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Today, Russell insists that his assistant videotape you while you interview him. He says it's all part of his chronicle of making Three Kings. But frankly, it just seems like an annoying eccentricity. Still, it's the kind of thing movie execs are willing to overlook when they think they may have a genius on their hands. Two of those execs were Bill Gerber and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, then copresidents of production at Warner, who asked Russell to make his next film there. ''It was surprising for me,'' says Russell, ''because I always thought of Warner Bros. as being the least independent of the studios.'' (In fact, it's one of the few major studios without an indie division.)

Nonetheless, Russell says he became obsessed with a one-line synopsis he saw in the studio's development log of a John Ridley script called Spoils of War, about some Gulf War soldiers who find a map leading to a stash of gold that Saddam Hussein stole from the Kuwaitis. ''I remember I was at Sundance when the war started,'' says Russell, ''and to me, it was better than any of the movies that were there. It was just this weird thing that was going on — it made you nauseous and excited at the same time.'' After his meeting at Warner Bros., Russell spent the next 18 months poring over accounts of the war and writing a new screenplay from scratch.

''Everybody was extremely excited about the script,'' says Three Kings producer Charles Roven, ''but everybody also recognized that this wasn't what we call a commercial fastball down the middle. But that's the point — you don't get into business with David and think that's what you're going to get.'' True enough. While both of Russell's previous films were unconventionally good, they were hits in terms of buzz more than box office (Monkey and Disaster made $1.4 million and $14.9 million, respectively). In fact, even after Warner Bros. execs gave him the green light to cast Three Kings, Russell couldn't believe they were willing to give him a $50 million budget. ''I kept waiting for them to go, 'How did this guy get in here?''' laughs Russell. ''I just figured I had the ball and I was going to keep going with it until someone said 'Wait a minute, he's only made a $7 million movie before!'''

Naturally, there were certain strings attached to that sack of money — like getting an A-list star. The studio had Mel Gibson in mind for the role that eventually went to Clooney, but Russell wooed Nicolas Cage instead. ''My perception of [Clooney] was as a romantic leading man because he always had a beautiful woman with him in his pictures, whether it was Jennifer Lopez, Michelle Pfeiffer, or Nicole Kidman,'' says Russell, ''but I'd seen a little bit of him in that vampire movie From Dusk Till Dawn and there was a little glimmer in there.''

Meanwhile, Clooney had been slipped a copy of Russell's Three Kings script from allies inside the studio (where he has a TV and film development deal) and desperately wanted in: He wrote Russell a letter self-deprecatingly signed ''George Clooney, TV Actor''; he offered to show Russell an early cut of Out of Sight; he even showed up on Russell's doorstep in New York City to plead his case. ''He opened the door with his video camera,'' says Clooney. ''It's very annoying. And he said, 'Does this bother you?' And I said, 'It will only if I don't get the job.... If I end up in The Making of Three Kings and I'm not in the movie, then I'll look like an a--hole.''' Clooney eventually got the part when Cage opted for Bringing Out the Dead.


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