From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. We have a special live edition of the show for you today, recorded at the LA

County Museum of Arts, where writer-director David O. Russell joined me for a discussion after a screening

of his newest film, American Nozzle. So many of your movies are kind of about tribes going up

against each other. Yes. Almost a warring families or clans. What does that come from for you?

I don't know. There's something very elemental about it. I think that started really for me with the fighter. And I happen to write,

you could even say it was the case with flirting with disaster as well. I mean, even in that case,

there's like these sort of tribes. I mean, it goes back to that, I think, even. True. I don't know. Maybe it's just how my family's wired,

you know? I mean, I have a huge family that's scattered over the five boroughs and all of the New York area. But see, for me, after Three Kings, which is when I met you at that time, when you're

at the New York Times, I feel like after that period, I kind of had a period that was very difficult for me for a lot of reasons.

I mean, part of it was that I was helping my son, who has bipolar issues, find a better

school and everything, which became a massive undertaking with my ex-wife.

We got divorced.

I lost my way as a storyteller a little bit, and that became a very difficult period for

me. And the reason I talk about it is because that difficulty kind of turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me,

I mean, as a filmmaker, because it kind of humbled me and it led me to, when Sidney Pollock gave me Silver Linings Playbook, which I took as a writer for hire,

it was very personal chance for me to write about my own family, which would have factions

about how to handle that situation, about the bipolar kid.

And I related very personally to that, but it was more very much from the gut, or as Irving

would say, from the feet up. You know, it was very deep and instinctive and kind of pure.

And then I couldn't make it.

I couldn't get it made.

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