David O Russell on fake sheikhs and real performances at the Dubai International Film Festival

The American director jets into the Emirates to screen his latest film at the closing of the Dubai International Film Festival. American Hustle is a dramatic caper that wraps up a rapid-fire trilogy and a dark period in Russell's own life.

Producer Matthew Budman, director David O Russell and Charles Roven attend the Closing Night premiere of American Hustle. Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images for DIFF

It’s Saturday afternoon and David O Russell must be exhausted, having just flown into Dubai from the US hours before. But you would never know it from the enthusiasm he exudes as he engages with a succession of media. As the sun goes down over the terrace at Al Qasr Hotel, he warmly greets an interloper who tries to slip him a script, encourages an Emirati radio reporter to work on a documentary about Arab life and pesters his Dubai-based security guard about what workout he uses to get so buff.

It's not surprising that from this curious and active mind comes American Hustle. It's the last film in a rapid-fire trilogy from the director, following up 2010's The Fighter and last year's Silver Linings Playbook. The three films turn on the themes of frustration, reinvention and redemption, made as Russell emerged from a dark and painful period in his own life.

But don't let all his talk of passion and frustration fool you: American Hustle is a ton of fun. The film is loosely based on the true story of a 1970s-era US corruption sting operation that hinged on the promise of funding from some phoney Arab sheikhs.

Here Russell gathers a group of Hollywood actors, each at the top of their game and back for another go-round under his guidance, to portray characters at times trapped, flummoxed and delighted by their circumstances. Christian Bale plays a kind-hearted, comb-over-sporting swindler and Amy Adams his cunning and complicated mistress; Jennifer Lawrence has a supporting role as his often-unhinged wife while an extremely hyper FBI agent is played with curly-haired frenetic perfection by Bradley Cooper. Robert De Niro even does a brief turn as a worldly mobster.

Q: So Abu Dhabi has a pretty pivotal moment in your film! Was it part of the original story?

Russell: We just made that up. Everybody at the table made that, we all picked that up. Me, Bradley and DeNiro, because DeNiro’s familiar with this area, so we all sort of put it together and said, that’s it. Bradley then said: “Ah, he’s from Abu Dhabi.”

Q: Why Abu Dhabi?

Russell: I don’t know - because it’s just perfect, it sounds great. It sounds like they knew what they were talking about.

Q: Did you have any trepidation about coming and screening a film with some phoney sheikhs in it at DIFF, in front of some real sheikhs?

Russell: A little. I just hope they get that this was all a fabrication that was to create a person who seemed royal and rich to then entrap people in America who might try to take advantage of someone who is royal and rich. That was at that time, as it has been for a long time, a very credible type of someone who is royal and rich. So actually it’s a compliment to Arab sheikhs, because it’s saying they represent wealth and opportunity.

Q: The New York Times review of the film calls you one of the few male directors who thinks women are as interesting as men.

Russell: Listen, this whole thing for me, my whole life leading up to making these films started when I wrote Silver Linings Playbook as writer for hire. I mean I hadn't made films for a few years, I'd lost my way and I was working for hire, and I adapted that, Sydney Pollack [the director] gave it to me to adapt, but I couldn't get it financed, I couldn't get the job to direct it. Then I got the opportunity, thanks to Mark Wahlberg, to make The Fighter, which really brought into focus from a humbled place and from my own struggles, being broke, dealing with my bipolar son, getting divorced and coming more from instinct, coming more from humility and going more on instinct… So what made me really really want to do The Fighter more than anything was the women. It was the sisters and the mother, and I said: "This is what makes it really interesting." The brothers were pretty fantastic, and they're dynamic, but the sisters and the mother are what really made it special. It felt like a blind spot in a lot of cinema and in particular my own, that had not had formidable-enough women, and I said: "This is wonderful", as I saw myself as an under-voiced asset that needed to be realised. I thought; "This is a fantastic nuclear power plant and the whole movie is elevated." I have a lot of thoughts about women, and I say these things and I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying them… but I think women are smarter than men, I think women mystify men, I think they think differently. It's just different, it's more instinctive. It's also can be more direct, and somehow men don't understand it or hear it, it's just so interesting how they can say it right to their faces, until they wake up on their asses and they go: "Oh I think this is what you meant."

Q: The flip side is you see some really raw, desperate romantic behaviour in the men… I don’t see that very often on-screen.

Russell: Oh good, I’m not even aware of that. Well, I mean that’s because I love romance, and I love love, and I don’t believe in cynicism and I believe in the passion, so these are kind of operatic and that means they’re doing what we all do, but in an intense, operatic way. I love the rawness of them, their longing and their desire and their vulnerability. I loved seeing Christian vulnerable and warm and funny, it just happens organically but I want to create the person who can do that. It’s my job to create the person. Ditto for every single actor in the picture.

Q: Jennifer Lawrence has this amazing moment when she says: “I don’t deal well with change.” I felt it would resonate with so many people.

Russell: I know what that’s like from my core. I mean, I got divorced, that’s very hard. And I know what it’s like to say: “Sometimes I think I’ll never change” you know or “I think I’ll die before I change”… Sometimes it’s too formidable, “I don’t know if I can do it, I don’t know if I have it in me, to move out of this house and change this job.”

Q: In terms of building characters, there’s the phrase “from the feet up” - you’ve used it before in interviews and it was a line used in the film. Where does that come from?

Russell: Christian got that from Bob Hoskins [a veteran British actor]. I was in Christian’s backyard and we were talking about what we loved about this guy, an artist, see it’s not about insincerity, because there’s a lot of sincerity in the film, that’s what interested me, I’m not interested in a mere rip-off artist or a grifter. I’m interested in a sincere person who loves the women in his life, who loves his kid, who loves his business, that’s real, loves Duke Ellington, that’s sincere. You see? So he loves the art of being and reading other people, which we all love to do. So Christian said, he grabbed on to what Bob Hoskins had said to him about acting, Bob Hoskins said: “Christian, it’s not from the ears up, is it? It’s from the feet up, isn’t it?” And I would say that’s what happened to me with filmmaking, in this new period, is from the feet up. People feel that when you walk on the set.

*This interview has been edited and condensed.