avid O. Russell is a filmmaker whose entire career has been synonymous with controversy. His first movie was a black comedy about incest called Spanking The Monkey that premiered at Sundance in 1994. While the project was generally well-received and launched Russell’s directorial career, oddly enough, some people found the subject matter inappropriate. Since then he has only made three films (Flirting With Disaster, Three Kings, and I Heart Huckabees), hardly a large output for such an undeniably talented filmmaker. While much of this delay can be chalked up to a combination of selectiveness on the part of the director and the limited commercial appeal of his projects, its seeming more and more likely that Russell’s competitive and combustive personality make him almost impossible to work with. His last two projects were marred by infamous fights with his actors and his latest movie has suffered from similar problems before shutting down production on Friday.

By now the exploits of David O. Russell on the sets of The Kings and I Heart Huckabees are legendary. After constantly screaming at his crew and making unreasonable demands, tensions between Russell and Clooney got so bad that the two had an actual fistfight in the middle of production on Three Kings. Tension between the director and his cast is a common complaint on almost any Russell project, primarily because of his demanding directorial style (Russell never says “action” or “cut”, he merely runs film all day every day and shouts commands at his actors while they are in the middle of a scene). This unconventional style can be quite difficult for actors and it lead to a huge altercation between Lilly Tomlin and Russell on the set of I Heart Huckabees. Because the director never stopped filming, footage of the fight was captured and eventually found its way to youtube.