"He has his own unique bearing; you've got to know that going in," said "Smokin' Aces" director Joe Carnahan. "And he's not an apologist." [...]

"It's just hard to understand unless you're part of the club in a certain respect," said "I (Heart) Huckabees" cinematographer Peter Deming. "When people see this clip, particularly if you're not in the film business, they'd think, 'This guy's insane!' But he's not. Things happen when you're in this machine that's been rolling along for several months."[...]

Producer Greg Goodman, a longtime friend and producer on "Huckabees" and Russell's earlier film "Three Kings," said the clip was taken out of context.

"He's a very responsible filmmaker who wants to make sure we're coming in on budget," said Goodman. (And indeed, "Huckabees" came in on time and on budget.) "He is an individual. You embrace that."

It's ironic that at the precise moment Russell was demonstrating the maximum extent of his individuality, the flying desk implements and imminent choking threat made an actor/auteur embrace largely unfeasible. Still, if Tomlin was long ago able to make peace with her on-set adversary, shouldn't we all, and merely ratchet up the leaked footage to something akin to a front row surgical theater seat, offering us a rare and startling glimpse inside an open showbiz cavity, and the messy secrets of the filmmaking process within?

• Friends defend Russell as 'Huckabees' video gathers steam [LAT]

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You've denied leaking the Huckabees footage. But is it possible we will ever see any similar material from Three Kings?

GEORGE CLOONEY: The funny thing is that that tape has been going around for about two and a half years. And everybody's seen it. I saw it when we were shooting Ocean's Twelve. I felt bad for Lily but I also felt a little vindicated for anyone that thought that that had anything to do with me on [Three Kings].

But, you know, the last thing in the world I would have done is stick it on the Internet. I don't even know how to get onto YouTube. So there's not going to be any Three Kings things. There are pranks I like to play [but] that [posting this kind of footage online] falls into the world of screwing with people's careers. I'm up for a good fight, but not sneaky. I like 'em face-to-face.''

So there you have it: If video of his excitable Kings director trying to kick a mounted machine gun off an armored jeep after a particularly contentious day of shooting should one day anonymously surface online, the questioning should start with a possibly disgruntled co-star like Ice Cube, who still might be a little bitter that Russell chose Mark Wahlberg over him for a juicy role in Huckabees, abandoning him to a career filled with Vin Diesel's sloppy seconds and cred-killing family comedies.

• ''Huckabees'' Whacks [EW.com]

· A single Huckabees parody video per day is never enough, so here's another one.
· Out of all the late-series, Cousin Oliver-type characters from the 80's sitcoms, we always thought Chrissy from Growing Pains was going to turn out to be the bad seed. Guess we were wrong.
· Michael Jackson shocker! Erstwhile King of Pop a possible attention-whoring malingerer!
· Jenna Jameson suffering from that not-so-fresh, just-had-my-labia-blasted-off-with-lasers feeling.
· Hey, totally adorable, hand-holding otters!

Our friends over at CollegeHumor kept the cameras rolling during a particularly difficult shoot for their The Michael Showalter Showalter series, capturing behind-the-scenes video of a dramatic on-set meltdown the likes of which Hollywood hasn't witnessed in hours. But before you vilify the talented—but notoriously difficult—Showalter for his outburst, please realize that infamous diva Paul Rudd was clearly asking for it with his unrelenting bitching following each take.

"It will do for Washington, D.C., what 'Talladega Nights' did for race car driving," Wick said. "We are going for a bold, subversive comedy, and David O. Russell is one of the most original voices working in comedy."

This could get good if Wick really believes that Talledega Nights constitutes "bold and subversive comedy," and that wasn't just a calculated comparison he made to make sure his project doesn't get quickly buried by a spooked Sony. But even if that kind of movie is actually what the studio expects to extract from a director who spent three years making a film about existential detectives, executives shouldn't be that surprised when they start seeing dailies in which an off-camera Russell can be heard screaming at a visibly exhausted Will Ferrell, "I don't care if we've been doing this scene for seven hours already.You will run around the Capitol building in your underwear as many fucking times as I tell you to, motherfucker. The studio wants you jogging in tighty-whiteys, that's exactly what they're fucking going to get."

• Russell going to D.C. for Gore's 'Hill' [THR]

[Also: We feel like such dirty, dirty little whores now that George and his trusty flack are running around sticking his filthy denial in every quivering media-hole they can find. We thought we were special! You know what? Fuck Darfur!]

• Clooney's Million-Dollar Rumor Reward [ET Online]
• Previously: Defamer Publicist Denial Corner: Clooney Not Involved In Huckabees Video Leak, Says Clooney [Defamer]

To Radar and Defamer.com

In response to a story carried by your respective web sites, George Clooney has written the following to you:
———————-

Contrary to popular opinion. neither the sound man, Ed Tise, nor yours truly sent in the David O. Russell tape.

I saw it when we were working on "Ocean's 12," and there have been quite a few copies traveling around town for the last couple of years.

Any rumor that either of us put it on the internet is simply false.

And I'd offer a million bucks to anyone who would prove otherwise.

Your fan,

George Clooney

Backing up his claim with a generous financial offer for information linking him to the video's internet debut is a nice touch, though we're a little disappointed he didn't extend the idea a little further. CLOONEY PLACES MILLION DOLLAR BOUNTY ON HEAD OF REAL RUSSELL VIDEO LEAK would make for a much more compelling story than the simple, anticlimactic denial he and his trusty flack are offering.

• Theory: Was Prankster Clooney Behind The 'Huckabees' Clips? [Defamer]

Clooney's rep, Stan Rosenfield, insists the star had nothing to do with it. "The question is preposterous. He doesn't know how to put a video on YouTube. He barely knows how to e-mail."

But perhaps he had some help?

Clooney is currently at work on Leatherheads, a football comedy set in the 1920s that he's starring in and directing. Among the crew members listed on the film's IMDb page is sound mixer Edward Tise. The two last worked together on Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck, and, before that, on Three Kings.

He also served in the same capacity on—you guessed it—I Heart Huckabees. A message left for Tise at Leatherheads' production office hasn't been returned, but one Hollywood insider cautions that Clooney would have had a wide variety of accomplices to choose from: "When a director is like that, it makes the entire crew want to do things to him."

Even if the alleged soundman/Clooney tag-team leaked the clips, they probably won't ever admit to violating the pact of secrecy between tantrum-throwing, headlock-happy director and aggrieved cast and crew members. Hopefully, the knowledge that whoever's responsible gave the entire industry a solid week of pitch meeting and happy hour small talk taking the general form of, "Holy shit! How awesome was it when Russell comes back in and kicks that stuff off the desk!" will be satisfaction enough for our anonymous heroes.

• Huckabees Clip a Clooney Production? [Radar]

By now you have undoubtedly watched the now-infamous footage of Lily Tomlin and David O. Russell's love-in on the set of I Heart Huckabees dozens and dozens of times (if not, hey, there's a video hovering right above these words! Convenient!), delighting anew at every bird flipped in frustration and each heartfelt, profane accusation of directorial incest. The clips' rapid proliferation via the YouTubes prompted the Miami New Times to ask Tomlin what she thinks about having the three-year-old laundry run out on the interweb clothesline for a fresh airing:

"Oh my God, the one in the car is on there too?" Tomlin asked, referring to one of the two videos, which were shot during two different scenes. In "the one in the car," Tomlin tells Russell: "Leave me the fuck alone! Do you know what the fuck is going on, period? Fuck you! Fuck you motherfucker!"

"I can't believe the damn car is in there. I've never seen it. Is that when I'm sitting in the seat and really going nuts? Oh my God, I'm gonna die when I see that," Tomlin told New Times, laughing.

"I love David," she said. "There was a lot of pressure in making the movie — even the way it came out you could see it was a very free-associative, crazy movie, and David was under a tremendous amount of pressure. And he's a very free-form kind of guy anyway. [...]

"Adults have fights and go through stuff," Tomlin said Tuesday. "I know some people are more dignified in the world, that if you transgress against that kind of professionalism, that it's some kind of great sin, but I don't see it that way."

She called the episode "in a way liberating... now it's all over, and so what, and I don't have to keep up some great pretention I'm the most dignified, eloquent, elegant, perfect, smart-thinking, kind, generous person. I'm just a plain old human with a whole bunch of flaws.""

The suggestion that there were no hard feelings following the incidents was originally made in that 2004 NYT piece about the delightfully turbulent Huckabees set (excerpted here), but it's still nice to hear that she has a sense of humor about it and that even after so much time, Lily and David O. are all hugs n' headlocks. Perhaps we'll even get a new edition of the DVD soon, featuring commentary tracks over the footage in which Tomlin and Russell share laughs about the tense moments like, "When you came back in through that stage door, I thought you really might kill me! But then I realized we all have our process, and I wasn't really in danger. My next take was really spectacular, my heart was pumping! You're so good!"

• Lily Tomlin Reacts to Leaked Videos [Miami New Times]

We don't know how or why these two utterly amazing clips of Lily Tomlin and David O. Russell, the headlockingest, Clooney-feudingest director in all of Hollywoodland, sharing a couple of very special moments on the set of I Heart Huckabees (video whose existence on the talent agency tape-swapping black market we first heard about in a Sharon Waxman NY Times piece in 2004—more on that later) have suddenly surfaced on the YouTubes, but here they are, giving us all a taste of the existential cockfight that the Huckabees shoot seems to have been.

After the jump, the desk-clearing, c-bomb-dropping scene that unfolded when frustrated actress and fed-up, talent-destabilizing director had finally had enough of one another:

[UPDATE: The original clips disappeared, but they're reappeared elsewhere on the YouTubes. We've replaced them here with the new versions.

UPDATE 2: They've come down again, but are now back up; new videos via omg blog.]

Just in case you'd like a little context for the clips, here's an excerpt from the Sharon Waxman article (which touched off a spat between the reporter and director at the time; reading the whole thing requires a TimesSelect membership) we mentioned above giving some background on the complicated Tomlin/Russell dynamic that contributed to the highly entertaining blow-up. Spoiler alert: Despite the friction, no one was murdered during production—a happy ending that only enriches subsequent viewings of both the videos and the eventual feature film.

July 24, 2003: The Car Trip [...]

So far, the actors have been remarkably tolerant of Mr. Russell's mischief. As Ms. Huppert later observed in a phone interview, the actors knew Mr. Russell was intentionally trying to destabilize them for the sake of their performances. ''He is fascinating, completely brilliant, intelligent and very annoying sometimes, too,'' she said. They also know he has created superb films from chaotic-seeming sets before. Besides, he's the director and the writer; now that they've cast their lot with him, they really don't have a choice.

But on what is meant to be the last take of the day, Ms. Tomlin, who recently ended an exhausting run of her one-woman play, collapses into Mr. Hoffman's arms crying and doesn't stop. As he embraces her, the wails grow louder and louder, and finally it becomes clear that she is not in character. After long moments, Ms. Tomlin breaks the tension by shouting at Mr. Hoffman: ''You're driving a hairpin into my head!'' Everyone collapses in laughter and the take is trashed.

But the drama is not over. The car scene takes several more hours to shoot, and as the sun fades, the accumulated tension erupts. Ms. Tomlin begins shouting at Mr. Russell: she is unhappy with the way she looks. She wants to try the scene a different way. She taunts him with a few expletives and curses at the other actors too. Their patience worn, the other actors laugh at her outburst.

Later, unfolding himself from the back seat of the Chevrolet, Mark Wahlberg jokes that his next project will be a nice, easy action film.

July 31, 2003: Candid Camera

The production has moved from the dried-up swamp to the set of the detectives' office. It is hot and cramped, and the hour is getting late. To pass the time while a shot is set up, Mr. Russell treats the crew to a description of a baby passing through the birth canal.

And then Ms. Tomlin is berating Mr. Russell again.

This time, the director turns on her angrily, calling her the crudest word imaginable, in front of the actors and crew. He shrieks: ''I wrote this role for you! I fought for you!'' Mr. Russell ends his tirade by sweeping his arm across a nearby table cluttered with production paraphernalia. He storms off the set and back on again, continually shouting. Then he locks himself in his office, refusing to return. After an uncomfortable, set-wide pause, Ms. Tomlin goes in to apologize, and Mr. Russell returns to the shoot.

Unbeknownst to both of them, a member of the crew has videotaped his tirade. The recording makes its way around the Hollywood talent agencies. Asked about the incident later, Mr. Russell says: ''Sure, I wish I hadn't done that. But Lily and I are fine.'' For her part, Ms. Tomlin admits that both she and Mr. Russell lost control. ''It's not a practice on his part or my part,'' she says. ''I'd rather have someone human and available and raw and open. Don't give me someone cold, or cut off, or someone who considers themselves dignified.''

This must be the Zen part.

• Screaming Huckabees [YouTube]
• Screaming Huckabees 2 [YouTube]
• The Nudist Buddhist Borderline-Abusive Love-In [NYT, sub. req'd.]