One of independent cinema's most successful purveyors of familial dysfunction, writer, producer, and director David O. Russell first thrust his vision into the faces of filmgoers with his 1994 film Spanking the Monkey. A darkly hilarious account of a young man's sexually torturous and seemingly interminable summer "vacation" spent in the company of his bored and bedridden mother, the film was a critical favorite, particularly at that year's Sundance Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Picture.

A native New Yorker, Russell attended Amherst College, where he majored in English and Political Science. Following graduation, he worked as a union organizer in Maine and taught literacy in Boston. Harboring an interest in filmmaking, Russell spent his spare time writing scripts and documenting his experiences; his video documentation of workers' conditions led to an internship with Smithsonian World for PBS in Washington, D.C. After completing his internship, Russell returned to New York, where he wrote and directed the short, Bingo Inferno, which was accepted into the 1987 Sundance Festival.

After using a grant from the New York Council for the Arts to produce a short comedy feature, Hairway to the Stars, in 1990, Russell made his feature directorial debut with Spanking the Monkey (also financed through grant money) in 1994. Featuring a cast of such talented but relatively unknown actors as Jeremy Davies (who played the film's luckless protagonist) and Alberta Watson, and a degree of Oedipal conflict not seen since …  » Read more