:48Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, that's enough. That's enough of that. So, here's the thing.

• 1:12:54Lizzie Bassett?

  That recording aligns awfully closely with George Clooney's account of the day. Let's hear what George Clooney had to say. He said, quote, "It was a big pressure day, and he was under the gun. We were trying to get a shot, and then he went berserk. He went nuts on an extra. So I went over, I put my arm around him, I pulled him aside away from everybody, which seemed fair, and I said, 'You can't do that.'" And he basically said, "Fuck you, worry about your acting." Okay, we literally just heard that. "And I said, 'Now you're being an asshole.'" And we started pushing against each other with our heads, so I got him by the throat, and I was yelling at him, and he was screaming at me, and we were at it. Obviously, I do not condone George Clooney choking David O. Russell. You should not choke your boss, which George Clooney admitted he was deeply embarrassed by. He would later tell Entertainment Weekly, "Will I work with David ever again?

• 1:13:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Absolutely not, never. Do I think he's tremendously talented? Do I think he should be nominated for Oscars? Yeah." But, I gotta say, after doing this episode, here's the thing that I come back to in that iHeart Huckabees video. This is obviously an audio-only format, so you can't see this, but in that video, Lily Tomlin is not alone on that set. Both Dustin Hoffman and Jason Schwartzman are right there. Jason Schwartzman is there right in front of her the entire time. Dustin Hoffman leaves about halfway through. Neither of them say a peep in her defense. And while I totally understand not wanting to get involved, I'm not shitting on Jason Schwartzman for that, if I were Lily Tomlin, I sure would have appreciated a George Clooney in that moment. And then when you take into account that the person Russell was screaming at wasn't

• 1:14:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Lily Tomlin, it was an extra, I am Team George Clooney for life. I don't think that this was performative. I think he was genuinely standing up for people on this set who could not stand up for themselves. And again, he was not George Clooney movie star the way that he is today. This was a big risk for him to do this on this set.

• 1:14:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and really, that's where a producer also should be stepping in on this set.

• 1:14:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Somebody, yes.

• 1:14:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Because you do need somebody who is above the director. And yeah, like, while I have empathy for him, he's a maniac.

• 1:14:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:14:51Chris Winterbauer?

  And the studio needs to, like, hire a bodyguard to prevent him from, like...

• 1:14:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Just make him Bubble Boy. Put him in a bubble, like Jake Gyllenhaal.

• 1:14:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, someone big enough that anytime he freaks out, they, like, grab him by the hips, you know what I mean? And just kind of lift him and walk him out of the room while he's yelling. He, like, gets a little timeout, and then they bring him back, you know, after a while.

• 1:15:12Lizzie Bassett?

  God.

• 1:15:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Lizzie Bassett?

  It's just, it's the classic thing of, if a woman had done this, if a person of color had done this, you don't ever get to work again. So, you know, that does have to be said. But, anyway, by February 15th of 99, filming wrapped. It was over schedule, and it was just slightly over the original budget, but it was done. After filming wrapped, a Newsweek researcher asked David O. Russell about how the movie would be marketed, and also asked about the fight with George Clooney, because of course, news of this had broken since every single person on the set saw it. Russell decided to get back at the interviewer by claiming that they had used a real corpse for the shot where they showed a bullet passing through it. Of course, the story got picked up. The Morticians Association protested Warner Brothers for the unethical use of a corpse. David O. Russell thought that it was all very funny.

• 1:15:58Lizzie Bassett?

  So he spent the middle part of 1999 editing the film. In June, when he was still in post-production, he met with, not H.W., but George W. Bush, at the Bel Air House of Terry Semel. The then candidate was trying to win more support in California because the state had not backed a Republican candidate since 1988, when it had helped George H.W. Bush win. So Russell showed up in his trademark orange camo t-shirt. He said he went out of curiosity, thinking he was a renegade, but what happened next surprised even him. Of the encounter with Bush, Russell said, "He comes to shake my hand, and I say, 'I'm editing a movie right now that's going to question your father's legacy in Iraq.'" And Bush smiled and said, "Well, I guess I'm gonna have to go back there and finish the job." Yikes.

• 1:16:41Lizzie Bassett?

  On October 1st, 1999, Three Kings opened wide. It did pretty well at the box office, 60 million domestically, 47 million abroad, but it was the DVD sales that really brought home the gold. It made over $30 million in profit from the DVD sales alone. Bill Clinton evidently invited David O. Russell to the White House, and Russell said, quote, "We showed the movie, and it was a real quiet house. I was dying. The humor is not like there's something about Mary in big block letters, 'Hey, laugh at this, laugh at this. The material is as disturbing as it is funny.'" So I think people were self-conscious about laughing at stuff in front of the president so they wouldn't commit a faux pas. But, to his pleasant surprise, Clinton then proceeded to hold a two-hour on-the-fly seminar afterwards about the history of Iraqi policy dating back to the 1920s.

• 1:17:24Lizzie Bassett?

  He reportedly said to Russell, "Apart from being a fabulous movie, this is an important movie because people need to know how this war really ended." And then he jetted off to Epstein's Island.

• 1:17:32Chris Winterbauer?

  And then he said, "Now, can you teach me how you abuse the young interns on your films?"

• 1:17:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Everyone's terrible.

• 1:17:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Let's continue to desecrate the offices with our power. Yeah, that's more Joe Biden than Bill Clinton, but yes, you get the point.

• 1:17:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Despite great critical acclaim, the film received zero Oscar nominations because 1999 was crazy.

• 1:17:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I was curious what was nominated for screenplay and picture that year, if we can do a quick sojourn.

• 1:18:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Best Picture was American Beauty, The Cider House Rules, The Green Mile, The Insider, and Sixth Sense. Best, would this be original screenplay? Yes, even though he rewrote it. Tough category. Winner was American Beauty, being John Malkovich was nominated, Magnolia was nominated, The Sixth Sense was nominated, and then Topsy Turvy, interesting, by Mike Lee. I would maybe put this in.

• 1:18:25Chris Winterbauer?

  I would say that arguably the best original screenplay category is more stacked than the Best Picture category that year.

• 1:18:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 1:18:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, tough year.

• 1:18:35Lizzie Bassett?

  As for original screenwriter John Ridley, he felt pretty slighted by the whole thing, and I can't say I blame him for what he did about it. David O. Russell wanted to publish the script for The Three Kings in book form, and Ridley had this to say, quote, "I get calls all the time from the producers in the studio asking me to please let him publish this thing, but I've been completely disrespected through this whole process, and now they're asking for a favor? The answer is no." To that, Russell responded, quote, "I'm shocked that he's blocking the book. I think he's doing it because he's embarrassed by how little of his screenplay ended up in the movie." He later said, quote, "If he wants to direct his own scripts, he should control them a little bit. If he thinks it's such a dwork of genius, I think he'd let me publish my script. I even offered to publish both scripts in one volume." What a guy. Following this, both David O. Russell and George Clooney have had some choice words to say about each other.

• 1:19:20Lizzie Bassett?

  So let's go through a little timeline of where their relationship stands now. In 2000, in a Playboy interview, George Clooney gave this version of events. He said, "I was trying to make things work. I went over, 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.'" And then, you know, George Clooney reiterates the same story. Russell starts screaming at him. He's telling him to hit him. He says that Russell got him by the throat, so it does change a little bit here. In 2004, Clooney said, quote, "Quite honestly, if he comes near me, I'll sock him right in the fucking mouth." David O. Russell pushed back and said, quote, "I never physically attacked him. If I ran into him, I'd say, 'Shut the fuck up, you lying ass bitch.'"

• 1:20:00Chris Winterbauer?

  These are like 45-year-old men, like, speaking publicly about their jobs.

• 1:20:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:20:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Could you imagine?

• 1:20:06Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:20:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Like a prominent lawyer being, "Shut the fuck up."

• 1:20:10Lizzie Bassett?

  You lying ass bitch. In 2012, George Clooney said that he actually had spoken to David O. Russell at this point. He said, quote, "I felt to go over and go, 'So are we done?'" And he goes, "Please." And I said, "Okay, we made a really, really great film, and we had a really tough time together, but it's a case of us both getting older. I do appreciate the work he continues to do, and I think he appreciates what I'm trying to do." So they put it to bed, Chris. Just kidding, in 2024, while promoting Wolves, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, in an interview together, talked about how, you know, acting is for young people. They've become more selective about the work that they choose to do and who they choose to work with. And then George Clooney said, quote, "And so it's not just like, 'Oh, I'm gonna go do a really good film like Three Kings, and I'm gonna have a miserable fuck like David O. Russell making my life hell,

• 1:20:55Lizzie Bassett?

  making every person in the crew's life hell. It's not worth it, not at this point in my life, just to have a good product.'" He's not over it. Now, of course, we talked about this following the leaked audio of David O. Russell's meltdown on iHeart Huckabes set. He entered what was basically a six-year break from filmmaking, which he referred to as an unwanted hiatus. He told The New York Times in 2013, "A lot of things happened. I was very humbled, but that was good. Humbled in the sense that I had gotten divorced, and I was helping to raise a son who faces bipolar issues, but I'd also lost my way in terms of what kind of movies I wanted to make." Six years after Huckabes, Russell returned with the three films in four years that people termed his reinvention trilogy. You mentioned these, Chris, but it was The Fighter in 2010, Silver Linings Playbook in 2012, and American Hustle in 2013.

• 1:21:41Lizzie Bassett?

  And unfortunately, he also continues to be an abusive asshole. Altercations with his actors and other directors have continued. If we ever cover American Hustle, we will talk about his dynamic with Amy Adams on that set. Amy Adams told GQ in 2016, "Jennifer Lawrence doesn't take any of it on. She's Teflon, and I am not Teflon, but I also don't like to see other people treated badly. It's not okay with me. Life to me is more important than movies. It really taught me how to separate work and home, because I was like, 'I cannot bring this experience home with me to my daughter.'" It should be noted that Christian Bale evidently stepped in and put David O. Russell in his place for how he was treating Amy Adams during that shoot.

• 1:22:18Chris Winterbauer?

  But continues to work with him.

• 1:22:20Lizzie Bassett?

  That's correct.

• 1:22:21Chris Winterbauer?

  On Amsterdam, for example.

• 1:22:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Worked with him on several things after this. Not to mention that time he put Christopher Nolan in a headlock at a party, because he felt Nolan had poached Jude Law when Russell wanted Jude Law for iHeart Huckabes. Of course, he would eventually get him, and Nolan would let him go for the prestige.

• 1:22:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I was gonna say, when did Nolan work with Jude Law?

• 1:22:38Lizzie Bassett?

  He didn't, because David O. Russell put him in a headlock at a party.

• 1:22:41Chris Winterbauer?

  That, especially if you've watched, like, interviews of Christopher Nolan, he's just so mild-mannered.

• 1:22:45Lizzie Bassett?

  He's so nice.

• 1:22:46Chris Winterbauer?

  But also, it would be so jarring, I would imagine, just for this guy to throw you in a headlock. Like, that guy's, eh?

• 1:22:52Lizzie Bassett?

  I'd be like, "For Jude Law? Take him."

• 1:22:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Please, please let go.

• 1:22:56Lizzie Bassett?

  And then, I am mentioning this because I'm sure people will bring it up if we don't. He has admitted to groping his 19-year-old niece, for which she filed a police report. The case was dropped. He claimed it was consensual. I'm not gonna get into it more than that, but it, you know, he has a history of physically assaulting people, so that is worth mentioning. I'll end this by saying it's very clear that he is an incredible filmmaker. I love almost all of his movies. I will probably continue to watch them. I definitely enjoy them, but I don't condone any of his behavior. And, you know, you mentioned this earlier, but like, I do think people need to be questioning whether or not he gets to keep making movies.

• 1:23:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, no, I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm just saying I think when people...

• 1:23:35Lizzie Bassett?

  You understand why people justify it.

• 1:23:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, I understand the mental math behind making the leap. That's my only point.

• 1:23:42Lizzie Bassett?

  I do, too.

• 1:23:43Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm not making a moral judgment one way or the other. I just, making movies is really hard. He clearly is good at it, and that is not to say that it justifies his behavior in any way.

• 1:23:52Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 1:23:53Chris Winterbauer?

  At all.

• 1:23:53Lizzie Bassett?

  It doesn't.

• 1:23:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm just trying to express my understanding as to why Christian Bale would go back to continue to work with him, even after stepping in on behalf of Amy Adams. To me, those two seemingly incompatible realities can coexist inside somebody's mind.

• 1:24:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I guess. Chris, what went right?

• 1:24:11Chris Winterbauer?

  David O. Russell's working style.

• 1:24:15Chris Winterbauer?

  No, um, I will give it to the writing, and I don't know. Maybe there's a way we can get John Ridley's first draft. I would love to read it if we could ever find it.

• 1:24:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I'd love to know. I mean, obviously, yes, the story came from him. Having, again, coming from my limited experience, but I've been in a situation where I've, as a director, rewritten a script. In the moment, I really felt like I had completely reinvented it. And now, a few years removed, I actually really can see, no, it has more of my voice in it, but it was really all there, and I was just reshaping it, you know what I mean, a little bit to fit me.

• 1:24:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Even though what you did was essentially a page one rewrite.

• 1:24:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Technically speaking, yes, but like, the architecture was there. The foundations were there, the characters were there. I think we overestimate the work we do in crafting something, and we really downplay it. We have a tendency to downplay the input maybe of other people when we get close to it.

• 1:25:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Which makes sense, because it is such a personal job.

• 1:25:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you feel like you're really pouring yourself into it.

• 1:25:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:25:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Maybe more than you are.

• 1:25:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 1:25:14Chris Winterbauer?

  But I would say whatever the ultimate calculus of what percentage would go to each person, I think this is a really tonally tricky and successful screenplay, ultimately.

• 1:25:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 1:25:25Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's really hard to do in the war genre and the Soldier of Fortune genre. You know, we talked about Gunga Dean, you know, which this movie, it's never name-checked by the filmmakers, but it feels like it's certainly pulling from it a little bit, or something like Kelly's Heroes or something like that. And I think this movie, there's not a lot out there quite like it. And so I'll give it to the script.

• 1:25:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Great. I'm gonna give it to the supporting cast, who we didn't get a ton of time to talk about, but Cliff Curtis.

• 1:25:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Kiwi.

• 1:25:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Kiwi, Cliff Curtis. While you can definitely tell he's from New Zealand, he is really lovely in this movie, as is Said Tagmawi, as are so many of the featured extras that appear in this. I just think all around, the acting and the ensemble cast is excellent. And we didn't even have time to talk about them, because David O. Russell was screaming and choking people too much. So I just wanna make sure that they get their due. Obviously, Nora Dunn, Judy Greer, like, everybody is great in this, and just feels very much like they all live within the same world, which I think is a very difficult thing to achieve on a movie, especially one like this, where it's a very unfamiliar world. So, all right, I think that wraps up our coverage of Three Kings. Let's wait a while before we go back to David O. Russell.

• 1:26:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Sounds good.

• 1:26:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I just don't want him to yell at me.

• 1:26:33Chris Winterbauer?

  You may hear from him after this episode drops. Well, Lizzie, thank you so much for taking us out to the desert and yelling in my face. Let's tell the folks at home how they can yell at people around them to help this podcast.

• 1:26:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Sure.

• 1:26:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Guys, if you're enjoying the show, there's a few easy ways to support it. Tell a family member or friend. Check out What Went Wrong. It's pretty fun. They talk about movies, some of your favorite movies, some movies that you wonder how they even got made, and we try to celebrate all of them. If you wanna go a step further, leave us a rating and review on whatever podcatcher you are listening to the show on. If you wanna go even further than that, make sure you subscribe, so you get our episodes every Monday and occasionally Friday in your podcast feed. If you guys want even more of this podcast, which I fundamentally don't understand, I hate listening to myself. But if you want even more of this podcast, for $5 a month, you can sign up via Spotify, Apple, or Patreon for our bonus episodes.

• 1:27:28Chris Winterbauer?

  We do these once a month at least. We've actually been trending towards two, maybe two and a half, maybe three a month. We're typically covering new releases. These are films that are out in theaters. We did The Odyssey this summer. We're doing Anne Hathaway Summer, End of Oak Street. We're gonna hit Verity in the fall, the weird psychosexual author drama. We don't know what's happening. It's very exciting. We love to talk about these movies. We love to hear what you guys think about these movies on Patreon in particular. Again, that is available through Spotify, Apple, and Patreon. And of course, all three of these also come with an ad-free RSS feed. That means all of our normal episodes show up in your podcast feed without ads. I do wanna mention, if you sign up via Apple, that ad-free episode may take a few extra hours to populate,

• 1:28:11Chris Winterbauer?

  so it may not show up until the afternoon of Monday, but be assured it will be coming your way. We're just dealing with a little technical limitation. Feel free to tweet Tim Cook and say, "Get your shit together," so we can have our podcast earlier in the day. And of course, for $50 on Patreon, you can get a Full Stop David O. Russell shout-out, just like one of these.

• 1:28:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no.

• 1:28:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you to our Full Stop patron supporters. I'm so sorry for what Lizzie's about to do to you. Again, you go to www.patreon.com/whatwentwrongpodcast.

• 1:28:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Let me get in character.

• 1:28:47Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, let's get this over with. You think you're special because you're a full stop supporter? Adrian Penn Korea, Alex Barrett, Angeline Renee Cook, Ben Schindelman, if that's even your real name. I'm just trying to help you. Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, C. Grace B. You know what? I'm being a collaborator. Have you ever thought about that? Chris Leal, COVID Diner, Datem3, David Friscalanti. I'm not here to be yelled at, even though I'm yelling at you. Darren and Dale Conkling, M. Zodiac, Evan Downey, Felicia G. I did not work on these Patreon shout outs for three years to have you yell at me in front of the crew.

• 1:29:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Film it yourself, Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, the broken glass kids, the cast and crew of When A Trip To Brown Town, Figure It Out Yourself, Half Greyhound. I have the biggest man crush on Chris Winterbauer, James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, J.J. Rapido. Go yourself. John D. Wilshire, Jory Hill Piper, Jose Emelano Salto Del Giorgio, Karina Kanaba, Kate Ellington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgashlager McCoy. You know what? Why don't you go work on your one woman show, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Lena LJ, Lousy Susan, Lydia Howes, Mandy Roll, Mark Bertha,

• 1:30:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nate Ashley, Nate The Knife. Focus on your acting. How about that? How about you try and remember your lines? Pete, Ree Peterson, Rosemary Southward. You're not a baby. You're not a baby. Act like a grown up. Rural Jur, Sadie, Just Sadie, So Man Shinani, Suzanne Johnson, The Provost Family. Oh, the Os sound like Os, do they? Shut the up, you lying. All right. Well, I feel terrible. Chris, what do we have coming up next week?

• 1:30:51Chris Winterbauer?

  We're actually going to talk about a movie that you mentioned today. We are going to be talking about Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, one of my favorite films of the 70s. Three Kings is a heist movie, and so I kind of wanted to follow it up with a heist movie, a great Pacino role. I'm really excited to talk about it and the complex history of films that are based on a true story.

• 1:31:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Great, I can't wait. We'll see you then. Bye.

• 1:31:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Bye.