Interview with David O. Russell

The Fourth King

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

David O.Russell has been sneaking up on us from behind for five years now. He made asmall splash on the indie scene in 1994 withSpanking the Monkey. In1996, he made an indie/mainstream comedy with Ben Stiller and Patricia Arquette,Flirting With Disaster. Both of these movies were admired andrespected. Neither was a huge hit and neither really blew anyone away like filmsby indie directors Joel Coen, Quentin Tarantino, or Kevin Smith. But now theworld will hear of David O. Russell and they will be impressed.

His new filmThree Kings is blowing away everyone who seesit. In a barren movie landscape it feels like something new. It's the storyof four soldiers (played by George Clooney, Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg, andSpike Jonze) at the end of the Gulf War who break into a bunker to steala pile of stolen gold for themselves. Instead they end up rescuing Iraqicivilians from their own army. Strangely, the movie has tested even betterwith women than with men. The movie has a look and feel and sound thatrivalsSaving Private Ryan. And, as with that movie, there'sOscar talk in the air.

Russell (The "O" in his name stands for "Owen")came to San Francisco recently to speak with journalists about his newmovie. Oddly enough, he looks a little like Ben Stiller, but more reserved.He seems very careful in choosing his words, and he videotapes us as hetalks. "I have 60 hours of tape from the beginning of this thing untilnow. Maybe I'll cut it all together and make something out of it."

"I've always wanted to do an action film where a guy got a splinter,"he begins, referring to the scene in which Spike Jonze gets a splinterjust before planting a bomb. ButThree Kings is not just anaction film. "A movie like this is very rich for me because it hasmany different faces to it. You could make a trailer from the first partof the movie and it would look like a comedy. You could make a trailerfrom the middle part of the movie and it would seem like an action movie."For example, Russell describes the several explosions in the movie, whichare all done in one shot. "To me that's more real. The car's blowingup on this guy, and we just park the camera. Of course the producer says,'we gotta run three cameras!' But if I cut three ways, then it just lookslike an action picture. Your brain has referenced that as a cartoon. IfI want to make you awake to it in a different way, I've gotta cover ita different way. I don't want to have action that suddenly feels like wewent into an action movie. I want it to feel like the fabric of the restof the movie."

"When I started, I didn't know that anyone else was making a warmovie, and then I found out that Spielberg and Malick were doing it, andI didn't care, because I thought, 'that's territory we've been over a milliontimes,' even if they do it brilliantly. Nobody's doing this."

Russell researched the Gulf War for 18 months to make sure he had specificdetails right. He even wanted a specific look for the film, based on newspaperphotographs. "If you look at the color Xeroxes from the L.A.TimesorUSA Today. This is the first war to really have color pictures in newspapers.And they have this color Xerox quality to them, which is very contrasty,and kinda blown out, and the colors really pop. So that was what we sawfor the look, because I think it's a really beautiful look. And it alsoseemed to be the look of that war. I kind of like that digital look. MaybeI'll do the next movie on digital. Because I spent a lot of money makingit look like it's digital."

On top of that, the movie is loaded with consumer culture. "Thiswas the first war where guys had their CD players over there, and someguys had Watchmans and were watching the war on TV, and cell phones, andall the stuff they stole from Kuwait, which is one of the richest countriesin the world."

Oliver Stone was known for making his actors go through boot camp totrain for his war pictures, but Russell didn't feel that was necessary,though he did pay attention to his advisors. "We had three militaryadvisors. One was a Sergeant-Major Special Forces guy, who had died duringproduction, perhaps due to chemicals he was exposed to in the Gulf. Reallygood guy. He was in Vietnam. Tried to steal a six-ton gold Buddha froma temple. Amazing guy. He and George really hit it off. The other guy wasa trained Navy Seal--also a Gulf veteran. And a Colonel who was the sheriffof Sierra Madre, California, who was the Sergeant-Major's commanding officer.His name was King Davis. We had to hire him because his name was King.They took the guys shooting a bunch of times, they gave them the lingo.Then they had a four-day mission. We built our sets and they did an assaulton the town. But they didn't sleep out there or anything. They slept inthe Holiday Inn."

"We also had three Arab advisors, cause you want to get the languageright, get the religion right, the graffiti. There were two guys in ourcast who personally defaced like 300 murals of Saddam. And those muralsare for real. Those are taken from real pictures. They make him as everything;a doctor, with children, everything."

Unlike the stream of Vietnam and World War II movies of the past 20years,Three Kings is the first movie about the Gulf War; awar that happened in most moviegoers' lifetimes. "A strange warfarewith an ambiguous ending," Russell says. Yet, the movie begins whenthe war ends. "The war to me itself wasn't very interesting. Whatwas interesting was the moment everybody stopped paying attention. Andthat was very fertile for making a movie. They broke out the yellow ribbons.Meanwhile, these guys are partying -- drinking liquor out of mouthwash bottles,because no liquor was allowed in Saudi Arabia -- and 60 miles away there'sa democratic uprising. Which to me, was a mind-blowing opportunity fora movie that felt likeM*A*S*H (1970) in some parts, and reallypowerful drama in other parts. Because you start out with theM*A*S*Hpartying, they go for a joyride, and now they're in the middle of somethingmore serious. It has to become a very human fable for me, at the end. There'sa face. It's not a computer grid of a bomber. It's some guys who hateSaddam as much as we do."

To that end, Russell was concerned about making the action scenes effective."The whole approach that I took to the bullets in the movie was totry to make a bullet alive to an audience who is benumbed to bullets. So,number one, that means fewer bullets. I write at a friends house sometimes,'cause it's less lonely, and one friend is an emergency room doctor. Iwas asking him, what does the bullet actually do? He described it to me.And I asked what's the weirdest wound? You can get a wound that doesn'tkill you. The bullet goes through your lung and you can walk around. Butthe air is leaking out of your lung everytime you breathe. So your ownbreathing can kill you, because your own breathing will crush your organs.It'll turn into a balloon in there. And they have to puncture it to letit out. And I thought, 'that's never been in a movie.'"

"We had this minimal sound design that I loved. We had this veryspare, dense, and quiet sound. And I came back from working with the composer,and the sound mixers did their professional Hollywood job, which was toBruce Willis-ize it. So the shootouts suddenly became KABLAM -- huge bullet!And I said, 'No! Gotta change it.' It completely changes the scene. I wanted'pop, pop', not 'BOOM!'"

Russell, who seemed to be heading into the realm of comedy directorsimply stumbled upon the idea for a Gulf War movie. John Ridley, who iscredited with the story ofThree Kings had sold an entire screenplayto Warner Brothers, who then didn't know what to do with it. Russell lookedthrough their log book and saw one line, "heist set in the Gulf War.""I was researching this turn-of-the-century mystery for myself atthe time. But I couldn't stop thinking about this one thing. I got thisL.A.Times book that was day-by-day of the war and I saw Bart Simpson,and I saw hundreds of soldiers being stripped in the desert -- this bizarreritual -- taking prisoners. I thought it was so funny and odd. I saw greenCadillacs -- things that were taken from Kuwait. And I though, 'I could gonuts in this environment.' And nobody's done it. And the more I researchedit, I thought, 'there's a story here that hadn't been told.' I went downthat road, and I never read Ridley's script, because I didn't want to pollutemy own idea. I'm told that it's a more straight-ahead action picture. Johngets credit where it's due. The germ of the idea that I took was his."

Russell's unusual casting reminded me of Howard Hawks'Rio Bravo(1959) with its cast of musicians Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson teamingup with John Wayne. But Russell wasn't thinking along those lines. He wasjust casting the way he wrote the parts. "The parts were written thatway. George Clooney had a passion for the part, and he was trying to putsome of his weaker pictures behind him. I was happy to work with him becausehe had done strong work inOut of Sight (1998). Same thingwith Mark (Wahlberg) inBoogie Nights (1997). He has a qualityof being a regular guy, also won't take any shit, and also seems very sweet.He's also very serious as an actor, which I didn't understand, and I thinkmore people will increasingly understand. His aspirations are equal toDeNiro's. He's friends with DeNiro. Cube was the first person I cast. Iwanted either him or Charlie Hays, who played 3rd base for the Yankeesin the '96 World Series. He now plays for the Giants. I liked his energy.He's very focused, quiet, solid, intense, no-nonsense. Cube had that inspades. And that's how I cast him. I loved him inBoyz N the Hood(1991). I thought he really hadn't had an opportunity since then to dosome serious acting, which he wants to do, which is why there are no songsof his here."

Spike Jonzeis known for his insane talent in directing music videos, like the Beastie Boys'"Sabotage," Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet," Weezer's "BuddyHolly" and "Undone (The Sweater Song)" and the upcoming featurefilmBeing John Malkovich. Jonze and Russell were friends, but Jonzehad never acted before and the two were concerned about one director directingthe other. But they did some rehearsal and it worked out fine. Russell says hebenefited from having Spike on the set. "Spike is more of a friend of mine,and had my ear more. Having Spike around helped me to aspire to try harder andbe more original. I like that Spike's a first-time actor. It brings a goodenergy to the set. It gets everybody on their toes. There's somebody there who'snew to it. It throws everybody off a little bit."

Russell says that in directing the movie, the key is knowing your scriptwell. "I got the script in my bones. I know every cell of it. Allthe work is done in the writing." But writing the screenplay was thehardest part. He says that he would love to direct someone else's screenplaybecause, "it sure would be a lot easier." But the right one hasn'tcome along yet. "Warren Beatty said to me it's as hard to read a screenplayas it is to write one. And I agree with that. I was sentGood WillHunting and I didn't get it. I was sentFight Club andI didn't get it. Warren Beatty told me that Robert Towne read the scriptforReds and didn't get it. Told him it was a catastrophe."

If the movie is successful, will Russell consider a sequel? "Idon't think so. If somebody wanted to make a funny TV series. If somebodyreally smart wanted to do it..."

For Russell it was important to capture the multiple layers of experienceof the war: the comedy, the tragedy, the heart, the cynicism. One scenein the movie encapsulates that, "when they burst through the doorof that second bunker. Eddie Murphy's playing. Rodney King's on TV. There'sa guy on a Nordic Track. There's a guy offering George Clooney a Cuisinart.The other guy's trying to offer a CD player to Mark. Open this door -- there'sa guy getting tortured in here! When you shoot that, that's a half a pageon the script. The producer says, 'OK, we can shoot this by lunch.' Youget on the set, and that is a lot of material to photograph. And a lotof actors to direct. A lot of shots to set up. Right away, 'this is goingto take us all day. Maybe two days.' Producer goes, 'varoom half of it.What's the purpose of the scene? They're walking through the room to getdownstairs to the gold!' And I said, 'no, this is the movie.'

September 25, 1999

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Interview with David O. Russell

The Fourth King