112: American Hustle (with Matthew Perpetua) (Patreon)

Matthew Perpetua of the long-running Fluxblog returns to the pod from Brooklyn, but this time his visit is only tangentially related to Steely Dan. This is an episode about the notorious director David O. Russell, whose first film in 7 years, the all-star Amsterdam, just bombed at the box office. But it has a lot in common with an earlier Russell film that was a big hit with audiences, if not with most critics, 2013’s American Hustle, a film Matthew and I both quite liked.

Released in the same month as Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle was derided by some as “Scorsese-lite”, a retread of Goodfellas stuffed with showy performances and cartoonish behaviour. It was reviewed as if it was supposed to be a historical drama (as it was based on the true story of two con artists who worked with the FBI to ensnare corrupt congressmen in the ABSCAM sting operation). But American Hustle worked for us as a ridiculous screwball comedy about desperate people chasing after the American Dream in a cynical age, a film quite possibly made by a madman, though at a time before more sordid details about Russell’s personal conduct became public and tarnished his reputation.

We try to make a case for why American Hustle is Good, Actually, but we also discuss why Amsterdam, another loopy story based on another obscure footnote in American history, with even more big names in the cast, doesn’t succeed.

With sidebars on the oncoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and our views on Elon Musk’s early days of “running” Twitter.

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Trailer for American Hustle (Russell, 2013)

Trailer for Amsterdam (Russell, 2022)

“David O. Russell is latest face of Hollywood’s workplace abuse problem” by Sonia Rao for The Washington Post, October 7, 2022