David O. Russell’s 2008 political satire, Nailed, endured a painstaking production process. One snag kept following another, until Russell eventually quit the project altogether in 2010. Now almost seven years later, the film has been retitled Accidental Love, Stephen Greene has been given the credit as director, and the first trailer has dropped online.
The Accidental Love trailer, which comes to us via Vimeo, shows a story about a couple (James Marsden and Jessica Biel) planning to get married when an accident leaves the woman with a nail lodged in her brain. Because she doesn’t have health insurance, she can't afford to remove it, and winds up wreaking havoc on her mood and personality. In an effort to use her condition for good, she journeys to Washington, D.C. to approach a handsome Congressman (Jake Gyllenhaal) about improving healthcare options for people with odd injuries they can’t afford to fix. He ultimately campaigns with her, but not before the two strike up a romance - which naturally causes some problems with her man back home. The film certainly doesn’t seem to mesh with Russell’s current line of work — Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle and his upcoming Joy — but rather takes more of a nod from his earlier stuff, like Flirting With Disaster and I Heart Huckabees. Of course, this is no longer even considered his film, so it's actually kind of odd to compare it to his other work.
Accidental Love had been stuck in turmoil ever since the first time its financier, Ronald Tutor, didn’t pay up - which led to Jessica Biel, Jake Gyllenhaal and a few other crew members walking off set. Discussions eventually got to such a low point that Russell dropped out two years after the film went into production, citing delays created by Pangea Media Group CEO David Bergstein - who partly controlled the film’s rights. In a statement he made in 2010, Russell laid out exactly what was going on with the movie, and concluded by saying, "I, unfortunately, am no longer involved in the project and cannot call it 'my' film."
In addition, producers Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher were being asked to cut their fees in half, a move with which Russell took issue, and Wick and Fisher jointly called "unfair, unprofessional and detrimental to the movie." So, all in all, it was a major fiasco. But now the film is getting an on-demand release this February 10th - even though it was never actually finished with its original artistic intent. While we’re partly intrigued by the talent, which also includes Tracy Morgan, Bill Hader, Pee-wee himself Paul Reubens and Arrow star David Ramsay, it seems like the controversy might be more interesting than the film itself.
