Russell Crowe considering directing as an excuse to yell at people professionally

Sentient hangover Russell Crowe is considering making his feature film directing debut with James Ellroy’s 77, which would put Crowe back in the grizzled cop period drama milieu of Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential—a pairing that worked out pretty well for both of them the first time around. David “Not Dave” Matthews has been hired to rewrite Ellroy’s original script, which connects the 1974 unsolved murder of an LAPD officer and that year’s famous South Central shootout between police and the Symbionese Liberation Army, best known as the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst. Crowe is considering starring in the film, presumably as one-half of the cop duo—one black, one white—whose point of view frames the story, and Deadline reports he’s waiting on the rewrite to see if he might also want to take the helm. Given Crowe’s reputation for not suffering fools, we haven’t been this worried for a crew since the days of Otto Preminger.