In one of their better headlines, TMZ reports about The Fighter and I Heart Huckabees director David O. Russell, “Transgender Niece Tells Cops — He Groped My Breasts.” They go onto say that she’s not even a blood relative, so I don’t really see what the big deal is.

David O. Russell — the Oscar-nominated director behind “The Fighter” — is under investigation in Florida for copping a feel of his 19-year-old transgender niece … but Russell told cops it was totally consensual.

David O. Russell is a hyper-intellectual director raised in New York City by a Jewish father and Catholic mother. He’s in Florida for five minutes and BOOM! Busted for feeling up a tranny relative. Oh, Florida. (*sad trombone, banjo run*)

The Broward County Sheriff’s Dept. has confirmed … Russell has been accused of inappropriately grabbing his niece’s breasts during a workout session at a South Florida hotel gym on Dec. 30.
According to the police report taken 3 days after the incident, Russell’s niece … who was born a man and is currently in the preoperative phase of her transition … told cops the two had been doing abdominal exercises when he asked questions about her transformation.
The niece — who does NOT have a blood relation to Russell — told cops they began to talk about her breasts … and how certain hormones she’s taking have made them larger.
According to the report, the niece claims Russell then “put his hands under [her] top and felt both breasts.”
Cops say the woman said she felt “uncomfortable” … but admitted she “did not ask him to stop at any time.”

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Aside from being a pretty good director, David O. Russell has two main claims to fame: calling Lily Tomlin a c*nt, and always casting Mark Wahlberg in his movies (all of them since Three Kings — Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, and The Fighter). While he’ll always be the Lily Tomlin-c*nt guy, the latter has reportedly changed, and if TheWrap is to be believed, Marky Mark is none to pleased about it.

Hollywood heavyweight [and real-life welterweight -Ed.] Mark Wahlberg has fallen out with his buddy director David O. Russell over the director’s decision to cast someone else in the lead of his new film, “The Silver Linings Playbook,” according to two individuals with knowledge of the relationship.

What, ah you too good fa Maahk Wahlberg now, cawksuckah? I FACKIN MADE YOU!

“They went with Brad Cooper because they felt he was hungrier and would work for cheaper,” Matt Muzio, Russell’s cousin and frequent collaborator, told TheWrap.
Muzio also fell out with the director recently, but said he was with Russell this summer on Martha’s Vineyard when the decision was made. Another individual close to Wahlberg confirmed the information.

BRADLEY FACKIN’ COOPAH? YOAH GONNA BURN ME FOAH THAT PRETTY FACKIN’ BLUE-EYED MAWMMA’S BOY? …I shoulda known you’d do me just like ya done yoah cousin, Matty da Wawp.

Wahlberg’s deal provided that he was to be paid an additional $900,000 if Anne Hathaway fell out of the project, according to two individuals with knowledge of the deal. Hathaway did indeed drop out, making Cooper the less expensive option to Wahlberg.
Wahlberg was paid a fee anyway, though another executive said it was because of his creative contribution to the Weinstein Co. project.
The decision to cast Cooper surprised Muzio and others because Wahlberg has been one of Russell’s most loyal friends in Hollywood, bringing him in on his pet project, “The Fighter,” after years of Russell being sidelined.
“If it weren’t for ‘The Fighter,’ ‘Silver Linings’ wouldn’t exist,” Muzio said.

Yeah, and if it weren’t for David O. Russell, The Fighter probably wouldn’t have been any good, so…

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In a shocking turn of events, multiple Academy Award-nominated director David O. Russell will not be making a film based on a videogame.  Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune once had Mark Wahlberg attached and Robert DeNiro rumored to star, but they’re probably gone too. We’ve now reached the part of the sitcom towards the end, after the main character has learned a valuable lesson and decided he actually doesn’t want to be a professional pie-eating contest judge, and everything goes back to normal.

Russell had seemed excited about the Columbia Pictures project, speaking frequently and enthusiastically about it as he made the rounds to promote “The Fighter” during awards season. But creative differences between him and Sony developed and the sides parted amicably, insiders say.

The creative difference being “this is a videogame movie” and “I direct real movies”, I assume.

Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer penned the first draft of “Uncharted,” which Sony is still very high on, though the studio has already begun a search for another scribe. While there has never been talent formally attached to “Uncharted,” Russell had been looking to reteam with “The Fighter” star Mark Wahlberg; project was also rumored to co-star Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. But with a new writer and director coming aboard, producers Avi Arad, Ari Arad, Charles Roven and Alex Gartner will likely start from scratch. [Variety]

DAMN YOU, O. RUSSELL! YOU’VE ARONOFSKY’D THIS ENTIRE PROJECT! That’s what we call it when an acclaimed director pretends for a few months that he wants to direct some studio exec’s brilliant plan for an Air Bud reboot or a Night at the Museum set at the Slushy factory, develops a relationship with the studio, and then splits to direct the real project he was planning to do all along.  Looking forward to finding out what that is in this case.  In the meantime, keep your phone handy, Brett Ratner.

Aw, he thinks the phone is in his pants but he’s already holding it up to his ear!  “So this Unsharted, is it like a wish-fulfillment story?”

SET YOUR ONLINE JOURNALIZZM GUNS TO “HE-SAID, SHE-SAID”, MOTHERF****RS!  Videogame site Joystiq recently got a movie news update from the director of the Uncharted 3 videogame [?]. Justin Richmond spoke of Mark Wahlberg being cast as the lead in the David O. Russell film adaptation, and he says it isn’t as done a deal as everyone thinks.

Mark Wahlberg isn’t anywhere near to being confirmed to play Nathan Drake either — it’s just Hollywood scuttlebutt, apparently. Still, I dutifully told Richmond that the Joystiq Biomass had chosen, and Nathan Fillion has our vote. Message received, Richmond responded.

If I have to hear one more of you nerds geeking out about Nathan Fillion, I swear I’m stuffing someone in a locker.  Anyway, even if it’s not a “done deal” as Richmond says, news of Wahlberg’s casting came from Wahberg himself in an interview with MTV.

Just what was that puzzling David O’Russell [sic] quote, referencing a “family dynamic” in the Uncharted movie, all about, I asked Uncharted 3 game director Justin Richmond at a recent press event. He laughed. “First of all, all that stuff was denied by David O. Russell,” Richmond said. “He actually called us up and was like, ‘I don’t know what these guys are talking about.’”

Again, the “family dynamic” thing (which is pretty broad) came from a direct quote from David O. Russell in the LA Times, so it’s hard to know how trustworthy this guy is.  I’ll be honest, this story doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.  All I know is that it’s all over the internet,  it’s about the planned Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune movie, and last time I posted something about that, everyone crapped their pants, as if this is finally going to be the video game movie that doesn’t gargle monster hog nuts like the last 50.  Look, I like David O. Russell twice as much as the next dude, but even I ain’t rushing to kick the football on this one.  Unless Drake is from Mass and the “family dynamic” means trashy sisters.  “Why ah you goin lookin’ fah treasah in Nepawl?  Ya think yoah too good foah ya famdly now?   That MTV whoah put you up to this, didn’t she!  …FACK YOU, I AM SOBAH!”

Oh thank gawd, it feels like it’s been three fackin’ weeks since I gawt ta offah my two cents on a motion picshah set in my fayah state of Mass.  It seems like these days, Hawllywood has the audacity ta offah three a foah movies every mont that ah NAWT SET NEAH BAWSTON.  And that is PISS POAH.  Everyone knows New Yawk is a queah. But The Fightah is about bawxin, Mahky Mahk, bein blue collah, and most of all, Lowell, Mass. GO SAWX, oah whatevah.

(*clears throat, shuffles papers*)

In Zadie Smith’s award-winning debut novel White Teeth, which also happened to have as its central characters two brothers, she wrote perhaps most brilliantly about the often burdensome but defining nature of one’s own family history, writing that the brothers of her story “could not escape their history any more than you can your own shadow.”

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