4. David O. Russell - Spanking the Monkey (1994) - $200,000
With another Oscar nomination to his name for this year's excellent Silver Linings Playbook, following an impressive run of movies that include some innovative cinematic story-telling in Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees and The Fighter (also nominated for Best Picture), David O. Russell is pretty much at the top of the Hollywood director's pool right now. Those aforementioned movies dealt with the fallible humanness of American soldiers in Iraq, philosophical conundrum and environmental awareness, drug addictions, the American Dream and family respectively. All pretty heavy subjects to sell to investors and ticket-goers, especially considering they all starred Mark Wahlberg but David O. basically
made Marky Mark a respected serious actor. 1994's Spanking the Monkey however, did not star Mark Wahlberg. Now when others thought movies with blood and guts was the way to go, Russell decided to make a movie about a boy having an unhealthy crush on his mother with no blood in it whatsoever. Instead of blood, there was uncomfortable masturbation. That is what he thought would make for a good introductory film that would get him noticed. And it worked. Spanking the Monkey was made with about $200,ooo, a lot coming from short film grants and the classic knee down, hand out financing strategy. It hit the festival circuit, garnered mass attention at Sundance and was sold to New Line distribution, allowing David O. to continue his chosen path all the way to Oscar contention and perhaps the most
famous on-camera temper tantrums of Hollywood history.