Listen, I am no fan of Don’t Worry Darling. It’s riddled with plot holes, one of the leads can’t act, and the twist ending is both nonsensical and derivative. Hell, even its title is grammatically deficient. And the film’s director, Olivia Wilde, deserves some of the blame. She recruited a sexy pop star for a demanding role—who she then romanced—when he clearly wasn’t ready; disparaged her eminently likable leading lady in an effort to lure back the accused abuser he replaced; is rumored to have butted heads with said leading lady; cringeworthily bragged about the film’s illogical sex scenes in interviews (“Men don’t come in this film… only women here!”); and framed the entire picture as an anti-incel paean to feminism when it is anything but.
Warner Bros. Discovery, its embattled distributor, deserves some as well. The company inexplicably positioned the film as a prestige Oscar contender, replete with an award-season release date/ad campaign and flashy unveiling at the Venice Film Festival, instead of the trashy thriller it is.
All this sound and fury has resulted in a reputational hit to Wilde, who’s been cast as the villain of this tabloid saga in the eyes of the public. Whether that’s fair or not is up for debate, but one thing is certain: she is a goddamn saint compared to David O. Russell.
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Like Wilde, Russell has a splashy new film, Amsterdam, hitting theaters (Oct. 7). It stars Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington as a vagabond trio of World War I vets who reunite in 1933 to foil a fascist plot to overthrow the U.S. government. It is also, in this writer’s opinion, the worst movie of the year—a meandering mess crammed with poor performances from its starry cast (Robert De Niro, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Rami Malek, Taylor Swift, and Timothy Olyphant among it) and more embarrassing liberal sloganeering than Lingua Franca’s sweater collection.
The approach has been markedly different. Unlike Wilde and Don’t Worry Darling, Disney has chosen to quietly promote Amsterdam and make Russell unavailable to press, lest they question him about his long history of abhorrent behavior.
Rumors of Russell’s behavior first spread around 1999’s Three Kings. Star George Clooney and Russell were said to have come to blows after Clooney confronted Russell over his mistreating the crew, which allegedly included belittling a camera-car driver, yelling at a script supervisor until she cried, and attacking an extra. Clooney later called it “truly, without exception, the worst experience of my life,” while Russell denied everything. Later, The New York Times reported that he put Christopher Nolan in a headlock at a Hollywood party over the services of Jude Law; and set video from I Heart Huckabees leaked of him wildly berating Lily Tomlin, calling her a “bitch” and a “fucking cunt,” while hurling props in her direction.
All of this, however, pales in comparison to the time Russell was accused of fondling his niece.
As The Daily Beast previously reported, Russell’s transgender niece filed a police report for battery in 2011 alleging that, when she was 19, she and Russell were at a Florida gym discussing hormones when he “put his hands under [her] top and felt both breasts.” She also said that Russell offered to help her with ab workouts while his hand “hovered above” her “private parts.”
Though Russell didn’t end up facing any charges, the director admitted to police that the incident occurred, telling them his niece was “acting very provocative toward him” and that he was “curious about the breast enhancement.” The police report further said, “Russell stated she is always causing drama since the transgender transformation and has become very provocative and seductive.” A “family source” later told TMZ that “Russell’s niece really looked up to him... and she believes he lured her into a false sense of security before taking advantage of her.”
In 2014, The Daily Beast uncovered emails from the Sony hack between executives at the studio—which distributed his film American Hustle—discussing Russell’s sordid reputation. In an email to studio chief Amy Pascal, her co-president of production for Columbia Pictures, Michael De Luca, wrote, “David’s a loon, talented but geez once I saw him bring Sally Field to a party and reduce her to tears. Plus remember when he got in trouble for feeling up his transgender nieces [sic] boobs?” Another email from the Sony hack said Hustle’s Russell “so abused Amy Adams that Christian Bale got in his face and told him to stop acting like an asshole.” (Adams later confirmed this to British GQ).
The Daily Beast also revealed that Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid less than their male co-stars for Russell’s American Hustle, sparking a larger conversation about the gender pay gap in Hollywood.
It’s easy to understand why the public’s been so enraptured by the drama surrounding Don’t Worry Darling. But wouldn’t it be great if people directed more of their energy toward David O. Russell’s actual, far more disturbing missteps than Olivia Wilde’s perceived ones? Or would that be less fun?
