George Clooney says David O. Russell is a 'miserable f‑‑‑', won't work with him ever again
"It's not worth it. Not at this point in my life," Clooney said reflecting on working with Russell on the 1999 film "Three Kings."
George Clooney isn't done talking about how much he hated working with David O. Russell.
In a joint profile of Clooney and "BFF" Brad Pitt in GQ, the pair struck up a conversation about "time allocation." As Clooney put it, "The older you get, time allotment is very different. Five months out of your life is a lot." Five months, say, shooting a movie with David O. Russell?
Clooney didn't need to be prompted to be specific. He continued, "So it’s not just like, 'Oh, I’m going to go do a really good film, like Three Kings, and I’m going to have a miserable fuck like David O Russell making my life hell. Making every person in the crew’s life hell.'"
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George Clooney and David O. Russell.Woof!
After reportedly fighting to star in Russell's 1999 Gulf War heist film, Clooney quickly reversed course on the director, and has been letting anyone in the ensuing years who asks know how terrible he found Russell to work with.
He told Entertainment Weekly while on theThree Kings set that he found Russell to be "a weirdo, and he’s hard to talk to,” but curbed his comments with a cordial, "but that's what makes his writing unique and interesting."
The gloves were off by the following year, when Clooney chronicled Russell's shocking on-set behavior in detail. According to The Washington Post, Clooney claimed to have witnessed the director assault an extra who was nervous about performing a stunt, and when Clooney stepped in to defend them, Russell allegedly head-butted Clooney and grabbed him by the throat.
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The New York Times reported on another physical altercation in 2003. Russell allegedly put director Christopher Nolan in a headlock at a party in an effort to force Nolan to release Jude Law from a contract so he could star in Russell's upcoming I Heart Huckabees.
After that film was released, a shocking tape of Russell berating Lily Tomlin on set surfaced. In 2007, Clooney admitted to feeling "vindicated" by the evidence of the aggressive behavior he claimed to have witnessed on his own Russell set. Five years later, however, Clooney told The Hollywood Reporter that he "saw David" recently at a party and "felt compelled to go over and go, 'So are we done?'"
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Whispers of Russell's aggressive on set behavior haven't ceased over the years. Amy Adams described being "devastated" on the set of American Hustle in 2016, not just because she discovered a glaring pay disparity between herself and her male costars, but because, "I also don’t like to see other people treated badly. It’s not OK with me."
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"It’s not worth it," Clooney told GQ. "Not at this point in my life. Just to have a good product.”
It may also simply be that Clooney is finally just saying what he wants to say. In response to recent disparaging remarks Clooney's From Dusk Till Dawn costar Quentin Tarantino had about Clooney's career, the star shot back, “Quentin said some s--- about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him [...] I’m like, all right, dude, f--- off.”
Remarking on his own cameo as Batman in The Flash, he remarked in December, “I don't think there are enough drugs in the world for me to go back" to playing the caped crusader in a full feature film again.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.