Russell Smith (producer)

Mr. Mudd is a film production company founded in 1998 by Lianne Halfon, John Malkovich, and Russell Smith. The production company is also well known for producing three films Ghost World, Juno and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, all three of which received critical acclaim.

The company is named for a Thai man (and convicted murderer) named Mr. Mudd who acted as Malkovich's driver while he was making The Killing Fields in 1983.

Malkovich met Russell Smith in high school, where Smith was a star basketball player for the Lanphier High School Lions in Springfield, Illinois. The two later became freshmen roommates at Eastern Illinois University. Malkovich later co-founded the Steppenwolf Theater Company, and invited Smith to become a writer for the troupe. Smith later produced a number of Steppenwolf plays, then moved into film production. Malkovich and Smith formed the Smith-Malkovich film production company in 1994.

Malkovich met Lianne Halfon in the late 1980s while she was an executive at A&M Films. Malkovich and Halfon were both bidding for the film rights to author Don DeLillo's 1988 novel about Lee Harvey Oswald, Libra. A&M films won the auction, and Halfon asked Malkovich to help develop the property. Although the film never coalesced, Malkovich asked Halfon to help produce a version of the novel as a play for the Steppenwolf Theater. The three first met while developing Libra for Steppenwolf.

Having Malkovich's name attached to the company did not initially prove valuable. According to Smith, writers and financers kept turning down Mr. Mudd because they assumed Malkovich would want to star in the film. The company was forced to stop mentioning Malkovich's involvement, and did not look for a property for Malkovich to act in for three years.

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