FLIRTING WITH DISASTER Cinema's Legacy

Following the birth of his first child, Mel (Ben Stiller) feels he can’t decide on a name until he meets his own biological parents. When he finds his mother’s address from Tina (Téa Leoni), an incompetent but attractive adoption agency employee, Mel and his wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) and their baby son travel to San Diego to meet her — with Tina in tow to document the reunion for her PhD thesis. Things don’t go quite as planned, and soon the strange group is careening across the United States, meeting and picking up an assortment of sweet oddballs along the way. Twenty years after the film’s Cannes Un Certain Regard premiere, David O. Russell’s sophomore feature FLIRTING WITH DISASTER still boasts laugh-out-loud situations and hilarious performances from Mary Tyler Moore, Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin and others (including Josh Brolin as a gay ATF agent), all as people dealing with the joys and exasperations of family, fidelity and bed-and-breakfast culture. — Sudeep Sharma

Following a 20th anniversary screening of FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, Oscar®-nominated director David O. Russell sits down for a lively discussion of the lm and his career along with some of the cast members.