Before directing his first feature, Spanking the Monkey, Russell intended to make a film "about a guy who sits in the back of a Chinese restaurant with microphones on every table to surreptitiously listen to everybody's conversations, then write perversely personal fortunes for each of the people."
In March 2007, two videos were leaked onto YouTube portraying on-set arguments between Russell and Tomlin, in which among other things he called her sexist names.