The clock is ticking.
It's nearing sunset on a Sunday in the heart of November, and 13 people (and a black standard poodle named Rex) sit at brightly lit soundboards. From a camel-leather armchair at the back of the giant home theatre at the Hollywood Hills studio Ross 424, director David O. Russell tests music under footage rolling across a 12m screen.
The scene from American Hustle he's contemplating: a balding, paunchy Christian Bale, encased in velvet as '70s scam-artist Irving Rosenfeld, is introducing FBI agent Richie DiMaso (a twitchy, eager Bradley Cooper) to how great schemes are concocted in the Tri-State area.
''The more you say no, the more they want in on something,'' Bale's character intones.
''It is so stupid.''
It is the last day Russell has to tighten the score. Academy Award-nominated film editor Jay Cassidy (Silver Linings Playbook, Into the Wild) softly plays a classical track under the adjoining scene, in which Bale begins to swindle an art dealer.
''Go for it or don't do it,'' instructs Russell, dressed in black pants, a button-down shirt and a black vest, white sneakers on his feet. He wants the notes to permeate.
On command, Cassidy increases the volume, layering La Chatte a la Satie under the entire sequence. Russell's right; the scene is richer, the lilting score accentuating the faux pretentiousness of con men operating in New York's underbelly.
Everyone in the room nods, it's working.
''I was the only one who wanted that piano thing for like half an-hour,'' Russell says, eyebrow raised.
His deadline?
''It's like now,'' Russell says.
''This is it.''
He's remarkably calm, a reporter points out.
''You should be calm by this point,'' the director says, sipping on red bush tea.
''I've already been over this a million times.''
(Hustle has since claimed best film from the New York Film Critics Circle, and Golden Globes for best comedy, best actress and best supporting actress.)
In American Hustle, a grand caper of a film loosely based on the '70s ''Abscam'' scandal, in which politicians were targeted for bribes by a fake Arab sheikh, everyone is submerged in a relationship that chafes; Bale vacillates between his needy, unbalanced young Long Island housewife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), and his sexy, whip-smart British colleague (Amy Adams); DiMaso battles his beleaguered, risk-averse FBI boss (Louis C.K.) while attempting to control the con artists he's cornered into bringing down a popular New Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner).
The Cooper/Louis C.K. scenes are among Hustle's funniest, and Russell knows it. Hours ago he asked the comedian if he'd send over a few new lines for possible addition to the film.
''He texted them to me,'' Russell says, pulling out his BlackBerry.
''Thank you for doing this,'' Russell's text reads.
''Well I didn't do it yet,'' Louis C.K. responds.
''Onward!'' Cassidy calls, as they zip to another scene. Onscreen, Adams' red hair is in curlers; she's placing a late-night call to DiMaso (who, comically, is also in curlers).
''I called [Russell] one night and said, 'What if we curled his hair?','' Cooper recalls by phone.
''I kind of want to be unrecognisable. And he said, 'Oh yeah, he curls his own hair because he wants to be like the black baseball players, like Dock Ellis'.''
It's who Russell's characters are behind closed doors, textured with decade-specific references, that have shifted his career into overdrive.
''The fabric of people's lives is everything to me,'' he says.
American Hustle, in his words, is the third instalment in a trilogy of films that began six years after 2004's existential I Heart Huckabees, when the director reinvented himself with 2010's The Fighter and then Silver Linings Playbook. Both were showered with Oscar nominations (and wins, for Bale and Melissa Leo in 2011 and Lawrence last year).
''Some of it is life experience,'' he says of his growth.
''You grow up and you get more humble and soulful and appreciative of the simple things. You cut out any of the c..p in yourself.''
His 2007 divorce influenced him, as did his changing relationship with his son, Matthew, whose bipolar disorder inspired Russell's take on Silver Linings. With previous films ''I was overthinking too much,'' he says.
The year had Hustle's stars boarding a plane for the set just days after the 2012 Oscars, and has since required an intense edit schedule, but ''the little guy is around here a lot'', he says of his adopted 2-year-old, Leo (with partner Holly Davis).
''And my older son, Matt, has come and gone, and my dad.''
On-screen and off, this is a family affair. Matthew makes a cameo, as does another surprise guest.
''That's actually Jeremy Renner's baby,'' he says, pointing to a shot in which Renner, as Mayor Carmine Polito, is cradling a month-old infant.
''They brought the baby and they were hanging around with [Renner's] mother. I couldn't get his mother to be in the scene. But I said, 'Why don't you put the baby in the scene right now?'.''
Cooper even inserted a deeply personal habit into his character.
''He found this thing where he chewed his tongue, which his late father did,'' says Russell, which became DiMaso's sign he was losing control.
By all accounts, Hustle was a challenging set. The script was shot in 40 days, and changed rapidly; Russell has a tendency to change plot and dialogue on a dime. But the actors' loyalty to him is evident. Lawrence gave up her only break last year to play Rosalyn; Bale gained 20kg and shaved his head (Robert De Niro also cameos).
Cooper allows that Silver Linings gave him an entree to a new chapter of choices in his career. With Russell, ''my trust level is: with my life,'' says the actor.
For the first time, Adams pushes her sexuality to the forefront to play the seductive Sydney Prosser, whose closet is stocked with plunging, cleavage-baring dresses. Normally, ''that's definitely not the card that I lead with'', she says.
On the set, passions occasionally collided.
''You get moments with a great role, and David and me will butt heads at times,'' says Bale.
''We had moments where people were saying, 'OK, everyone clear the set very quickly' at what's happening. And we would kind of just chat it out. And so after a couple of days they'd be like, 'I thought you weren't really getting along?' But we're like arm-in-arm, and hugging each other and we're chatting and we're writing a new thing. It's a very fun relationship.''
Back to the scene with the curlers. Russell puts it to a vote, and a Jeff Lynne rock track makes it in. (Thanks to a bit of excavating by music supervisor Susan Jacobs, a series of the Electric Light Orchestra co-founder's unreleased tracks weave throughout the film.)
There's just one conundrum left. Do they launch the picture with King Curtis, Duke Ellington or Steely Dan? Each evokes a different emotion at the outset: nostalgia, sexy criminality, sleepy Old Hollywood glamour. The team tries each track, playing them again, and again.
Russell asks that all the computer monitors be turned off, effectively creating a darkened theatre.
''I'm kind of partial to that one,'' he says, after Ellington's Jeep's Blues plays. And Ellington stays.
