George Clooney & David O. Russell Will Never Work Together After Three Kings - Here's Why

Is there anything as heartwarming as a story about a jerk in Hollywood getting their comeuppance? Perhaps a jerk in Hollywood getting his comeuppance courtesy of one of the biggest movie stars in the world. This is exactly what happened to David O. Russell when the notorious (yet somehow still regularly employed) director worked with George Clooney on the film "Three Kings" back in the late '90s.

A dark military comedy set in the aftermath of the Gulf War, "Three Kings" was the third feature film by Russell. The filmmaker also got script credit on the film's screenplay, though outlets including Entertainment Weekly reported at the time that John Ridley actually wrote it. "Three Kings" starred Clooney, Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg, and Spike Jonze, and it received near-universal acclaim upon release. It was nominated for a Critics Choice Award and a WGA Award, and it no doubt opened doors for Russell, who would go on to make movies like "The Fighter," "Silver Linings Playbook," "American Hustle," and most recently, 2022's "Amsterdam." Clooney wasn't in any of those movies, though, because as he alleged to GQ UK this week, the filmmaker made his and everyone else's life "hell" on set.

To understand Clooney's recent statements about Russell (more on those later), it's important to go back to the start: a story that first emerged during the film's press tour, in which Clooney admitted he came to blows with Russell on set. A New York Times piece from 2000 painted Clooney as a hothead, confirming the on-set fight without explaining much context. "We throttled each other," Clooney is quoted as saying, citing mistreatment of the crew as his reason for duking it out with the director. To summarize, he simply said, "It was a really bad experience." Russell was also quoted in the piece, saying "There were times when I felt like killing George and he felt like killing me."

Clooney explained the situation in more depth during an interview featured in the July issue of Playboy that year, an archived copy of which can be found on a fan forum. Clooney told the outlet that Russell screamed at people every day on set and eventually grew violent. The actor said he once yelled at the director for belittling a camera-car driver in front of everyone on set, and he also wrote a letter to Russell requesting he simmer down after he allegedly made a script supervisor cry. According to Clooney, things were okay after that until a day when Russell, apparently stressed about the film being behind schedule, pushed and kicked an extra who was hesitant to perform a stunt with Clooney.

"Do you want to be in this f***ing movie?" Clooney recalled Russell saying to the actor, before throwing the walkie talkie of an assistant director who attempted to intervene. According to Clooney, that AD quit on the spot, and Russell started to antagonize Clooney when he attempted to diffuse the situation. Here's the rest of Clooney's side of the story, as told to Playboy:

"He turned on me and said, 'Why don't you just worry about your f***ed-up act? You're being a d**k. You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Come on, p***y, hit me.' I'm looking at him like he's out of his mind. Then he started banging me on the head with his head. He goes, 'Hit me, you p***y. Hit me.' Then he got me by the throat and I went nuts. Waldo, my buddy, one of the boys, grabbed me by the waist to get me to let go of him. I had him by the throat. I was going to kill him. Kill him. Finally, he apologized, but I walked away. By then the Warner Bros. guys were freaking out. David sort of pouted through the rest of the shoot and we finished the movie, but it was truly, without exception, the worst experience of my life."

Obviously, it was such a bad experience that Clooney is still thinking about it years later. In 2004, he told Premiere Magazine that he'd "sock [Russell] right in the f***ing mouth" if he saw him again, to which The Guardian says Russell responded by calling Clooney a "lying-ass b***h." In his new interview with GQ (alongside alleged abuser Brad Pitt, ironically), Clooney once again brought up "Three Kings." He used the set experience as an example of something he wouldn't want to be trapped in now that he's older, with limited time to do everything he wants with his life and career. "Five months out of your life is a lot," Clooney explained. "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 f*** like David O Russell making my life hell. Making every person in the crew's life hell,'" he told GQ.

A good movie isn't a fair trade-off for a terrible experience like the one he had with Russell, according to Clooney. "It's not worth it," he concluded. "Not at this point in my life. Just to have a good product." This makes sense, and it's a worthwhile lesson not just for actors, but for anyone anywhere who might be able to step away from whatever toxic person is wasting what poet Mary Oliver would call their "one wild and precious life." The onus, of course, is also on the Hollywood executives and powerful actors who continue to enable Russell despite decades of deeply troubling allegations against him.