IT'S NOT UNCOMMON FOR FILMMAKers to have problems with their stars, but writer-director David O. Russell had an unusual conflict while shooting his second feature film last year: Should he or should he not tell Alan Alda he had been a waiter at Alda's daughter's wedding just a few years earlier? "Every time I was about to, I thought, 'Don't tell him. He's not going to take your direction the same way if he knows that.'"
That dilemma is an indication of how sharp a climb Russell, 37, has made since his first film, Spanking the Monkey, two years ago. An...
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