Xixax Film Forum

The Director's Chair => The Director's Chair => Topic started by: ©brad on January 30, 2003, 12:59:19 PM

Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: ©brad on January 30, 2003, 12:59:19 PM
In Total Film magazine, an in depth interview w/ Soderbergh and his films, he had this to say about his new stuff.

SS: "Well, I'm writing a book about The Sopranos and I'm involved in a project called Eros, a kind of triptych movie with Antonioni, Won Kar-wai and me shooting a segment each. It'll be fun- it's only a five-day shoot- but it's already eating into my vacation. So much for me taking a year off to clear my head...

other interesting stuff from the interview-

TF: So is Ocean's Twelve a goer then?
SS: Oh, yeah! I know there's a better version of this movie to be had. When we were coming back from doing press in December 2001, I asked everybody if the idea appealed and they were cool. But they had to make a promise: that is, we're gonna be the first sequel in history that costs exactly the same and the first one. And since the scale of the sequel's gonna be even bigger, they're all gonna have to take an even bigger pay cut than last time. But I think somebody needs to do this- stop the idea that the second one has to be more expensive.

TF: So it's set in Europe, right?
SS: Yeah, it is. But until I go on a reccie, I haven't settled yet on what those three cities in Europe will be. So, you know, I'm thinking of stopping in Amsterdam for- oooh- about a year... [laughs]

There's more but I am falling asleep as we speak, will do the rest later.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Duck Sauce on January 30, 2003, 01:35:53 PM
Cbrad, always good for Soderbergh updates... Thanks. I like the idea of the sequel costing the same as the first, and I also like how that Oceans 11 group is pretty close and make cameos in each others movies and take big pay cuts.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Satcho9 on January 30, 2003, 02:24:34 PM
Soderbergh knows whats up. I guess so much for his "year off"?
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: ©brad on January 31, 2003, 06:37:26 AM
I want to see the Eros project he's doing. I am not aware of Won Kar-wai's work, but I know Antonioni and it should be pretty neato.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: polkablues on January 31, 2003, 06:33:56 PM
Quote from: cbrad4dI want to see the Eros project he's doing. I am not aware of Won Kar-wai's work, but I know Antonioni and it should be pretty neato.

Wong Kar-Wai is the man.  Go see "In the Mood for Love" right fucking now.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: budgie on February 02, 2003, 11:23:28 AM
Quote from: polkabluesWong Kar-Wai is the man.  Go see "In the Mood for Love" right fucking now.

Fucking right. It'll make you want to bossa nova.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Rudie Obias on February 02, 2003, 04:12:55 PM
Quote from: cbrad4dI want to see the Eros project he's doing. I am not aware of Won Kar-wai's work, but I know Antonioni and it should be pretty neato.

wong kar-wai is great.  he's one of my favorite filmmakers.  watch CHUNGKING EXPRESS (my favorite from his body of work), FALLEN ANGELS, HAPPY TOGETHER and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE.  his films have an element i really don't see in a lot of american film, energy.

*rudie*
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on February 04, 2003, 07:58:13 AM
Soderbergh Developing HBO Politics Series

Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh and HBO are developing a television series set in the world of political consulting, says The Hollywood Reporter. HBO is reportedly eyeing a 10-episode commitment to the project, with Soderbergh set to direct the first episode.

The series will be written by filmmaker Henry Bean (The Believer), and it's described as being part scripted, part improv, with current events expected to be woven into the story line. The goal is to shoot each episode one week before it airs to keep the subject matter as current as possible. There is no start date for the project.

Real-life political consultant James Carville, best known as former President Clinton's main campaign strategist, and Michael Deaver, former President Reagan's main media planner during his presidency, are executive producing the project with Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section Eight.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Victor on February 04, 2003, 10:35:04 AM
that sounds fucking terrific.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Duck Sauce on February 04, 2003, 01:34:13 PM
Does this guy not sleep? Why doesnt Soderbergh have his own section?
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: polkablues on February 04, 2003, 03:10:01 PM
Quote from: Duck SauceDoes this guy not sleep? Why doesnt Soderbergh have his own section?

A damn good question.  

Sphinx?  Jeremy?

Let's make this happen.   8)
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on February 04, 2003, 03:19:11 PM
Quote from: polkablues
Quote from: Duck SauceDoes this guy not sleep? Why doesnt Soderbergh have his own section?

A damn good question.  

Sphinx?  Jeremy?

Let's make this happen.   8)

Done.  :)
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: budgie on February 04, 2003, 04:25:27 PM
Quote from: polkablues
Quote from: Duck SauceDoes this guy not sleep?

A damn good question.  

Sphinx?  Jeremy?

Let's make this happen.   8)

I thought Duck was talking about MacGuffin then...

Never mind Soderbergh, I think MacGuffin needs sectioning.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Gold Trumpet on February 04, 2003, 07:32:07 PM
yeah, another useless director thread posted that will recieve hardly any attention.

~rougerum
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Xixax on February 04, 2003, 08:45:37 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpetyeah, another useless director thread posted that will recieve hardly any attention.

~rougerum
The boards are quite roomy at the moment, but the plan is not for them to stay that way.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on February 06, 2003, 01:02:57 AM
Section Eight Remaking Nine Queens

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. Pictures has acquired remake rights to the Argentine feature Nine Queens ("Nueve Reinas") for Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section Eight Prods.

Gregory Jacobs, Soderbergh's longtime first assistant director, will co-write the English version of screenplay with Soderbergh and will make his directorial debut on the project.

The original feature, released in 2000, is a con-artist-caper thriller about two men who team on a scam involving a forged set of extremely valuable stamps, the Nine Queens.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: polkablues on February 06, 2003, 03:18:04 PM
Quote from: MacGuffina con-artist-caper thriller

Stop, I'm salivating...
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: sphinx on February 07, 2003, 12:54:30 AM
There's a trailer for it up at apple.  The original looks interesting enough...,
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on February 28, 2003, 02:15:32 AM
Soderbergh's Eros & Ocean's Twelve Update

Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin have been drafted by director Steven Soderbergh to star in a segment of Eros, a film comprised of short films by Soderbergh, Michelangelo Antonioni and Wong Kar-wai. Variety says the actors are shooting the Soderbergh-scripted leg of the film this week.

Soderbergh is filming his part of the film while prepping Ocean's Twelve with his Section Eight partner George Clooney and producer Jerry Weintraub. They expect to shoot the ensembler next February, releasing the film in late 2004. George Nolfi is rewriting his script, which will be set in Europe.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: polkablues on February 28, 2003, 03:16:11 PM
I just saw the original "Nine Queens".  Solid con-artist stuff; a little predictable, but a lot more clever than the average movie of this genre.  I'm hoping the American remake would throw in some plot twists of its own, rather than rehash the original exactly.  I'm picturing Benicio Del Toro as the older con artist, and maybe... Casey Affleck as the young one.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on March 12, 2003, 01:13:00 AM
Neil Jordan Developing Soderbergh Thriller

Neil Jordan has come aboard to develop an untitled thriller written by Ann Biderman for Warner Bros. Pictures' Section Eight, with Steven Soderbergh producing, reports Variety.

Jordan also has an eye to direct the project, which came from a story developed by Soderbergh and Biderman. The film will concern a vulnerable private investigator and a prostitute in modern-day Gotham.

Jordan's most recent feature, The Good Thief starring Nick Nolte, will be released April 2 by Fox Searchlight.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: polkablues on March 12, 2003, 02:39:51 PM
Quote from: MacGuffinNeil Jordan Developing Soderbergh Thriller

Neil Jordan has come aboard to develop an untitled thriller written by Ann Biderman for Warner Bros. Pictures' Section Eight, with Steven Soderbergh producing, reports Variety.

Jordan also has an eye to direct the project, which came from a story developed by Soderbergh and Biderman. The film will concern a vulnerable private investigator and a prostitute in modern-day Gotham.

Jordan's most recent feature, The Good Thief starring Nick Nolte, will be released April 2 by Fox Searchlight.

This makes me happy all over.  I love Neil Jordan.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on April 16, 2003, 11:02:06 AM
US actress Meg Ryan and director Steven Soderbergh will sit on the nine-member jury at the Cannes Film Festival next month.

Ryan, star of When Harry Met Sally, and Oscar winner Soderbergh will help to judge the winner of the festival's main prize - the Palme d'Or.

The Palme d'Or is among the film world's most coveted accolades. Last year it was won by Roman Polanski's The Pianist, which went on to land Polanksi the best director Oscar in Hollywood last month.

The Cannes jury, headed by French director Patrice Chereau, will also include former Miss World Aishwarya Rai, the first Indian actress to become involved.

The panel also features veteran French actor Jean Rochefort, actress Karin Viard, Italian writer Erri De Luca, Bosnian director Danis Tanovic and Chinese director Jiang Wen.

The festival opens on 14 May, and the Palme d'Or winner will be announced at the closing ceremony on 25 May.

Cannes president Gilles Jacob is due to announce this year's official film selection on 23 April.

Futuristic sci-fi sequel The Matrix Reloaded will premiere at the festival on 15 May.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: edison on November 03, 2003, 11:05:37 PM
Ashton Kutcher's very public profile has cost him a role in an upcoming Steven Soderbergh movie, insiders claim. The 25-year-old actor, currently dating 41-year-old Striptease beauty Demi Moore, was reportedly approached by the Traffic and Erin Brockovich director with a view to being cast in one of his soon-to-shoot projects. But according to sources at Soderbergh's production company Section Eight, the film-maker was unsure if Just Married star Kutcher "was up to par professionally" for the job. According to American magazine the Star, Kutcher read from a script for K Street - George Clooney's Washington, DC, political drama - as an audition for one of six upcoming Soderbergh projects, and was told he was being considered for the heart-throb in one of them. But in return, sources say Soderbergh asked that Kutcher shun the celebrity spotlight. A source explains, "Steven told Ashton, 'If I see you pose for the cover of one more magazine or photographed at more parties, I'll take you off the picture.' Steven made it clear he wanted to work with an actor, not a party boy." Although Kutcher stayed away from parties to secure the role, Soderbergh reportedly became annoyed at all the attention he received for the second season of his prank show Punk'd, which premiered last month - and called off the collaboration on October 23. The source tells the publication, "Steven alluded that Ashton was too much of a prankster and that he just didn't feel an audience would see him as the character rather than 'the kid with Demi Moore'." Soderbergh's representatives deny the claims.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Find Your Magali on November 04, 2003, 11:42:38 PM
Hmmm, I wonder if Crowe will dump Kutcher, too....
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Jeremy Blackman on November 05, 2003, 09:22:59 AM
Quote from: EEz28A source explains, "Steven told Ashton, 'If I see you pose for the cover of one more magazine or photographed at more parties, I'll take you off the picture.'

I like Steven Soderbergh.
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: SoNowThen on November 05, 2003, 09:30:14 AM
seconded


whether or not that story is true, it's great!
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on November 05, 2003, 09:36:44 AM
Yo Kutcher, you've just been punk'd!
Title: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Just Withnail on January 19, 2004, 11:57:34 AM
Quote from: Find Your MagaliHmmm, I wonder if Crowe will dump Kutcher, too....

Haha! I'm so fucking glad I checked this thread after he actually got sacked from Crowe's Elizabethtown. Things not going to well Ashton?
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on March 01, 2007, 04:45:45 AM
Director of 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' Is Cut From Real Role as Sex-Trial Juror
Source: New York Times

You would think that the writer and director of a film called "Sex, Lies and Videotape" would be the perfect choice for the jury in a sex trial.

If so, it was a missed opportunity for Steven Soderbergh, the author of the 1989 film, which won a Golden Palm in Cannes. Mr. Soderbergh was called for the jury pool yesterday in the trial of Lina Sinha, 40, a director and teacher at an Upper East Side Montessori school who is accused of the statutory rape and sodomy of two teenage boys.

The judge dismissed Mr. Soderbergh because the director said he was busy, but only over the strenuous objections of the defense lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, and not before Mr. Soderbergh had answered a few questions.

In the case, being heard in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Ms. Sinha, who is on leave from the school, has maintained her innocence.

Mr. Soderbergh, wearing a burnt-umber leather jacket and black-framed glasses, maintained a poker face throughout the jury selection.

When the prosecutor suggested that some jurors might be thinking, "Where was that teacher when I was around?" several of the would-be jurors, women included, could not help giggling or smiling, but not Mr. Soderbergh.

Mr. Shargel asked the jurors if they were the type to make snap decisions — say, in "three seconds, five seconds" — rather than listen to the whole case.

"Mr. Soderbergh?" Mr. Shargel asked.

"Not in a trial," Mr. Soderbergh replied, deadpan.

Justice Carol Berkman kept the prosecutor, Rachel L. Hochhauser, and Mr. Shargel on a tight leash, giving them only 20 minutes to question each panel of prospective jurors. When Mr. Shargel expressed a mild hope that the judge would be flexible, she replied: "Mr. Shargel, I take yoga and Pilates. I'm quite flexible."

She also told the jurors not to believe everything they see on television, adding, "I'm nothing like that judge in Miami." A few of the jurors, at least, seemed to get the reference to Larry Seidlin, the former Bronx cabby who ruled last week in a dispute over custody of the body of Anna Nicole Smith.

After the questioning, Justice Berkman informed Ms. Hochhauser and Mr. Shargel that she was dismissing Mr. Soderbergh, among others.

"I dissent," Mr. Shargel protested, to no avail.

Mr. Soderbergh, who is working on a movie called "Guerrilla," about Che Guevara, walked out carrying a book about Lenin under his arm.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on December 16, 2008, 12:30:36 AM
Soderbergh: Fourth 'Ocean's' Movie Unlikely Due To Bernie Mac's Passing
Source: MTV

During MTV's recent conversation with "Che" director Steven Soderbergh, discussion turned to the "Ocean's" trilogy, all three films of which Soderbergh directed.

So what does the future hold for the venerable franchise? Not much, according to Soderbergh, who said that the loss of one among its ranks might leave another film feeling incomplete. "With Bernie Mac being gone, I don't think any of us would want to return to that," he said, referring to the comedian's untimely passing earlier this year.

Soderbergh is one of the most versatile directors in Hollywood , having worked steadily (and interchangeably) as both a crowd-pleaser and art-house auteur since making his directorial debut in 1989 with "Sex, Lies and Videotape."

Though he has since moved on to bigger and more personal projects, specifically his new, four-hour chronicle of the life of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, he admits that he misses the days when he could pal around with the likes of Clooney, Pitt and Don Cheadle. "It's sad because that was a fun group of people to hang out with," Soderbergh says.

Still, the director insists that he explored everything he wanted to in the three existing films. "I was done [anyway]," Soderbergh confesses, adding that he enjoyed the chance to experiment in a way he hasn't even been able to do in his more eccentric or off-the-radar projects. "I got to play on those movies visually in a way that I don't normally." (We can only assume he's referring to the rare challenge of making Matt Damon look unattractive.)
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on October 31, 2009, 09:12:09 PM
Soderbergh scripts 'Tot Mom'
Source: AP

Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh has written a play about the case of slain Florida toddler Caylee Anthony, whose mother Casey is charged with killing her.

Australia's Sydney Theatre Company plans to stage "Tot Mom" in December. Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and her husband are artistic directors of the prestigious group.

Soderbergh based the play on court documents and excerpts from the HLN show "Nancy Grace," which highlighted the investigation.

Casey Anthony has pleaded not guilty. The toddler's remains were found in December 2008.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: JG on November 01, 2009, 01:32:59 PM
Ha!
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Stefen on November 01, 2009, 04:23:03 PM
Seriously, Soderbergh is pretty much just real life trolling now. It's fucking awesome.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on August 04, 2011, 05:30:45 PM
Steven Soderbergh Is Doing Second Unit Shooting On 'Hunger Games'
Source: Playlist

While retirement is still in the cards for Steven Soderbergh, the director moves to his own interests and impulses and if anything, his always full calendar proves he likes to occupied and on the move. But even with that said, we never could have guessed Soderbergh would take on something like this.

Over the past day or so, Twitter has revealed that Steven Soderbergh has been spotted on the set of "Hunger Games," the upcoming young adult book adaptation by Gary Ross. "Soderbergh in the house this weekend!!! very exciting!" tweeted production designer Eddie Mills, while electrician on the film Chrys Blackstone posted, "Holy shit! Just found out that Steven Soderbergh is coming to the #hungergames to direct 2nd Unit. I am so excited this is getting good!" Sources have confirmed with The Playlist, that yes, Soderbergh is second unit directing on "Hunger Games" but it not quite be so random and odd as you might think.

Ross and Soderbergh have actually been friends for years. Soderbergh produced "Pleasantville," while Ross has often taken a look at Soderbergh's scripts. Another connection comes in the shape of Phil Messina, a production designer on "Hunger Games" who has also worked on Soderbergh's "Erin Brockovich," "Traffic," "Solaris," "The Good German," "Che: Part Two" and 'Ocean's' trilogy of films.

As for Soderbergh's participation on "Hunger Games" it was required no more than Ross asking for him to come aboard. Considering how ridiculously tight the timeline is on the film—it's due in theaters in just over seven months—getting Soderbergh to help out is a smart choice. The director is already known to work very, very quickly. How fast? Earlier this year, Matt Damon recounted that during the "Contagion" shoot, Soderbergh would be editing the day's work into a final cut shape, after filming had wrapped each day. "Steven would have his headphones on, sitting at his laptop. And in about 20 minutes he'd cut together the day's work. 'OK,' he'd say, pull his headphones off and turn the computer around and show us, right there, what we'd shot that day and how it would look on the big screen when the movie comes out. THAT FAST. He's a FREAK," Damon said.

For Ross who is moving very fast at is, having someone on the ground who is a friend, who works fast and who Ross knows will deliver what he needs will be a huge asset. We have to say, we pretty much didn't care at all about "Hunger Games" until now. And yeah, we realize second unit work is not the kind of stuff that bears an auteur signature but at least gives us something to pay attention to other than Peeta/Gale/Katniss trifecta of swoony teen heartache or whatever. "Hunger Games" opens on March 23, 2012. Meanwhile, Soderbergh will head to Venice later this month for the world premiere of "Contagion" before shooting the Channing Tatum-led male stripper pic "Magic Mike" this fall.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on February 05, 2013, 01:23:33 PM
Steven Soderbergh on Quitting Hollywood, Getting the Best Out of J-Lo, and His Love of Girls
via Vulture
By Mary Kaye Schilling
1/27/13

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FpAeNjAk.jpg&hash=cb4c21405cb5c4e9d09d8b34db02f97c3006c2bf)

Steven Soderbergh has directed 26 films since his 1989 debut, sex, lies, and videotape — the behind-closed-doors portrait of yuppie Louisiana often credited with kick-starting the indie-film revolution of the nineties, released when he was only 26. In the 24 years since, he's been a remarkably prolific chameleon, managing arguably more than any other director of his generation to successfully bounce between the low- and high-budget, not only directing but often editing and shooting his own films, each, in its way, an audacious experiment. In one extraordinary three-year streak — 1998 to 2001 — he directed two noirish classics (Out of Sight, The Limey), pulled an Oscar performance out of Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich), earned an Oscar of his own (Traffic, the same year he was also nominated for Brockovich), and launched a lucrative franchise (Ocean's Eleven, followed by Twelve and Thirteen). Then in 2011, the seemingly abrupt ­announcement: He wanted to be done making movies by the time he was 50, to focus on painting, among many other things.

A few days before that big birthday, with his mission accomplished (his last theatrical release, Side Effects, comes out next week), Mary Kaye Schilling met with Soderbergh in his office and painting studio near the Flatiron Building, where he talked about cribbing from Lucian Freud, his love of Girls, and why movies don't matter so much anymore.

So, retirement.
Just to be clear, I won't be directing "cinema," for lack of a better word. But I still plan to direct — theater stuff, and I'd do a TV series if something great were to come along.

You said something once about playing baseball when you were growing up. You were obsessive about it, an excellent pitcher, but one day you woke up — I think you were 12 — and you knew you had lost "whatever it is that makes you know you're better than the other guy." The next day you played badly, and you never recovered. Is that similar to what's happening with film?
No. It was a combination of things. I had talked about it in the aftermath of Che.

Was that the nail in the coffin? You've said that the two-part, four-hour-plus biopic was not only a bitch to make but that you wish you hadn't made it.
Well, the first part of that is true. But it wasn't just that. These things — I can feel them coming on. I can feel it when I need to slough off one skin and grow another. So that's when I started thinking, All right, when I turn 50, I'd like to be done. I knew that in order to stop, I couldn't keep it a secret — so many things are coming at you when you're making films that you need to have a reason to be saying no all the time.

And what was that reason?
It's a combination of wanting a change personally and of feeling like I've hit a wall in my development that I don't know how to break through. The tyranny of narrative is beginning to frustrate me, or at least narrative as we're currently defining it. I'm convinced there's a new grammar out there somewhere. But that could just be my form of theism.

Is it similar to how you were feeling in 1997 when you made the satire Schizopolis — an attempt to "blow up the house," as you put it?
Yeah. If I'm going to solve this issue, it means annihilating everything that came before and starting from scratch. That means I have to go away, and I don't know how long it's going to take. And I also know you can't force it. I love and respect filmmaking too much to continue to do it while feeling I'm running in place. That's not a good feeling. And if it turns out I don't make another one, I'm really happy with this last group of movies. I don't want to be one of those people about whom people say, "Wow, he kind of fell off there at the end." That would be depressing.

You've made eight remarkably different films since 2009: the super-low-budget drama The Girlfriend Experience, with porn star Sasha Grey; the documentary And Everything Is Going to Be Fine, about the late monologuist Spalding Gray; the corporate farce The Informant!; the disaster flick Contagion; the action picture Haywire; the stripper dramedy Magic Mike; and now the medical thriller Side Effects. You've also got the upcoming Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, for HBO. Do they add up to some kind of statement as you head out the door?
Not at all. A couple of them were just happenstance. Haywire started because I got fired off Moneyball and I needed to go to work; I just happened to see Gina Carano on TV and wanted to build a film around her. Magic Mike came out of the blue, and we jammed it in. Side Effects happened because another film, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., blew up. Half were planned, and half were not.

There's this theory out there that your strategy is "one for you, one for them." In other words, you do a big film, a studio film, like Erin Brockovich, so you can then make smaller, more experimental films, like ­Bubble, which had no script and was improvised by nonprofessional actors. Would you agree with that?
No. There may be some directors who do that, but anyone who works with me can tell you that I don't operate that way. I can't spend two years on a project without being totally excited about it. Any movie I've made has been because of the challenge it offered me as a director, because it provides a new canvas. Even the big-budget stuff like the Ocean's films.

So the studios didn't pressure you to do Ocean's Twelve and Thirteen after the first one became a massive hit?
No. They didn't care. We kind of had to talk them into it. Those movies provided a really unique set of opportunities visually. They're not easy for me to make. The first Ocean's was, directorially, a lot harder than Traffic. Not even close. But they allowed me to play in a way the other movies don't. It's the closest to a comic book as I'll ever get — I viewed them as like ­Roy Lichtenstein panels, which was really fun. And I'm very happy with them visually. When you look at what passes for a tent pole now, the Ocean's movies are pretty gentle in terms of their spirit, and I like that about them.

What do you think people mean when they call a film Soderberghian?
I have no idea. But never use that word to describe your movie in a pitch meeting because it won't get made.

Really? You just made a $7 million film about strippers — Magic Mike — that has earned something like $167 million worldwide.
So pitch the movie as Magic Mike. Otherwise, if you're using my name, you could mean The Good German.

But you've shown an incredible ability for getting films made, particularly the mid-level, character-driven, superhero-and-vampire-free films that conventional wisdom says don't get made anymore — from the esoteric sci-fi film Solaris to, yes, even a somber, black-and-white movie about post–World War II Germany. How do you account for that?
On the few occasions where I've talked to film students, one of the things I stress, in addition to learning your craft, is how you behave as a person. For the most part, our lives are about telling stories. So I ask them, "What are the stories you want people to tell about you?" Because at a certain point, your ability to get a job could turn on the stories people tell about you. The reason [then–Universal Pictures chief] Casey Silver put me up for [1998's] Out of Sight after I'd had five flops in a row was because he liked me personally. He also knew I was a responsible filmmaker, and if I got that job, the next time he'd see me was when we screened the movie. If I'm an asshole, then I don't get that job. Character counts. That's a long way of saying, "If you can be known as someone who can attract talent, that's a big plus."

You've talked at length about giving actors as much freedom as possible. That's resulted in a number of performances that have launched, revived, and revitalized careers. In the case of Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight, you're responsible for her only good film performance.
It's not that I never say no; I'm just not trying to control them. I'm looking to amplify and showcase whatever it is about them that I find compelling. You know, my attitude is that all of us have to submit to what the film wants and needs to be. So the best version of the thing is sitting up here, and you have to submit to that.

How do you accomplish that?
I keep the environment pretty relaxed — relaxed but focused. I work with the same people all the time. There's a form of band humor that develops: inside jokes and references that only a core group of people understand. It's fun. Some people believe tension is a good creative tool, that you get more out of people if you make them feel insecure. I'm not one of those people, and I don't want to be around that when I go to work.

Before shooting began on Magic Mike, Matthew McConaughey says he sent you two e-mails full of painstaking details about his character. The first e-mail was nine pages, the second was ten. Your responses were "Sure" and "Go for it." Is that true?
Matthew understood the part so well and had such good ideas that I had no desire to box him in. So I just said yes to everything, which turned out to be the right way to go. I think the only note I gave him, when I first pitched him the part on the phone, was that his character believed in UFOs.

UFOs?
It wasn't a way of diminishing the character. It was actually the opposite. My mom was a parapsychologist, so I grew up around that stuff.

You've talked in the past about obsessively viewing films for inspiration — like The Battle of Algiers and Z for Traffic. What did you watch for Magic Mike?
Saturday Night Fever was our model. It's one of those movies people remember differently than what was actually true. Going back, we were startled by how dark it gets. This girl is being raped in the back seat of the car, and Travolta doesn't really do anything, he just drives around. He does things that you probably wouldn't want your protagonist doing today.

And what were you watching for your new film, Side Effects, which is set in the psychopharmaceutical world?
Fatal Attraction. I watched that a lot. That's a very well-directed movie. Adrian Lyne knew exactly what he was doing. The eighties was a terrible decade for American films, with a few exceptions in the independent world. It's basically when the corporations took over. And one of the few, to my mind, interesting aspects of the decade were these psychological thrillers that popped up. I don't know why they stopped being made. Maybe they priced themselves out of existence.

The movie is an old-school nail-biter, not a diatribe on anti­depressants, drug companies, and psychotherapy. Still, it takes a pretty dim view of all of those things.
I think if you were to talk to Dr. Sasha Bardey, an adviser on the film, he would tell you that there's a place for ­SSRIs, but there's no question that a lot of people are looking for the shortcut. He would also say a combination of prescription meds and therapy can help people who are in a really bad way, but that there's a difference between those people and the garden-variety feelings of anxiety or depression that most of us go through occasionally because of a set of circumstances.

[Spoiler Alert] In Side Effects, Catherine Zeta-Jones has a sex scene with Rooney Mara, and  your HBO film Behind the Candelabra stars Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover. Are you trying to spice up or break up the Douglas-Zeta-Jones marriage?
[Laughs] That was just coincidence. I got the idea of doing a Liberace film when we were making Traffic—so thirteen years ago. Out of the blue, I asked Michael if he would be interested in playing Liberace, and he said yes. He told me later that he thought I was just fucking around with him. I don't think he understood where this was coming from, and I didn't either.

Candelabra brings you back to more lighthearted territory. At least it looks like a lot of fun—Michael and Matt making out, for instance.
It was really fun. The world of it was just bananas. It was great to see Michael and Matt jump off the cliff together. Nobody can accuse them of being shy. They just went for it. It's pretty gay.

Can Douglas sing?
He can sing as well as Liberace, who sort of talked-sang like Rex Harrison.

How did Matt get involved?
He came to do a day of work on Che. I gave him the book Behind the Cabdelabra, by Scott Thorson, and said, See if you're interested in playing Scott. Matt said yes, but when Michael had a little gathering at his house for a brunch—it was literally the day before shooting started—I could sense Matt was anxious. He said, I'm not sure where we're going with this guy. I told him to just show up to work the next day, get into his outfit, and put the hair on. It was one of those things where there wasn't anything to say—I didn't know what string of words to put together to explain it to him.  It was about the physicality of just being there. From that point it would be obvious what had to be done. And it was. By the second day he said he felt good, and by the end of the first week he was totally dialed in.

Are you disappointed that it's not being released in theaters?
Not at all. After Warner Bros. put it in turnaround, we showed it to every studio in town. No one wanted it, even though we only needed $5 million.

That seems inconceivable—no, stupid.
It was crazy. But HBO was immediately into it, and the experience was great from beginning to end.

John Huston, one of your influences, said that the ideal film "would be as though the reel were behind one's eyes and you were projecting it yourself, seeing what you wish to see." It reminded me of watching your movies. I can almost feel your impatience, like you can't get close enough to what you're shooting. It's almost as if you want to be the film.
Right. I wish it all happened faster. When I get stuck, I slow everything down, I send everyone away. I know, from experience, that you can't rush it. The opposite is that when you've figured it out, you can't move fast enough.

People tell stories about Hitchcock, that for him the shooting part was not fun. I don't believe he was as bored by shooting as he and others claim; for me, there's nothing more fun than watching a performer do something you don't expect. But I understand what he means: The exciting part is the idea, and then the execution of it sometimes is just laborious.

What do you consider the most important thing about the execution?
That we've made sure to take advantage of all the opportunities that the story provides. I want to feel we came out the other end of it considering all the options. The worst feeling in the world would be if we weren't rigorous enough. Contagion was a tricky one. We overhauled the movie in postproduction, cutting 45 minutes of material. And it was because we were trying to do two things. Take advantage of what that subject had to offer while avoiding disaster-movie clichés—we had a list we refused to do: Can't show the president. No helicopter shots. You can't go somewhere and show people suffering where our characters haven't been. Those restrictions made us think laterally, which was good.

The DVD for your 1999 crime film The Limey includes an exceedingly entertaining director commentary with screenwriter Lem Dobbs, who berates you for screwing up his script through cutting or rewriting.
I'm glad I got to work with Lem again on Haywire, because that's a fairly typical exchange for us. It's not anger—he's more incredulous than he is angry. I enjoy those conversations, because he's very bright, he's seen everything, and he has a strong point of view.

His chief criticism is that you favor style over substance, that you'd rather show a detail than an emotion. He's not the only person to say that about your films.
That's a reflection of my personality, probably, and I would argue that some of the things I've done that frustrated people upon a first viewing, ten or fifteen years later you're happy that they're that way. I remember describing making movies as a form of seduction and that people should look at it as though they're being approached at a bar. My whole thing is, when somebody comes up to you at a bar, what behavior is appealing to you? And there are certain things that I'm not willing to do to get a reaction.

Like what? Pander?
It's not pandering so much as being obvious. Do you want to hang out with someone who has the most obvious reaction to everything that happens? That's boring! And when I see a movie that's doing the obvious thing all the time, it's frustrating.

Your 1999 book, Getting Away With It, is a combination of your own diaries from that time and interviews with director Richard Lester, whose films—like A Hard Day's Night and The Knack ... And How to Get It—were major influences on you. At one point you complained to him: "I feel like a codger saying 'It's never been this bad,' but I really think it's never been this bad ... People who make dumb movies that make a lot of money are now treated with the kind of respect that used to be reserved for people who made good movies." You must be apoplectic now.
It's true that when I was growing up, there was a sort of division: Respect was accorded to people who made great movies and to people who made movies that made a lot of money. And that division just doesn't exist anymore: Now it's just the people who make a lot of money. I think there are many reasons for that. Some of them are cultural. I've said before, I think that the audience for the kinds of movies I grew up liking has migrated to television. The format really allows for the narrow and deep approach that I like, and a lot of people ... Well, the point is, three and a half million people watching a show on cable is a success. That many people seeing a movie is not a success. I just don't think movies matter as much anymore, culturally.

Around the same time you also said, "If you go much over two hours, I think you really better have a very good reason." I was thinking about that as I sat through the big December releases, which seemed to average two hours and 40 minutes.
The thing I also see a lot of is multiple endings—I feel like movies end like five times now! I remember being very conscious of the Lord of the Rings movies having a lot of endings. But I wonder if the audience has come to expect them.

Music has become another of the most abused aspects of filmmaking. I'm mystified by the direction scores have taken in the last ten years. It's wall-to-wall—it's the movie equivalent of the vuvuzelas from the last World Cup! I don't understand it at all. For me, it's ideal when you can get the music to do something that everything else isn't doing.

I've always appreciated how you don't use the soundtrack to telegraph emotions; your scores are remarkably subtle. The Informant! was one of the few times you used music conspicuously, but it really worked for that film.
A lot of people had mixed feelings about that score.  Look, it was a very specific choice in the sense that—what I said to [composer] Marvin Hamlisch was, this music is not for the audience. This music is for him [Matt Damon's character], it's his soundtrack. For the movie, it worked. But that's not typically what you're doing with a score. I think that's why people reacted ambivalently.

Have you noticed how loud trailers have gotten?
They're punishing! I've cut trailers that don't do that, and they test badly.  I will point out to the studio that sitting some people in a room and showing them this one trailer is not how they will be seen in a theater, where you get six in a row. I don't want my trailer to feel like the other five. Their response is always, Look at the numbers. That's one good thing—well, there have been many good things about working with HBO—but there are no numbers, no focus groups.

What else has gotten worse?
The worst development in filmmaking—particularly in the last five years—is how badly directors are treated. It's become absolutely horrible the way the people with the money decide they can fart in the kitchen, to put it bluntly. It's not just studios—it's anyone who is ­financing a film. I guess I don't understand the assumption that the director is presumptively wrong about what
the audience wants or needs when they are the first audience, in a way. And probably got into making movies ­because of being in that audience.

But an alarming thing I learned during Contagion is that the people who pay to make the movies and the audiences who see them are actually very much in sync. I remember during previews how upset the audience was by the Jude Law character. The fact that he created a sort of mixed reaction was viewed as a flaw in the filmmaking. Not, "Oh, that's interesting, I'm not sure if this guy is an asshole or a hero." People were really annoyed by that. And I thought, Wow, so ambiguity is not on the table anymore. They were angry.

Critics used to have the role of standing up for ambiguity. But you've never been a fan of film critics.
It's what Dave Hickey said: It's air guitar, ultimately. Was it helpful to read Pauline Kael's work when I was growing up? Absolutely. For a teenager who was beginning to look at movies as something other than just entertainment, her reviews were really interesting. But at a certain point, it's not useful anymore. I stopped reading reviews of my own films after Traffic, and I find it hard to read any critics now because they are just so easily fooled. From a directorial standpoint, you can't throw one by me. I know if you know what you're doing, and, "Wow, critics"—their reading of filmmaking is very superficial. Look, nothing excites me more than a good film. It makes me want to make something good. But I have certain standards, and I don't grade on a curve. If you want to be a director, I'm going to treat you like I treat everybody. So it's frustrating when critics praise things that I feel are not up to snuff.

Do you think it's deteriorated since Kael?
No. I think her reading of that stuff was pretty superficial as well. She had a great gift for setting movies in cultural context, but what set her apart from most critics—and especially a lot of critics today—was that she was at her absolute best when she loved something. And that was exciting to read. Nowadays, I find critics to be very facile when they don't like a film, but when they do like something they get tongue-tied.

Do you still see films in theaters, with audiences?
Sure. It's strange because you'd think there would be a lot of good theaters in Manhattan, but there aren't. There are a couple, but in general it's not fun to go out to movies here.

Somehow I don't think you're someone who worries about a legacy. But what do you think yours will be?
I have no idea. As Orson Welles said, I'm the bird, you're the ornithologist.

sex, lies, and videotape sparked the indie-film explosion of the nineties. Could something like that happen again?
It would be hard because movies cost so much to market. I'm encouraged by Video on Demand, which is a very promising distribution method. But it's much harder for filmmakers now. You're sort of expected to emerge full-blown. That's rare. Some people do, but I didn't. Like I said, you can't make five films in a row that nobody sees. You'd be in movie jail. I feel really lucky that I got to make the mistakes I made and still get to do Out of Sight.

Are there young filmmakers you're excited about?
Shane Carruth. He did the film Primer, and he's got a terrific new movie at Sundance. And I'm acting as a presenter on the new Godfrey Reggio film [Visitors], which is exciting. I mean, this is a guy who doesn't build a film based on other things he's seen, like I do. It's his own thing.

For a filmmaker as prolific as you are, what do you make of Terrence Malick's 30-years-in-the-making Tree of Life?
Everyone works in their own way. And as is often the case with people who are unique, the problem isn't Terrence Malick or Quentin Tarantino, the problem is all the people who came after them and want to be Terrence Malick and Quentin Tarantino. But that's the way it's always been.

I once asked Tarantino if he would change anything in any of his films. He said, "No. It wouldn't be in the film if I didn't want it there." That doesn't sound like something you would say.
Well, I'm remaking—it's been a long process—but I'm overhauling Kafka completely. It's funny—wrapping a movie 22 years later! But the rights had reverted back to me and Paul Rassam, an executive producer, and he said, "I know you were never really happy with it. Do you want to go back in and play around?" We shot some inserts while we were doing Side Effects. I'm also dubbing the whole thing into German so the accent issue goes away. And Lem and I have been working on recalibrating some of the dialogue and the storytelling. So it's a completely different movie. The idea is to put them both out on disc. But for the most part, I'm a believer in your first impulse being the right one. And I certainly think that most of the seventies directors who have gone back in and tinkered with their movies have made them worse.

Are you entirely satisfied with any of your films?
Out of Sight. It's less flawed than the others. Or The Informant! As I look at those two, I feel like I don't know what else I would do.

Are there many films you wanted to make that didn't happen?
Less than a handful. There are tons of excuses you can make for something not happening. It's a very imperfect process, getting a movie made. And I'm one of those people who just ignores that stuff. The film doesn't have to be perfect. The deal doesn't have to be perfect. I'll reverse engineer into whatever box we have so that we can do it and do do it—less money, less time, whatever. I'm looking for reasons to say yes. But, sometimes, nothing works.

Like Confederacy of Dunces. Whatever happened to that?
I ended up walking away. We had this lawsuit over the rights [against Scott Rudin and Paramount pictures in 1998], and we got the project back, and at that point—it was a good lesson to learn, actually, because I realized once we got it back that my enthusiasm had been beaten out of me. Now it was an obligation, as opposed to something that I wanted to do. I don't know what's happening with it. I think it's cursed. I'm not prone to superstition, but that project has got bad mojo on it.

We should talk about your painting, since, well, we're surrounded by your paintings! A portrait of Samuel Beckett, a panel of vivid stripes in the Color Field style. Looking at your work, I can see you're not a beginner—your fluency with different styles is impressive. You've been drawing since you were a child, right?
Yes, and both my parents did, too. But it wasn't until I was older that I started looking at visual art closely. What's exciting is to feel at the very beginning of something. It's also terrifying starting from scratch, but panic has always energized me. It's the same process as anything: identifying who your heroes are, figuring out what they did, and then just going and doing it. I can stare at my Lucian Freud book for hours and hours, but at a certain point you have to go to the wall and imitate. So it's very basic right now: Can I make things look the way I want them to look? That's where I'm at right now.

I get the sense that, as with film, motivation is not an issue.
I was watching one of those iconoclast shows on the Sundance Channel. Jamie Oliver said Paul Smith had told him something he hadn't understood until very recently: "I'd rather be No. 2 forever than No. 1 for a while." Just make stuff and don't agonize over it. Stop worrying about being No. 1. I see a lot of people getting paralyzed by the response to their work, the imagined result. It's like playing a Jedi mind trick on yourself, and Smith is right. That's the way I've always approached films, the way I approach everything. Just make 'em.

What are you gravitating toward as a painter?
I go back and forth between portraits and abstracts. I'm not really interested in landscapes or still life. I'm more attracted to faces. In fact, whenever I think of a film I'm about to make, I see a face with a certain expression on it. For my photography, I've been studying the work of Duane Michals. He's famous for these photo ­sequences, which tell stories in a cinematic way. I bought a few of his books, and I've begun to think about sequences of my own that suggest a narrative.

I'm always curious to hear how something was made—though I have no interest in why an artist did something, or what his work means. Like with Jackson Pollock: I'm always interested in what kind of paint and canvas he used, I just don't want to know what he meant. You're supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you're not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

Given how often you layer and deconstruct scenes in your films, I'm curious if you've ever worked in collage. Maybe I'm being too literal.
Actually, I've got a big collage in L.A. I was sitting in an airport reading Us Weekly one day, and I realized all the hours of my life I'd spent reading tabloid magazines. I thought: I can't have wasted all that time! So I spent six months building this six-foot-by-nine-foot collage of people on the red carpet. It was really fun.

You've spent hours of your life reading Us?
That shit is made to be read in an airport!

Do you have a fantasy of what your typical post-cinema day will be?
A little bit of everything. I'm really looking forward to reading a book, finishing it, and picking up another one.

Based on a list you put together two years ago—of everything you read and watched between April 2010 and March 2011—you had no problem reading while you were making films. What are you reading now?
I tend to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. I just finished a wonderful novel by Paul Murray called Skippy Dies. Right before that, I finished Tony Fletcher's book about the Smiths. They generated a lot of good music in a short time, then kind of burned out and crashed. I recently reread three Raymond Chandler novels, which were amazing all over again. I literally don't think he uses more than 200 different words. Of all the arts, I think the novel comes closest to being inside another person's head. Probably because none of it is being literalized; you're creating the images based on what you're reading, so you're never "wrong."

So painting, reading. Given your work ethic, that probably adds up to half a day.
I'm importing this liquor from Bolivia: Singani. Technically it's a brandy. I was turned onto it while I was doing Che and everybody on the crew got hooked.  You don't get that burn in your throat like you do with most hard liquor, so it's dangerous. You can drink it like water and then you're invisible.

You'll be the U.S. distributor?
Yeah. That took five years. There's also at least one non-fiction book that I'm working on. Another filmmaking book. And I'm working on a play with Scott.

Is the Cleopatra musical with Catherine Zeta-Jones still happening?
Yeah.  And I'm working on a play with Scott [Burns, who wrote Side Effects].

Mike Nichols has been a mentor pretty much since you started...
He's a good problem solver. I try not to make it a burden. I try to pick the right time to get his reaction.

I imagine he'll be particularly helpful as you move from film to theater.
We've talked about what skill set is transferable from one to the other. But whatever I do in the theater, the pieces have to be original pieces. In order for me to take advantage of what I can do, it would be pointless for me to do straight plays or revivals. The projects have to be something that I've been involved in creating from scratch, so I can use the sensibility I've developed as a filmmaker. I don't have the background in pure stage craft.
I just saw this great production at the Irish Rep—"A Celebration of Harold Pinter," starring Julian Sands.  I like Pinter a lot, maybe because his work reminds me of my own home growing up. There was all this unspoken heaviness going on, but everything happened off camera. We knew my parents weren't getting along, but they kept it to themselves, which was in fact a very generous thing for them to have done. And good for my career!

Was it classic WASP behavior?
No. My father was Swedish and Irish and my mother was Italian with a little Irish in there as well. They were just very different people. I'm a blend of both of them. My mom does not think in a linear way. She'd be very comfortable in this room [he gestures to the organized chaos of his studio, crowded with canvases, painting supplies and cardboard boxes]. This is not what my dad's office looked like. My father was a teacher and an intellectual—linear, rational, organized, hard-working. I got something from both of them, but I was closer to my father growing up so it took awhile to realize I was like my mother too. That dichotomy is featured in everything I've done.

What TV do you watch?
Pretty much what you'd expect: Breaking Bad. Can't wait for that next season. Mad Men. Boss. I feel very lucky because David Fincher sent me advance episodes of House of Cards. I've got three to go, and I'm totally hooked. What I like about all those shows is that there's an aesthetic that's adhered to no matter who is directing it. They have rules, there's a tool kit. I don't like seeing stuff where there's no coherence to the choices that are being made. And all those shows are shot like movies. That train-robbery episode in the last season of Breaking Bad? They had like eight days to shoot that episode. That's good shit! And House of Cards is the most beautiful thing you've seen on a screen. Oh, and I watch Girls.

You fit right into the Girls demo, which includes a large percentage of men in their forties and fifties.
Really?

Must be the butt-fucking. Many of your films—beginning with sex, lies—have been about communication and miscommunication and the noisiness of the world and the destruction of language, which has only been exacerbated by Twitter. So I'm wondering: Do you tweet?
I created a sort of shadow name that I've posted a few things on. Like anything, it's a tool. What is it going to be used for? Is there some aspect of it that can be positive? I guess the answer is maybe. I look at the young woman from Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban for advocating that girls go to school. It's hard to believe something like that can still happen, but I look at that and think, Is this technology a way to generate enough outrage that some change will occur? I don't know.

One thing I do know from making art is that ideology is the enemy of problem-solving. Nobody sits on a film set and says, "No, you can't use green-screen VFX to solve that because I'm Catholic." There's no place for that, and that's why I've stopped being embarrassed about being in the entertainment industry, because I'm surrounded by intelligent people who solve problems quickly and efficiently, primarily because issues of ideology don't enter into the conversation.

That's a 180-degree turn from fifteen years ago, when you called the film business the silliest in the world.
After making a lot more films, I realized that the movie and TV business is, for all its inefficiencies, one of the best-run big businesses we have. It's very transparent, financially, and the only business I know of that successfully employs trickle-down economics: When movies and shows make money, the profits go right back into making more movies and shows, because the stock price is all about market share. And these people excel at problem-solving—that's 99 percent of the job. I look at Hurricane Katrina, and I think if four days before landfall you gave a movie studio autonomy and a 100th of the billions the government spent on that disaster, and told them, "Lock this place down and get everyone taken care of," we wouldn't be using that disaster as an example of what not to do. A big movie involves clothing, feeding, and moving thousands of people around the world on a tight schedule. Problems are solved creatively and efficiently within a budget, or your ass is out of work. So when I look at what's going on in the government, the gridlock, I think, Wow, that's a really inefficient way to run a railroad. The government can't solve problems because the two parties are so wedded to their opposing ideas that they can't move. The very idea that someone from Congress can't take something from the other side because they'll be punished by their own party? That's stupid. If I were running for office, I would be poaching ideas from everywhere. That's how art works. You steal from everything. I must remember to tweet that I'm in fact not running for office.

Okay, so here's your chance: What is the efficient way to run a railroad or a government, as the case may be?
I'm of the minority opinion that presidents should be given more power for less time. Let him—no "her" yet!—put the ideas he campaigned on into play, like a new tax code, and let's see if it works or fails, quickly. If it doesn't, then two years later the people who said it would never work get their chance. A watered-down version of an idea isn't a good indicator of whether it's a good idea. I read this great book by Daniel Lazare—The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy. The Founders very clearly indicated that they had no idea what the country would be like in 100 years, and if the laws they'd written didn't work, they should toss them out and write new ones. The problem, of course, is that building or fixing things takes time. Tearing shit down is easy. The analogy I use is that if you throw a party with 40 people, it takes only one asshole to ruin the whole thing. And that's kind of where we're at. I wonder what would happen if I started a virtual country. Are there laws that would forbid that? What if I had my own virtual country with 1 million people?

Well, isn't a film set kind of like your own country for a limited time? You have to be a leader. What did you find to be the hardest part of that?
Being good and clear. Because if you're being clear, you may not be good because you're too obviously trying to be clear. If you can find interesting ways to be clear, you're really onto something.

Have you met any naturally great leaders?
George Clooney. He inspires people. He listens. He's generous. He's loyal. He's funny, which is crucial. He solves problems better than anyone I know. That's why people keep telling him to run for office, but he's too smart for that. If there were 500 of him, you could take over an entire country—but of course three weeks later you'd lose it again because of all the parties.

Do you still feel like a pessimist in a country of optimists?
When I hear people talk about 2025, I'm like, this could all turn into Mad Max a lot sooner than that! I was talking to Dr. Larry Brilliant, who consulted on Contagion, and I asked him, "Does the world seem to be spinning out of control as fast as I think it is?" And he said, "Oh, yeah."

But, look, I don't want to sound like a bummer. There are lots of things that America does really well.

Like what?
Comedy. We have the best comedy in the world, hands down. I'm very proud, for example, that we have Chris Rock.

Are you a Louis C.K. fan?
I love his show. He seems like someone who would be fun to know. Seems like. And we do sports entertainment better than anyone. It's phenomenal—the production values, the computer graphics, the commentators ...

What teams do you follow?
I followed the Jets, simply because they were such a train wreck this season. But I follow stories more than teams—stories like Robert Griffin III or Colin Kaepernick.

Do you watch basketball?
I was going to say that the only thing I don't really watch is basketball. It has to do with my personality, how I'm wired. You can't make a play in the first quarter of a basketball game that will determine the ultimate outcome the way you can in baseball or football—like if a touchdown is scored in the first quarter, that could conceivably be the only big play of the game. So I can never figure out why I'm supposed to watch the first half of a basketball game. Well, except for the pure athleticism—seeing something like the crazy Blake Griffin dunk from last year.

Any other American achievements you'd like to endorse?
We produce the best pet food! I've traveled the world, and I'll go to the mat on that one. When I open the cans for my cats—our cats—my mouth waters. You could serve the stuff on a cracker.

What brand are we talking here?
Fancy Feast. It comes in individual little trays that peel open. I think they're even called appetizers. This is the cat equivalent of eating at Nobu every night. So that's three things we lead the world in. Pretty good, right? America, fuck yeah!     
   
This conversation has been condensed and edited from two interviews conducted on January 9 and 11.

*This article originally appeared in the February 4, 2013 issue of New York Magazine.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Pubrick on February 05, 2013, 08:24:08 PM
I read the whole thing, and it  was "Dr  Larry" Brilliant!

for someone who has lost the will to keep making films,  he's really good at inspiring ppl to go out and make films.

I wish the interviewer had followed up on sodonebergh's claim that movies aren't culturally important anymore. he just glosses over that really quickly like it's a given.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Alexandro on February 05, 2013, 08:49:06 PM
yes, this is one of the best interviews I've read in a while. last week when I first encountered I reposted on facebook the bit were he talks about katrina, film crews and problem solving. which is very provocative, but a part of me believes this to be true.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: 72teeth on February 05, 2013, 09:29:10 PM
Soderbergh for Zizek 2014!
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on March 29, 2013, 09:34:55 PM
Steven Soderbergh working on 12-hour adaptation of 'The Sot-Weed Factor'
Source: EW

Let's just say Steven Soderbergh's idea of retirement doesn't include a lot of shuffleboard. The Oscar winning director, who has said that the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra (airing May 26 on HBO) will be his last conventional feature film for the time being, tells EW that he is now at work developing a 12-hour miniseries based on John Barth's 1960 novel The Sot-Weed Factor.

"I've had this on my shelf for a while," says Soderbergh. "I was going to do it as a movie, but I couldn't figure it out. So now I've had it adapted as 12 one-hour episodes." Set in the late 1600s, the satirical story follows an English poet who moves to Maryland to take over his father's tobacco farm. A 1960 New York Times review of the book called it "a bare-knuckled satire of humanity at large" that is "so monstrously long that reading it seemed nearly as laborious as writing it." In other words, this isn't exactly The Da Vinci Code.

According to Soderbergh, the real challenge on this project is figuring out a way to bring the epic period piece to the screen without an oversize budget. He says he's found a daring, outside-the-box solution — don't forget, this is the same guy who has shot movies with no script, no linear structure, and a porn star in the lead role — but he's not quite ready to reveal it yet. "I think I've come up with a solve to do it cheaply. It's bold. If it works, it'll be super cool. And if it doesn't, you won't be able to watch ten minutes of it," he says. "I don't want to make a f—ing $85 million, 12-hour comedy set in the [1600s]. That's why I started thinking this way."

Whether that means the movie will air on TV or become a web-distributed series, the director doesn't know — though he was a fan of his pal David Fincher's House of Cards, which broke ground this year as Netflix's first foray into flashy, high-profile scripted content. Either way, Soderbergh says he's interested in pursuing a distribution contract that's every bit as unusual as his top-secret concept for the project. "I'll be interested to see what kind of deal I can make that's good: Not getting paid up front, but participating and owning it in some meaningful way if it works. If I agree that I'm going to make this thing as lean and mean as possible, what do I get for that? Everything is changing so fast, there may be some new way of skinning the cat that I don't even know about," he says.

Sot-Weed isn't the only title on the director's docket: He's also adapting last summer's hit Magic Mike into a stage show ("It's definitely happening. We've had meetings about it and it's moving forward," he confirms), developing his long-rumored Cleopatra rock musical ("I may at least start workshopping that next year"), and getting ready to direct a play written by Contagion and Side Effects screenwriter Scott Z. Burns. But don't call him the Boy Who Cried Retirement. "I've been very specific that this applies to movies," he says. "I didn't say I would stop working. I'm too restless to sit around."
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on April 30, 2013, 05:08:25 PM
...Info on His Latest Twitter Novella
via NoFilmSchool

Though Soderbergh is apparently done with filmmaking, he is turning to new media to continue his output, and is currently writing a novella via his 'secret' Twitter (https://twitter.com/Bitchuation), entitled Glue. Published up to chapter seven, it's a second-person account of a journey through Amsterdam and Paris, seeking a mysterious drug aptly named "#&%#." He's not quite done with the visual storytelling medium, however, as his latest novella includes obscured and impressionistic photos (https://twitter.com/Bitchuation/status/328725487746682881/photo/1) alongside some of the tweets.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on May 22, 2013, 11:52:39 AM
Obscure T-Shirts, Movie Memorabilia and Bolivian Liquor: What You Can Find on Steven Soderbergh's Strange New Website
Source: indieWire

Steven Soderbergh. Steven Soderbergh recently retired from filmmaking, but not without directing three well-received films in the past two years ("Magic Mike," "Side Effects" and "Behind the Candelabra".  He also stirred up the film community with a rousing keynote at the San Francisco Film Society.

And now Soderbergh has launched his new website, Extension765.com (http://www.extension765.com), which is billed as a "one-of-a-kind marketplace from Steven Soderbergh."

One-of-a-kind, indeed.

In an interview with Reuters back in February, Soderbergh explained that the name of the site is a reference to the movie "The Conversation":  "Whenever Gene Hackman calls to find out what's going on, Harrison Ford answers the phone and says, 'extension 765.'"

There are a number of elements to the site.  First, an eBay-like auction site for bits and pieces from Soderbergh's filmmaking past, with proceeds going to the Children's Aid Society of New York. Goods include an "Erin Brockovich" clapper, "Oceans 13" Cannes tickets and an autographed "Solaris" press kit.

Next, we've got some photos Soderbergh took.  These photos, on sale on the site, come with a colorful disclosure:

Full disclosure: the subjects of these polaroids have not been contacted, mostly because I'm sure they would ask to see them all before I put them on sale, and there are hundreds of these things and it would be way too much hassle and, by the way, people are starving and need fresh water and schools so why would somebody want to hold me up? Plus I think technically these may be property of the companies that made the films, but really I'm hoping because the money is going to good causes they won't come after my ass, so you might want to move quickly and not make to much noise about your purchase if you don't want to get me into trouble.

Moving on, Soderbergh's also selling t-shirts, with some in-joke references to businesses in classic films.  In the Reuters interview, he gives away the reference to Black Pony Scotch, saying, "That's a very, very obscure reference from a famous film noir from the 1940s where there is a five-second pan across a table and you see this bottle of Black Pony Scotch."  The film, it turns out is Otto Preminger's "Laura."

The "Swag" page, where at the moment only t-shirts reside, also includes reference to soon-to-come Steven Soderbergh headphones created by RED (as in the cameras) and the novella he's been tweeting.

And then, Soderbergh exposes plans to sell (though not on the web) his own brand of Singani, a Bolivian spirit distilled from muscatel grapes that was introduced to Soderbergh by his "Che" location scout, the producer Rodrigo Bellot.  Included on this page is a video of a roller derby team that doesn't make sense until the last three seconds.

Finally, this Extension 765 thing is maybe possibly a transmedia project?  There's a really difficult-to-understand explanation of something called the Department of Human Engineering, and the site also launched with an incredibly strange memo written by "Office Lady No. 23," in which the owner of the site is implicated in a hit-and-run.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Pubrick on May 22, 2013, 12:39:35 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on May 22, 2013, 11:52:39 AM

Moving on, Soderbergh's also selling t-shirts, with some in-joke references to businesses in classic films.  In the Reuters interview, he gives away the reference to Black Pony Scotch, saying, "That's a very, very obscure reference from a famous film noir from the 1940s where there is a five-second pan across a table and you see this bottle of Black Pony Scotch."  The film, it turns out is Otto Preminger's "Laura."


this site is the best thing he's done in ages. the shirt section says there's a reference that is REALLY obscure, which i guess he just gave away in that interview (black pony - laura). which ones we gon' get?

i like Sybil the Soothsayer. it's the first one i got straight away. (network, obv.)

here's the rest:

NY Daily Enquirer - Citizen Kane
18 LU 13 -  the French Connection
Pacific All Risk Insurance - Double Indemnity
Linnekar - i have no idea and neither does google
Susan Alexander Kane - obvious
Fabian Publishing Company - little help?
Parallax Corporation - Parallax View
El Rancho - Kane again
El Macondo Apartments - Chinatown
Fly TGA - google seems to think it's a real thing.. uh..?
Rutland and Co. - Marnie
Perennial Armored Car - The Underneath
Sam Loomis Hardware - Psycho
American Newsreel inc NYC - i'm gonna go with kane.

so there you have it folks. soderbergh is now Comic Book Guy.

i would buy 4 straight away simply for the gimmick factor, cos i'm a manchild, but then there's this:

QuoteQuestion: Do you ship to an international address?

Answer: We would like to, but we're too lazy. And poor. We have plans to expand shipping to Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia by the end of 2013, but then again we also have plans to buy the state of Rhode Island, and that's more of a priority. Stay tuned for updates.


but since it's only available in the US i imagine my size will still be available by the end of the year, as they will only have sold out of L and XL.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Reel on May 22, 2013, 01:06:48 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on May 22, 2013, 11:52:39 AM
Soderbergh exposes plans to sell (though not on the web) his own brand of Singani, a Bolivian spirit distilled from muscatel grapes that was introduced to Soderbergh by his "Che" location scout, the producer Rodrigo Bellot.  Included on this page is a video of a roller derby team that doesn't make sense until the last three seconds.

Rodrigo was my digital filmmaking teacher at 15! He's a pisser, introduced me to Haneke, Brakhage, and most importantly George Kuchar. I haven't kept up with him, but it's cool to see this happening. I hope he gets a piece of the pie. I should go harass him on twitter, maybe he can hook me up with Soderbergh so I can convince him to let me take his job.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on May 22, 2013, 03:47:54 PM
Quote from: Pubrick on May 22, 2013, 12:39:35 PM
Linnekar - i have no idea and neither does google

Touch of Evil

Quote from: Pubrick on May 22, 2013, 12:39:35 PM
Fabian Publishing Company - little help?

The Best of Everything

Quote from: Pubrick on May 22, 2013, 12:39:35 PM
Fly TGA - google seems to think it's a real thing.. uh..?

Airport

Quote from: Pubrick on May 22, 2013, 12:39:35 PM
American Newsreel inc NYC - i'm gonna go with kane.

Saboteur
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on May 23, 2013, 01:52:26 PM
Steven Soderbergh Will Interrupt Retirement To Direct And Produce Cinemax Series 'The Knick' With Clive Owen Starring
BY MIKE FLEMING JR | Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: We need to qualify Steven Soderbergh's self-imposed retirement from the business with an asterisk: feature films only. Just as his final film Behind The Candelabra airs this Sunday on HBO, Soderbergh is in talks to team with Clive Owen on The Knick, a period series set in New York in 1900.

I'm told that he and Owen will set this series at Cinemax, which will give him a 10-episode season commitment. Soderbergh will direct all of the episodes. The setting: downtown New York in 1900, a tumultuous time of massive change and great progress. The series centers around the groundbreaking surgeons, nurses and staff at Knickerbocker Hospital, who are pushing the bounds of medicine in a time of astonishingly high mortality rates and zero antibiotics. Jack Amiel & Michael Begler wrote the pilot on spec, and they will be executive producers on the series. Owen and Soderbergh are also executive producers and so are Anonymous Content's Michael Sugar and Soderbergh's longtime producer Gregory Jacobs.

While this might make some might look cynically on Soderbergh's "retirement," he told me the other day in an interview for the Michael Douglas-Matt Damon Liberace movie that for the moment, he has shut the door on feature films. I can see that he likes the energy present in pay and basic cable TV, and it would be like him to try helping re-brand Cinemax by giving that network an event series, rather than setting it at HBO which has a wealth of great series already. HBO and Cinemax are under one roof, so this is easy to finesse. Soderbergh has experience with series, having directed the episodes and exec produced K Street, the HBO-based series done with George Clooney when they together operated the production company Section Eight. As for Owen, he most recently played Ernest Hemingway in the HBO telepic Hemingway & Gellhorn opposite Nicole Kidman, and he did TV work early in his career, including the Brit series Chancer, which was his breakout series.

And if you still want to snivel about Soderbergh's retirement, remember how nice it was when Michael Jordan put away his baseball bat and went back to basketball? The notion of Soderbergh and Owen teaming to add yet another must-watch feature-centric series in the cable landscape is exciting, if you ask me. I believe that production on this will begin in the fall. The broadcaster was not commenting.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: socketlevel on May 24, 2013, 01:48:21 PM
i wonder if soderbergh ever laughs at himself by this point. still, love this guy so much.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: ©brad on May 24, 2013, 05:25:42 PM
This retirement thing has been blown way out of proportion. He's stated several times he's taking an indefinite break from movies to do other things, TV included.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Gold Trumpet on May 24, 2013, 07:05:34 PM
Yea, he also said he was considering it a sabbatical. All of his frustration has been with theatrical filmmaking and its limitations. Ingmar Bergman made a similar transition and his journey to television defined the second part of his career. I honestly think Soderbergh is doing much the same. I can't ever see him not directing visual work in the way we know. Plus his journey will be more honest since unlike other filmmakers attaching themselves to tv projects, Soderbergh will direct it all.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: classical gas on May 25, 2013, 02:17:15 AM
Has it ever occurred to anyone that this guy is a whiny bitch?  I mean, what's his best film?  Fuck him.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Lottery on May 25, 2013, 02:24:38 AM
I thought Ocean's Eleven was awesome.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on September 23, 2013, 02:54:20 PM
Soderbergh Says Abandoned Leni Riefenstahl Biopic Would Focus On Director Battling The Studio System
via The Playist

Perhaps only super attentive Steven Soderbergh fans are aware but at one time, the director was kicking around the idea of making a movie about controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. The German director is best known for making the Nazi propaganda piece "Triumph Of The Will" which actual content aside, is regarded by many as a pretty technically accomplished work. Soderbergh had worked with Scott Z. Burns on a script about Riefenstahl, cracked the story and then ultimately realized, perhaps correctly, that no studio would finance such a movie. So instead, he and Burns pitched "Contagion" which got them a thumbs up and off they went. But whatever happened with the Riefensthal movie?

Presumably, it's sitting in a desk somewhere but a couple of years ago, Soderbergh elaborated a bit more on the fascinating approach.  "[Scott] and I were working on it and I thought we had an interesting take on it which was: to see if we could make the audience root for her and treat Hitler and Goebbels as like the studio heads and treat her as the aggrieved artist who is being held back by Phillistines and to really flip the thing upside down," he explained. "The job is not to judge your characters, your job is to present their point of view as they would want it presented so I thought, 'Wow, that would be interesting if you could somehow over 90 minutes convince somebody to root for someone who probably on some level was pretty horrible."

And speaking recently with NPR, Soderbergh shared a bit more about how the story would've been told in the film. "And so the movie at no point leaves her point of view, or delves into any of these moral questions at all. The whole design of the movie is that you are rooting for her to win. And the film ends with her onstage after the premier of 'Triumph of the Will' with people throwing roses at her and she's beaming," he said. "And that's the end of the movie. Now, what we realized after we solved this sort of creative problem was no one would go see this."

"I wanted to just be inside of her point of view," Soderbergh says about why he wanted to do the movie in the first place, particularly one that didn't take a stand one way or the other on the filmmaker. "...And so to me, it - the questions are there for the audience. They don't need to be there for her."
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Pubrick on September 23, 2013, 05:09:42 PM
That's dumb. She was Hitler's darling, he always defended her against Goebbels who couldn't stand her.

Also she was sexually active well into her 90s.

There's your movie. No need to twist the truth.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on March 06, 2014, 02:32:16 PM
David Gordon Green & Steven Soderbergh Bring 'Red Oaks' To Amazon Studios
via The Playlist

Steven Soderbergh has always been one of director David Gordon Green's models for an ideal career path, and it's a perplexing thought that the two filmmakers previously haven't secured a reason to collaborate. They came close—Green's adaptation of "A Confederacy of Dunces" promised Soderbergh as producer, before the film collapsed under studio politics—but now a prime opportunity has finally arrived, thanks to the heads over at Amazon Studios.

After a second slate of pilots including shows from Jill Soloway ("Afternoon Delight"), Chris Carter, and Paul Weitz, Amazon Studios have started prepping their next batch of projects, and they've locked an apparent gem. Green and Soderbergh have been tapped (via Deadline) to create "Red Oaks", a single-camera comedy written by Greg Jacobs and Joe Gagemi that follows the inner workings of a country club, and the relationships of the employees and their rich clientele.

Soderbergh has decided to exec produce the pilot, and Green will both exec-produce and direct once production begins this June.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: ©brad on March 06, 2014, 08:18:12 PM
There's too much! Too many shows. Too much content. Too much everything. I don't know where to begin sometimes. On my current list:

The Americans
Justified
True Detective
HOC Season 2
Banshee
Transparent (the Jill Jill Soloway amazon show)
Getting On

The Silicon Valley HBO show looks great. And Veep and Mad Men are coming back. And of course there's like, movies.

I'm going to happy hour.



Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on March 10, 2014, 07:16:06 AM
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: polkablues on March 10, 2014, 02:54:57 PM
Soderbergh's concept of retirement seems exhausting.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Kal on April 08, 2014, 11:58:25 PM
If anyone is in NY or plans to be in the next month, go see Soderbergh's play THE LIBRARY at the Public Theater. Really great stuff.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on April 28, 2014, 03:39:08 AM
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on June 23, 2014, 01:50:08 PM
Starz Orders Steven Soderbergh Anthology Series 'The Girlfriend Experience' Based On His Movie
via Deadline

Starz has greenlighted The Girlfriend Experience, a 13-part anthology series inspired by Steven Soderbergh's 2009 Magnolia Pictures film. Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman executive produce the half-hour series, from Transactional Pictures, which explores the relationships of the most exclusive courtesans who provide their clients with far more than just sex. These purveyors – or GFEs (Girlfriend Experience) – share intimacies more common to romantic partners or husbands and wives, becoming quasi-lovers and confidants who are richly paid for their time. "Many of these women are extremely accomplished," said Fleishman. "They range from musicians in major orchestras to PhD candidates in the sciences and often feel empowered by the control and economic freedom their work as GFE's affords them. The question is whether they define a new genus of contemporary relationship, or have relationships always been transactionally based in one form or another?"

Soderbergh and Fleishman executive producer along with independent filmmakers Lodge Kerrigan (!) and Amy Seimetz, who will also write and direct on the series. "We're in an exciting period of auteur-driven television right now," Soderbergh said. "When Philip floated the idea of a Girlfriend Experience-inspired television show, I thought: 'let's make it a different woman in a different city, let's pair two independent writer-directors, one male and one female, and let them do the whole thing." Soderbergh said he'd known Lodge for 20 years and became a fan of Amy's when he saw her first feature, Sun Don't Shine, last summer. The series reunites Soderbergh with Starz CEO Chris Albrecht 11 years after the two worked together on the improv Washington DC comedy K Street.

The original feature, directed by Soderbergh and written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009 (watch the trailer below). "We are all such fans of the movie that the idea of exploring this world through many different characters, voices and points of view was especially intriguing," Albrecht said. "Steven and Philip's approach to the format is unique and not something seen on the entertainment landscape today."

Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: MacGuffin on July 07, 2014, 01:50:27 PM
Steven Soderbergh on Why He Really Quit Movies
The director talks about his new TV show, his old films, and the one-asshole theory of everything
Source: Esquire Magazine

This time last year, Steven Soderbergh was winding down his filmmaking career and switching to other things. Many other things. Since then, he's directed an Off-Broadway play about school shootings, The Library, produced and directed The Knick, a 10-episode TV series debuting on Cinemax this August (starring Clive Owen), and become a serious liquor importer, with his Bolivian brandy, Singani 63. And it was recently announced that one of his films, The Girlfriend Experience, is being adapted for television. The headlines had said he was retiring, but he's done nothing remotely close to retiring.

We recently sat down with Soderbergh at the The Roof at the Viceroy Hotel in midtown Manhattan, where he gave us a Singani tasting, and talked in detail about life, art, assholes, and much more.

ESQUIRE.COM: I recently re-watched Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which turned 25 this year.

STEVEN SODERBERGH: That must be like watching something from the Victorian era.

ESQ: I remember it being revolutionary.

SS: Now these people seem so well-adjusted! The bar has shifted so much to what people consider to be... I don't know if average is the right word. But in Sex, Lies, this guy comes back to town and has a proclivity that people find unusual. Now, what would that be? You can't shock people, is what it comes down to.

ESQ: You're made out to be this anti-Hollywood guy. But now you have a liquor brand. So you're not anti-brand.

SS: My working life is me doing what I want to do. This is that. I've made movies that people don't go to see.

ESQ: But you like it.

SS: Yeah! The other thing is people ask, "Why don't you want to do movies anymore?"

ESQ: People are obsessed with that. It's like the Beatles breaking up. You're the Beatles.

SS: Well there's no Yoko. The reason is, and I understand it... The fact that it became a story at all is because of Matt Damon. He remembered verbatim a drunk conversation we had in Chicago and repeated it to USA Today. I'd talked about it before and nobody gave a shit. It wasn't until Matt said that I had a plan to get out. The bottom line when people talk about all the reasons, you know the biggest reason? It stopped being fun. It just stopped being fun. It really wasn't. That's a big deal to me. It may sound like "Why do you have to have fun to go to work?" I don't know. I like to be in a good mood. The ratio of bullshit to the fun part of doing the work was really starting to get out of whack.

ESQ: If you're in a position not to go through the motions, why go through the motions?

SS: Look, I've been having a lot of fun. And I had a lot of fun doing the theater piece [The Library].

ESQ: I didn't see that but the subject matter is pretty sad and extremely relevant.

SS: People would ask me what it's about and I'd go, "The next school shooting." It's horrible.

ESQ: The interviews I read make it seem like you're constantly thinking about art and film and storytelling. Are you?

SS: I think about art a lot only in two contexts. One is narrative. That we're a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn. When we look at what's going on in the world and we see the immense level of conflict that seems to always be happening — you can always trace it back to competing narratives. What's going on in Ukraine right now is that Vladimir Putin has a narrative of himself and his country that he's so passionate about that he's willing to make a move like that. This is about a story. His story of himself and him trying to restore his country to the glory he thinks it should have. It's that elemental.

ESQ: It's like the gun debate. The gun people have their narrative, the anti-gun people have their stories, the people who use the guns to murder have their own stories about how shitty they think their life is. And it all weaves together.

SS: It's at the center of everything, this idea of narrative and stories. So I am always thinking about it: Is there another way to do it? That's why I was so fascinated and obsessed with the cave paintings in France. I'm like, "Fuck, there it is. The first stories." I draw a little bit and was like, "Somebody practiced those." 30,000 years ago you have your forehead out to here, you don't just pick up a piece of charcoal and do that. That was something that struck me as "Where's the practice board?" The other thing that I'm interested in, which is tangential, but not unrelated... All art to me is about problem solving. So I'm obsessed with problem solving. Somewhere someone discovered something or somebody was tasked to figure something out and they did. What did they figure out and how? One of the things that I believe is true is the art model of problem solving is incredibly efficient because ideology has no place there. There's only the thing and what the thing needs to be. When I look around the world and think why is everything working or not working, it's because it's entrenched ideology. You can't solve a problem if you're sitting down with people who say, "All these ideas are off the table because of what I believe."

ESQ: It's never going to get solved. Like the gun situation.

SS: And I'll tell you why. This country is too fucking big. I honestly think... In nature, if a cell gets too big, it divides. You can't come up with a set of rules that's going to work for 350 million people. You're just not. So we're stuck. Robert Kennedy had this great quote: "20 percent of people are against everything, all the time." That's a big number now. And you know what? "No" is easy. "No" doesn't require any follow-up, commitment. "Yes" is hard, "yes" has to be worked on. It needs a lot of people to keep it as "yes." That's where we're at. When I'm president, we're going back to the Thirteen Colonies, is what we're going to do. It's a weird time. Because the trajectory... Wow, I look around and I'm alarmed. I guess every generation feels that way, I don't know, but I'm really alarmed. I talk to smart people who work in fields either, you know, neuro-cognition or social analysis, I go, "Am I going nuts or is this thing going a certain direction, really fast?" All of them go, "You're not imagining things." And I go, "What do we do?" This could turn into Mad Max, like tomorrow. The fabric is so thin, I feel like.

ESQ: Do you believe that people in your field can affect change through their work? It's not like Traffic did anything in those regards.

SS: And I knew it wouldn't. I knew it would generate a conversation for like three months and I said to everybody at the time, "You can make this movie every five years." I don't think it changes. What it does, potentially, it starts a conversation. And I do believe this: Artists' livelihood is based on observation and interaction, I do believe they pick up on vibrations that are early. And they go, "Hey, I'm feeling something that's not yet agreed upon." That I do believe. I'm concerned about what's going on in the world comes back to... talk about the Internet again. I think we're in desperate need of another enlightenment. We need to evolve to another level, very soon, or we're going to be fucked. En masse, we all need to step up. The last enlightenment happened because of the printing press. The Internet is that, potentially. Potentially. I have some very real ideas that I'm working on with some very interesting, possibly crazy people, about how to address this, how to use the technology that's available to bring about some collective step forward, soon. Othewrise, I'm like, "I give up." Look, it may be hopeless. The analogy that I use is you throw a party with 40 people you've selected. Handpicked. It's gonna be a great party. It takes one asshole to ruin the whole thing. That's it. One. The problem with the world is one asshole comes up with a really bad idea and now we're all taking our shoes off at the airport. One asshole in a cave and look [points out to New York City]. That's what makes this so hard. It just takes on asshole.

ESQ: That would be a great book: The One-Asshole Theory.

SS: Well, the key is, how do you feel with the one asshole? They cannot be talked to. That's why they are assholes.

ESQ: Because ideology is the gasoline for assholes.

SS: Yeah, it is. Did you read that book, Assholes: A Theory? It's pretty amazing. It's about this. How they function in our society and alter how we behave. It's kinda great.

ESQ: I think about assholes a lot.

SS: On a macro level and on a micro level, it's one of the biggest issues we have to figure out. Seriously! It really is. They are the obstacle to what I'm talking about, to getting to the next level. It's a real problem. Some of them are smart, some of them are very high-functioning and successful. And the scariest thing is: They make little assholes.

ESQ: Of course they do. The spawn of assholes.

SS: I'm trying to think of a way — because with the Internet, where all information is everywhere, all the time — how do we use that? Is there a mechanism where you can publicly shame them in an effective way so there's a tipping point for the asshole? It's like the yellow card. How do you incentivize — that's what I love about reading the Freakanomics guys' books. Their theory is all human interaction, you can break it down to incentives. All relationships, at some level, are transactional. They're fascinated with incentives. I'm wondering if there's a way to incentivize an asshole to stop being an asshole. I don't know. [Shrugs.] I got to ask them. They live here. It would be a big problem to solve. Taking the subway here. Getting out at 57th Street. It pulls up and there's a guy standing six inches from the door, waiting to get in. Big guy. Now, we know what the rule is. You wait for the other people to get off. The door opens and he just blows in and knocks all of us back. Okay. Asshole.

ESQ: The thing is, we all have our own asshole moments.

SS: Absolutely. This guy argues that the true asshole never has that moment of self-awareness. No personal moment of doubt, no self-reflection. I'm always analyzing. A real litmus test for me is how people treat someone who is waiting on them. That's a dealbreaker for me. If I were on the verge of getting into a serious relationship and I saw that person be mean to a waiter... I'm out. That's a core problem. You're being mean to someone who's helping you. What is that? Everyone knows who the assholes are, and I avoid them.

ESQ: What's the story behind Singani 63?

SS: It's been a really interesting process for me. It's kinda a test. My first mentor in filmmaking was teaching at LSU. I was going to high school on the LSU campus. I wormed my way into this film class and refused to leave. His mantra was "You're the audience. Just make something you want to see. Anything you can understand, someone else can understand." And I always believed that. In this case, I'm transferring that, as someone who likes to drink and takes it seriously. Summer of 2007, we're in Madrid, about to start shooting Che. Our Bolivian casting director as a gift gives me a bottle of Singani. I said, "What is it?" "It's the national drink of Bolivia. My father has a connection to the company." I start drinking it immediately [points to glass] because I usually drink vodka on the rocks. The first thing I notice is there's no burn. Usually when you drink something at that proof level, you're waiting for the burn. So I had two of these and go find him and said, "Dude, what is this?" He starts telling me the history of it, that it's made in a certain part of Bolivia. So I get the whole camera department hooked on this stuff. I like it. So let's start there. Little did I know, but I should've known, that any time you're going to interact with the United States government, it's not going to be fast, it's going to be frustrating. You're talking about the ATF and the FDA.

ESQ: So are you having meetings with the ATF and the FDA?

SS: You have to apply state-by-state to sell it, which is a drag. You have a series of calls — they're trying to determine if you're real. Then there's this whole testing thing. You give them a bottle of it and they send it to a lab and test it. Again, I'm operating on this fantasy of "Well, I think it's good, and I know people who own bars. Done." That's what I was thinking. About a year ago, 250 cases of this stuff show up in New Jersey. Now I have to get serious. It's here. What I decided was, let's do New York. Let's come up with a plan to see if we can get this going in New York. With the idea that after a year, I find a large-scale distributor or equity person and show them, "Look, this is what we did in New York with like four people and not a lot of money." Any time I start to despair about it, I start to wonder about it, I just go back to my reaction and thinking that it's really good. I drank it, I thought it was really good, that's the best I can do.

ESQ: It sounds like a huge undertaking.

SS: Let's put it this way: If it's going to go anywhere beyond New York, it is. The good news has been that... I've had insane luck in my life. Really weird luck. When I drank this for the first time, tried to get it here — I didn't know what it was technically. The fact that it turned out to be a brandy that was clear was a stroke of luck. It meant I'm not going head-to-head with other types of spirit that are very well-funded and by coincidence, there's not a lot of clear brandys. Most people think of brandy the way I did: sniffer.

ESQ: Do you ever get nostalgic for your early days, when you were first in L.A. trying to make it and doing shit jobs? Before Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

SS: I'll say no because... [Pauses.]

ESQ: You seem like a pretty forward-thinking guy.

SS: There's that and look, I had an idea of what I wanted to do and I found a thing I loved to do more than anything else. So spending all my waking hours thinking about it was not work. But this has gone so much further than even fantasy. Yeah, I'm always trying to think of "What's the next 12 months?" Those were good times. Those salad days, sleeping on my buddy's couch for months and one day sitting around, the two of us being like, "Fuck, we have a jar of jelly. Literally, in this apartment, we have a jar of jelly." We were laughing. I was driven but I was not impatient. I felt like it would happen. I grew up in a subdivision in Baton Rouge. I had no connection to the business at all. But I felt like it's going to happen to somebody. I was like an athlete who didn't have any extraordinary skills, but had basic skills, but worked really hard. That was me. I'm a grinder. I'll beat you because I will not sleep. Whenever I go and talk to aspiring filmmakers, I go, "Look, at the end of the day, I can talk about craft, whether you have a soul of an artist, I don't know." Your take on things is what is either going to make you somebody we talk about or no. You have to have a take on shit. It's got to be specific and engaging. We're all standing on the shoulders of what other people have done. But you're supposed to take that and add your own sauce. It can be intimidating, believe me. When I look at amazing work that's been done, I don't look at... Persona or Hard Day's Night and think, "Oh, I can do better than that." I just look at that and say, "That's fucking amazing," and say, "What about me can make it slightly different?" So it's not just a Xerox. Everybody steals, that's a given. If you steal a coat, what are the buttons you're going to put on it? Ego is something that everybody, creative especially, has to grapple with. You need enough ego to keep going but not so much ego that you're deaf or blind, that you're making a mistake and can't fix the course.

ESQ: After you won an Academy Award for Traffic, did you wrestle to keep your ego in check?

SS: No... What's hilarious about it, ironically, and nobody will ever believe this... I was in the middle of shooting Ocean's Eleven, which for me, as a director, was much harder. I just had to laugh. Best door prize ever. But I was literally set up to work the next morning. Sunday night was the Oscars. I flew to Vegas that night and I'm on set first thing Monday morning confronting a scene that I couldn't figure out how to shoot. At the end of the day, the quote I use is "In the land of ideas, you are always renting." The landlord can always go "Bye!" If you're not humbled by that then you're an idiot and you will fail. You will fail. The process of discovery or coming up with an idea is so resistant to formula.

ESQ: How is The Knick?

SS: I'm really happy. Really happy.

ESQ: Having the space to go 10 hours must be a dream.

SS: It really is. You get to go narrow and deep. I had a great time on it. I was terrified going in. Because they basically said yes to a pilot script. We wanted a series commitment with the understanding... This is end of May, June, a year ago. We wanted a commitment and we had to start shooting in September. The good news was they said yes. The bad news was now we got to write nine hours in two and a half months and prep for a 10-hour period piece. We had to shoot nine pages a day and I was really scared. But it turned out to be a total blast. Clive [Owen] really set the tone. This will sound strange, but — it wasn't horrible. I thought 570 pages for 73 days... How would you do that? It turned out to be actually... fun. It really was fun. But the only way you can do that is if you have autonomy on the ground to solve problems moment to moment, the way you want to solve them. Look, I was out. I read this thing last May, right before we were going to Cannes with Behind the Candelabra. I read it and was like, "Shit." I was the first person to get it. I went, "Well, the second person who reads this is going to do this."

ESQ: Is this something that's going to be more than one season?

SS: That's my plan. We'll find out within the next couple of weeks. I know they're happy. I know they like the show. I'm not privy to what money they have allocated. But I've made it clear. We know what we want to do, we've already worked on breaking out a second year. Everybody wants to do it. That's one of the reasons why when I read this, I said I gotta go to HBO. We were literally on the Candelabra tour and I had a great experience with it. I said to [HBO president of programming] Michael Lombardo, "This may sound a little weird, but I'd rather be the big kid at a really small school. How do you feel about doing this on Cinemax instead of HBO?" For me personally, I'm going to get a lot more one-on-one. He goes, "Actually, that'll be great." Nobody's talking about movies the way they're talking about their favorite TV shows.

ESQ: Is that weird for you to see?

SS: No. You know what? I've never been a snob. It's just about stories. And I've never felt just because it's a big screen and you plop down your eight bucks that gives it a special meaning. It's just "Are you good at telling a story?"
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Fernando on September 22, 2014, 01:20:11 PM
Watch: Steven Soderbergh Re-Scores And Changes Steven Spielberg's 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' To Black-And-White

While he isn't making feature films at the moment, that doesn't mean Steven Soderbergh doesn't like to play with them. We've seen him mashup Alfred Hitchcock and Gus Van Sant's "Psycho," and now he's toying with a massive cultural touchstone of the 1980s.

Soderbergh decided to take Steven Spielberg's "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" and drape a new score on top—mostly consisting of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' work for David Fincher's "The Social Network" and "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"—and then turned the whole movie into monochrome black-and-white. Why? Here's Soderbergh's blog post:

Raiders.
SEP 22, 2014
(Note: This posting is for educational purposes only.)

I'm assuming the phrase "staging" came out of the theatre world, but it's equally at home (and useful) in the movie world, since the term (roughly defined) refers to how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated. In movies the role of editing adds something unique: the opportunity to extend and/or expand a visual (or narrative) idea to the limits of one's imagination—a crazy idea that works today is tomorrow's normal.

I value the ability to stage something well because when it's done well its pleasures are huge, and most people don't do it well, which indicates it must not be easy to master (it's frightening how many opportunities there are to do something wrong in a sequence or a group of scenes. Minefields EVERYWHERE. Fincher said it: there's potentially a hundred different ways to shoot something but at the end of the day there's really only two, and one of them is wrong). Of course understanding story, character, and performance are crucial to directing well, but I operate under the theory a movie should work with the sound off, and under that theory, staging becomes paramount (the adjective, not the studio. although their logo DOES appear on the front of this...).

So I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me. Oh, and I've removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect. Wait, WHAT? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? Well, I'm not saying I'm like, ALLOWED to do this, I'm just saying this is what I do when I try to learn about staging, and this filmmaker forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day (for example, no matter how fast the cuts come, you always know exactly where you are—that's high level visual math shit).

At some point you will say to yourself or someone THIS LOOKS AMAZING IN BLACK AND WHITE and it's because Douglas Slocombe shot THE LAVENDAR HILL MOB and the THE SERVANT and his stark, high-contrast lighting style was eye-popping regardless of medium.


http://extension765.com/sdr/18-raiders


I watched the first 14 minutes (because I had to stop and work!), looks and sounds fascinating.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Fernando on January 14, 2015, 03:11:11 PM
and now he recuts 2001

THE RETURN OF W. DE RIJK
JAN 14, 2015

sometimes you have to cross the line to know where the line is. just ask any two-year-old.

maybe this is what happens when you spend too much time with a movie: you start thinking about it when it's not around, and then you start wanting to touch it. i've been watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY regularly for four decades, but it wasn't until a few years ago i started thinking about touching it, and then over the holidays i decided to make my move. why now? I don't know. maybe i wasn't old enough to touch it until now. maybe i was too scared to touch it until now, because not only does the film not need my—or anyone else's—help, but if it's not THE most impressively imagined and sustained piece of visual art created in the 20th century, then it's tied for first. meaning IF i was finally going to touch it, i'd better have a bigger idea than just trimming or re-scoring.

plus, it's TECHNOLOGY'S FAULT. without technology, i wouldn't have been able to spend so much intimate—and, ultimately, inappropriate—time with the film. by the way, i've seen every conceivable kind of film print of 2001, from 16mm flat to 35mm internegative to a cherry camera negative 70mm in the screening room at warner bros, and i'm telling you, none of them look as good as a bluray played on an pioneer elite plasma kuro monitor. and while you're cleaning up your spit take over that sentence, let me also say i believe SK would have embraced the current crop of digital cameras, because from a visual standpoint, he was obsessed with two things: absolute fidelity to reality-based light sources, and image stabilization. regarding the former, the increased sensitivity without resolution loss allows us to really capture the world as it is, and regarding the latter, post-2001 SK generally shot matte perf film (normally reserved for effects shots, because of its added steadiness) all day, every day, something which digital capture makes moot. pile on things like never being distracted by weaving, splices, dirt, scratches, bad lab matches during changeovers, changeovers themselves, bad framing and focus exacerbated by projector vibration, and you can see why i think he might dig digital.

MY ONE GIGANTIC ISSUE WITH THIS TRANSFER

is that you can see, in the dawn of man sequence, the cross-hatched patterns of the front projection screen in several shots. this is INEXCUSBALE. i never saw these patterns in any film prints—this would never have gotten past the polaroid-happy SK—and ANY transfer in which these patterns are visible no matter how your monitor/TV is set up is TECHNICALLY FUCKED AND COMPLETELY WRONG. i hate saying that about my good friends at WB, especially since the WB remaster of CITIZEN KANE is literally a revelation, BUT on the other hand the ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN bluray is a disappointment, BUT on the OTHER other hand they did remaster and release a beautiful END OF THE ROAD disc, so...

http://extension765.com/sdr/23-the-return-of-w-de-rijk
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: OpO1832 on May 13, 2015, 10:19:31 PM
this man should not quit! he is literally at his PEAK NOW!

The Knick is one the greatest televisions shows I have seen! EVERY EPISODE WAS amazing. Soderburgh is the only director that shoots digitally that actually does great work!
His last movies have been GREAT! I do wish he would shoot on film, Traffic is a fucking tour de force in every way you can say that! writing, direction, cinematography, the different stocks, the cross processing, just marvelous, the casting, the acting.

his Che movie is profound, i just wish he shot that on film cause the RED camera he used then was crap but that is petty, the movie and cast are superb.
this man is unlike anyone, he is the d.p and editor and writes and directs. He is a bad motherfucker! His insight is original and arresting. Please do not retire. DO NOT LET THEM WIN MOTHERFUCKER!  KEEP ON TRUCKING!

I HOPE and PRAY HE gets the opportunity to shoot and direct his Leni R. project! ( I hope he shoots it on film though, OROW STOCK! ) :D

Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on September 24, 2015, 05:02:13 PM
Steven Soderbergh To Direct 'Clue'-Esque Film 'Mosaic' For HBO With Garrett Hedlund And Sharon Stone
via The Playlist

Leave it to Steven Soderbergh to create a project that leaves both Deadline and Variety sorta confused about how to describe it. The former calls it a film, the latter a television series. We've learned that it's indeed film, and a boundary pushing one from the filmmaker who has set up an intriguing new project at HBO.

"Mosaic" will be a "Clue"-esque, Choose Your Own Adventure style narrative that will give viewers the options, via an app, to determine the fate of the storyline. To that end, Soderbergh will shoot multiple variations of scenes to give the audience options of where to take things next. So yes, welcome to the first high-profile, interactive film, and Soderbergh is pretty pumped about breaking out of the box.

"I believe the good people at HBO are genuinely enthusiastic about 'Mosaic' for two reasons: first, it represents a fresh way of experiencing a story and sharing that experience with others; second, it will require a new Emmy category, and we will be the only eligible nominee," Soderbergh said, hilariously, in a statement.

Garrett Hedlund and Sharon Stone will star in the project, and sources tell us that Ed Solomon ("Men in Black," "Charlie's Angels") is writing the film. Additionally, Soderbergh has been working on the development of the app technology for five years with the project's producer Casey Silver ("The Forbidden Kingdom," "Leatherheads").

Shooting will begin next month, and sorry, no plot details just yet. Before that, Soderbergh will finish editing the second season of "The Knick," which hits Cinemax this fall. So lots to look forward to from the director who seems eager to take apart the very foundation of storytelling and play around with it.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on December 11, 2015, 04:54:30 PM
Steven Soderbergh Talks 'Mosaic,' 'Kafka' & Plans To Still Make 'The Sot-Weed Factor' As A Mini-Series
via The Playlist

The Playlist recently sat down with Steven Soderbergh for a lengthy conversation about "The Knick," his one-man-band process as a director/editor/cinematographer/cameraman/producer on the show and much more. But we'll get to that conversation once the finale has aired. But over the course of an hour-long interview, we touched upon many other subjects, as the always-productive filmmaker has several pots boiling or simmering at once.

For example, once the second season of "The Knick" was completely in the can in late August, the director jumped immediately to a new project: the HBO movie "Mosaic." But there's been confusion around the project, which was erroneously described upon its announcement as a choose-your-own-adventure-style movie in which web apps and new technology would be part of the viewing experience.

When I asked if "Mosaic" is a movie, the director responded with, "well, sort of," and remained a little distant with details. And perhaps this is because the idea is abstract. "It's going to be very confusing for people until they see it," Soderbergh said. "It's something I've been working on in the background for three-and-a-half years and that I'm really excited about."

The director added the project will probably drop early 2017 and that it's apparently half-shot. On top of the already announced Sharon Stone and Garrett Hedlund, we learned that "Mosaic" also stars Devin Ratray, Jennifer Ferrin, Maya Kazan and Jeremy Bobb from "The Knick," plus Paul Reubens and Beau Bridges, among others.

"If it works, if it works for the audience, it's a way of doing things that I think has enormous potential for people who think a certain way. In a way, I'm very conscious of the fact that this is the first iteration of it," he said, noting that if it catches on, other filmmakers can push the technology forward. "I can already see its potential and I know I'm making a cave painting but it's exciting at the same time because it's like, 'Oh, man, some friends of mine that I know when they get their hands on this are going to do some crazy shit.'''

Soderbergh wouldn't talk plot details, but conceded the notion that it's trying to push narrative forward. "That's the idea," he said. "It's not a technical idea that we're now trying to put a story on top of. It grew out of an interest in trying to push storytelling in a different direction and coming up with technology that allows us to do it. It all originated from people who were thinking about story — the hope is the experience of it will be very organic and not technical."

There are several other projects bubbling, too. Soderbergh quipped that the re-edit of his 1991 film "Kafka" is "in year 12 now." He also confirmed that he's shot new footage for the film and he's working on it, but it's still unclear when this new version will see a release. Meanwhile, the rights of films like "Full Frontal" and "Bubble" have reverted back to the filmmaker, with "The Girlfriend Experience" to follow in 2016, but he still hasn't formulated a plan of what to do with them yet.

"I don't know if it's a re-edit or remastering them in 4K and sort of coming up with some fun box set with some extra shit in it. I don't know what to do with all of that yet," he said.

Then there's an adaptation of John Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor," a satirical epic/historical spoof set in the 1680s about the chaotic odyssey of a hapless Londoner sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business. It's been several years since that project has been even mentioned, but the director confirmed it's still in the works.

"I have scripts for that," he said. "We're getting ready to do another draft and so that's something that I really, really want to do. I've been working on it for a long time. That's a TV mini-series thing. That's like 10, 12 hours long."

If that wasn't enough, in addition to all this there's "The Girlfriend Experience" show on Starz that Soderbergh is executive producing. It will air in the spring of 2016, and Soderbergh handpicked filmmakers Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz to be the writer/directors and co-creators of the show, which stars "Magic Mike" actress Riley Keough.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on February 03, 2016, 11:06:25 PM
Michael Shannon To Team With Channing Tatum And Steven Soderbergh
via Deadline

Rumors are running wild tonight about Steven Soderbergh returning to feature directing with Channing Tatum and Matt Damon in a script called Hillbilly Heist. That report in our sister publication Variety doesn't exactly match up with what Deadline is hearing: the stars in the package are actually Soderbergh's Magic Mike partner Tatum and Michael Shannon in the leads, with Damon not part of the package. The title we're hearing is Logan Lucky, and while Glen Basner is listed in a report as the producer, he's just selling foreign. The producer is Soderbergh's frequent collaborator Gregory Jacobs. Script's being shown to studios this week. More to come.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: jenkins on May 09, 2016, 11:21:22 AM
this band is playing at a movie event is how i heard about this

QuoteVideo for the song "Histoire seule" from the album CONFUSION MODERNE on Xemu Records. Directed by Steven Soderbergh.
The song's title is a riff on Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema, and songwriter Lola G.'s lyrics are about how women tend to get erased from history. Steven's video presents a slyly subversive but more iconographic and idiosyncratic take on history's flux.

Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on July 13, 2016, 06:39:52 PM
Steven Soderbergh Discusses New, Weird "Midnight Edition" of 'Kafka'
via The Playlist

Steven Soderbergh's sabbatical from making movies is officially over. While he took a detour into television with "The Knick," the director has two films in the works: "Mosaic," an experimental project over at HBO (which may not quite resemble a film in the end and could be a kind of a series), and the NASCAR heist comedy, "Logan Lucky."

But last night at The Nitehawk theaters in Williamsburg, the director who rarely looks back at his work, was doing just that with a screening of "Haywire" followed by a Q&A afterwards (presented by Soderbergh's liquor line Singani 63). But the conversation, moderated by Esquire and Daily Beast writer Aaron Goldfarb, inadvertently began with a conversation that lead to Soderbergh's sophomore effort, "Kafka" starring Jeremy Irons, Theresa Russell, Ian Holm, and the late Alec Guinness. It's no secret that Soderbergh has been re-editing the film (which could come out on The Criterion Collection when it's finally done), but the filmmaker gave a lot of fascinating details on the do-over.

"I've been working on, at no one's request, 'Kafka' for 14 years," the director said dryly to laughter. "I have an idea, I have an approach. It was a movie I was never really happy with even at the time. "

The filmmaker explained the rights to the film reverted to him, and his producer (who also co-owned rights) asked him if he would be interested in working on the film again simply because he knew the director was never satisfied with it. "The tone was uneven. Tone is the hardest thing to maintain," the filmmaker said about the picture.

Soderbergh agreed and unveiled some very interesting details about the reworking. For one, it's no longer in English and now is in German (presumably dubbed, but he didn't quite elaborate, though he joked audiences would need to "understand German").

The director also divulged that he shot new inserts, on black and white film, during the filming of "Side Effects" and has radically retooled the film. "I'm calling it the 'Midnight Edition,'" he said. "It's very weird. I didn't solve any of the problems, I've just mitigated them by making it so weird. You're so distracted by the weirdness that you don't notice what doesn't make any sense."

When the conversation swung back to "Haywire," Soderbergh dropped a big reveal about the 007 series. "Over the years, I've been in conversations... ," he said with a pause and some hesitation and then just blurted it out. "I've been approached twice about doing a Bond film. And it never quite got anywhere. And ['Haywire'] in some ways, was my opportunity to do what I would do with a Bond movie."

His nixed baseball film, "Moneyball," also came up ("I was fired," he said with a laugh after attempting to delicately explain the matter). The deep-sixed project, which was supposed to feature 27 real baseball players as themselves, came up because it led directly to "Haywire." Soderbergh, for one, didn't want to let his crew down so scrambled to find another film. "I had 175 people who thought they were going to work on Monday, so my immediate concern was, 'We need to find something to do now, like right away. All of these people don't have a job.' "

Soderbergh then explained the off-told story: he saw "Haywire" star Gina Carano in an MMA fight and quickly conceived of a movie around her. The rest is history. For "Haywire," action film fanatics and Soderbergh fans, this is a must-listen conversation filled with lots of interesting tidbits: a possible "Haywire" sequel that didn't happen and a now-gone possibility of doing the movie as a TV show; being pushed off "Quiz Show" as a director, booze talk, and more.  The conversation thankfully recorded by Playlist contributor Chris Bell.

Listen to the entire 52-minute talk below (or above).

Audio removed at the request of the venue.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on August 04, 2016, 07:34:15 PM
Steven Soderbergh Talks The Revolutionary Approach To 'The Knick', The Impact Of 'Twin Peaks' & 'The Sopranos' And More
via The Playlist

It's a process with Steven Soderbergh, because Steven Soderbergh loves process. The making, the doing and the fundamental juxtaposition of images and how they work together is what turns the Oscar-winning director on. The diverse filmmaker of movies including "Traffic," "Che," "Magic Mike," the "Ocean's Eleven" trilogy and more, has always attempted to push the limits of narrative and he often does it himself in multiple key roles. And the director certainly has pushed the visual grammar envelope in television with "The Knick," his period medical drama set in New York in the early 1900s. On the show, medicine is still in its infancy, there's much to be learned, many lives lost along the way, and there's a knowledge-thirsty doctor, John Thackery (Clive Owen), at the center of it all, racing for cures, salves and breakthroughs in science, and creating his own when he can't find them. Charging forward with kinetic energy, Thackery, much like the show itself, is restless and roving.

"The Knick" wrapped up its second season back in December, but the Blu-Ray and DVD is just coming out this week (win a copy here). We spoke to Steven Soderbergh — the show's director, co-producer, co-showrunner, cinematographer, editor — on the eve of the show's finale last year. But we had a treasure trove of material we thought we'd save for the Blu-Ray release as fans are still catching up with the Cinemax series. What's next for the show? What are its influences? How did Soderbergh pull off that epic and elaborate ball sequence in season two? The director dishes all in our lengthy sit down. "The Knick" season two is available on Blu-Ray/DVD and if you're lucky enough, you can win a copy of it right here. And it goes without saying, *spoilers below* so catch up with the show if you haven't already and then come right back.


Did your visual approach change in season two, and if so, how?


It changed a little, but there was a consensus on the part of the creative brain trust that while we were happy with the first season, there was another gear to be had, that all of us needed to push a little harder. As a result I wanted to push the style and open my toolkit up a little more but primarily from a story standpoint, it's just a bigger canvas.

The ideas are bigger. We're outside of the hospital more in ways that still connect back to the hospital. But just on a practical level, we spent 10 more shootings days outside the hospital than we did in season one for the same length of shooting time. That's a pretty big percentage.

I wanted to discuss the ballroom sequence and the amazing unbroken take in episode seven, "Williams and Walker," which in a way mirrors episode seven of season one in its grandeur.


In this case it was just a weird coincidence. Maybe it's inevitable within the math of a 10-hour thing. Episode seven of last year ("Get the Rope") was the riot and episode seven of this year was the ball ("Williams and Walker").

That riot episode scared me the most last year. I was most anxious about it, thinking about a lot, talking to the writers often, recalibrating the writing of that episode a lot as we were approaching it. I felt the same about the ball. I was nervous — it was a giant set and it had to really deliver. It had to be impressive and I wasn't sure how I was going to do it until we got there.

The one shot in three minutes?


That one shot is like in 2:40 but the whole sequence is about 20 minutes. A lot of it feels fluid because of the editing though. We had two nights to do it and I was deeply nervous. But not all of it is planned. I show up on the day, and there were 4 pages of introductory expository dialogue that had to be dealt with. I knew that I didn't want people just standing still and saying these lines so as soon as we got there, I said to [first AD] Greg Jacobs, "Look, I think I want to try and do a massive 'oner' here and do this whole section in a single shot."

You've got to start somewhere so we start on the tray of champagne and there are certain things that I want to reveal there. I know what capabilities I have in terms of we had a dolly with a seat on the arm, so [there was] 5 feet of up and down that I could play with. We just started building it piece by piece, chunk by chunk. Okay, this is the main room, now we're in the room with the dance going on, now we're in the room adjacent to that and we want to go back to the main room. We just dove in.

The whole thing took 4 hours but it would have taken much longer to do it "normally" with "proper" coverage. It ends up an efficient way to shoot things and also fun. We did in 16 takes. Take 7 didn't have any mistakes in it but Greg came over, he goes, "You know, when we go into the ballroom on that take, you're supposed to see Andrew Rannells come right up to the camera." He goes, "It timed out there was another guy with a beer in the same space" I'm like, "Oh, shit." I ran over the camera and we looked at it back again and I realized he was right. It took 9 more [takes] to get it.

The good news was, once we had it, then I could relax. Then I could move into a mode that was within shouting distance of being more normal. Once the hard part is out of the way I can play a little bit more. Then there was just the whole Williams and Walker thing [a white duo doing a minstrel routine in blackface] which was just so disturbing. It was shocking to stand there and realize what a visceral reaction you have to somebody in blackface. It was just disturbing for everybody.

As soon as we finished, I turned to those two guys and said, "Now, please, go take all that shit off." It was also fascinating that in that period [performers] like Williams and Walker were also very popular with black audiences. The whole time was so fucked up that I liked the fact that there was nothing clear about it. Your reaction to seeing it is really complicated.

How involved in the writing are you?


It's [creators and co-showrunners] Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, [supervising producer, co-executive producer, writer] Steven Katz, me and [Soderbergh's longtime first AD] Greg Jacobs in a room with two giant dry-erase boards with one through ten written across the top. We had a macro idea of what the first two seasons were and we even sent it to Clive [Owen] from the beginning. In each case, the writers would show up with a bucket of ideas, shit that was going on medically during this period, the discoveries, the breakthroughs. Things they had read in their research and we would go, "That idea could go here. That idea could go there."

We knew at the beginning that we were going to kill [the health inspector] Jacob Speight (David Fierro) for example. We knew that season two was going to involve Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance) trying to figure out why that happened. We had things sketched out, then they go off and they start and they turn the scripts around very, very quickly.

Amiel and Begler wrote in sitcoms before they did movies, so the good news was like they're used to writing really fast. Steven Katz we brought in because I knew he knew this era and world. We brought him in because we didn't have time to educate somebody about New York during that period and he jumped up to speed immediately. The [Amiel and Begler] scripts come back and what we would do is have another two days of sitting in a room going through every script scene by scene.

In the season two finale, as Bertie tries to save Thackery, he's running to get the adrenaline, and you're whipping right along with him. And according to the script Cinemax sent, it wasn't written like that.


That's another idea I had about a third of the way through shooting it. I went over the guys. I go, "This is how we're going to end it." They went, "That's great!" It's about being in an environment in which you have the freedom to think like that. The ability to come up with an idea, implement it immediately right there and most importantly not be second guessed on you decision afterward.

By whom?


By whoever is paying for it. Look, I'm sure there are directors working in episodic TV are going, "Yeah, that would be really nice, but I don't have that freedom" because most episodic directors are not directing every episode of their shows although I think you're going to see more of that. They are more often than not there is no vessel to implement somebody else's decision. That's the typical structure of a TV show. What I'm encouraging people to do hopefully by example is, if you're not going to go a single director route, is have a small enough route to have them be part of the brain trust from the beginning.

Like what you're doing with the Starz series "The Girlfriend Experience," which has two directors on it and that's it.


I think when people see that show, they're going to see the benefits of this way I'm working because there's nothing out there that's like the show, like what Lodge [Kerrigan] and Amy [Seimetz] did is crazy. And it's like proof of concept for what can happen going forward with this or other shows.

The metrics of the success for places like Cinemax and Starz is starting a conversation around show that gets subscribers, right?


Yes, but also, in talking to [Starz CEO] Chris Albrecht, he's like, "We're going to watch this closely just from a process standpoint because we liked the idea of what you're proposing and if it works, this is could be a template for that we're going to want to do." They looked at the result and went, "Okay. That's cool." Again, you're working within a specific economic parameter but within that go for it, like go push it as far as you can. They were really, really supportive and they really liked the results so now we're planning the next phase. There's a slightly different grammar in long form television. There's an opportunity there to bring in a grammar that comes from a way of storytelling that is less literal in the sense that... [trails off]

[Since our conversation, "The Girlfriend Experience" season one has aired, and been renewed for a second season.]

That's been on your mind for years. The "tyranny of narrative."


It's unusual for instance, it's not unheard of. There are shows that do it but it's unusual to have extended periods of time in a television show where people don't talk. That's not a typical and it's that way of thinking, "Are there ways to put ideas and story points across that don't involve people telling you things in dialogue?" And that comes from a more cinematic way of presenting things and I think I'm seeing more people doing it. I think it's great for the viewer. There were two seminal events in television, two [shows] changed things and anybody that is doing anything good is standing on their shoulders — "Twin Peaks" and "The Sopranos."

When you take those two shows and what those two shows were doing and how they were doing it, those were really the building blocks. What I think is evolving is just a new way of telling stories on TV.

Who knows what's going to motivate the next generation? Viewing habits are changing so much that it's hard to tell in what size morsels people are going to want content.

I know from looking at the data when I was VP of the Director's Guild, that the only real area of growth in the entertainment business was one hour original content. Everything else was shrinking except for sports which is always going the right direction. Basically, every other aspect of the entertainment business is shrinking except for one hour original content.

Now, at the same time, and I've learned this in all areas of life, not just the entertainment business, the percentage of people that can really execute is small and does not increase exponentially by making a lot more shows.

The democracy of technology doesn't necessarily mean great content. That kid with a camera in Ohio that Coppola was talking about (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSePbQVR284) isn't necessarily a genius.


Exactly. I mean, it's corollary to my whole theory of any given calendar, period. Whether a 100 movies are made or 600 movies are made in one year, there's really going to be handful of it you can actually watch. It's not a linear relationship and that's true with TV. When people say there's still a lot of terrible stuff on TV and there's just more of it, that's probably partially true.

The point is, opportunities for people who do execute well, to execute more, has expanded. People who are really good at visual storytelling now have more opportunities and more outlets to tell stories. I think that's a good thing. The reason I don't see a ceiling on the current wave of television and don't feel it's a bubble that will crash is because the smart people I know don't have enough time to execute all the ideas they have. You know what I mean? They have shit pouring off of them that they want to do and they're just trying...they're not going to run out of ideas.

We haven't even scratched the surface yet. It's also like saying there's nothing left to paint. We've had enough paintings. There's always new knowledge. There's always another idea. There's always another filmmaker who you go, "Let's throw some money at that person."

It's kind of like the way you guys put a completely new spin on the medical drama, which was once a fairly routine template.


The bucket of stories and ideas the writers walked in with for both seasons, we used a tenth of what they had and filled up ten hours twice. There's a finite amount of good stuff. I think it's only limited by how many hours in a week for people that are really good are willing to put in, and how open the business becomes to these other voices who are potentially as talented as the people we know by name and just need the opportunity. It's like the New York Times magazine piece about women in the entertainment industry and the tag line was, "Just get us in the door."

That's really what it's about. It's like, just get us in the room and once we're in the room then it's on us but we're not getting in the room. Again, that's a whole other— you've got this whole spectrum of experience and narrative perspective that we haven't tapped.

Let's talk "The Knick" spoilers from season two.


Let's put it this way, we had this all planned out very clearly from the very beginning.

Even Thackery's death?


Yes, absolutely. I said [to Clive Owen] from the beginning, if it matters to you, we are going to kill you at the end of season two, just so you know. He's like, "Okay. Good to know."

I just said, "That is the design. That's what we're doing. We are looking at the show in two-year increments and that is the shape of the first two years." We knew he was going to have a self-surgery. We had the pictures of the guy that actually did this procedure on himself successfully and so we knew how we we're going to kill him. We knew that before Clive had even read the script. Everybody signed off.

Wow.


I'm going to do the first two years and then we are going to break out the story for seasons 3 and 4 and try and find a filmmaker or filmmakers to do this the way that I did. Like this is how we want our template to be, every two years, whoever comes on, has the freedom to create their universe.

It means they don't have to shoot it the way I shoot it. They don't have to score it the way I score it. They don't have to cast who I've cast. They have maximum freedom to come in and just go, "I want to wipe the slate clean." That was our design from the beginning and so that's what we're pursuing right now. We're working on story for [seasons] 3 and 4 and making a list of people who we think would be a good fit because the demands that are pretty specific.

Well, at the speed the show works, it has to be physically taxing.


It's a more of a mental thing than anything. When you see the stats for season two, we never did a 12-hour shoot day. We don't work long days. We worked efficiently and quick.

You didn't work long 12-hour days? That's insane. A movie shoot can easily be 15 hours daily.


[For] some people, not me. There [are] reasons that you go more than 12 hours a day. You're making "The Revenant" which just looked like the shoot from hell and it's just impossible. I watched that movie and just went, "I'm so fucking glad I wasn't there." I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near that. That's an exception, but generally speaking in an environment like this, there are two reasons you go over a 12-hour day. You don't know what you're doing or you're obligated to shoot a lot of coverage. That's what takes up time. The reason we can work this fast, as you know watching the show, is we don't do coverage.

You guys don't do a lot of takes, right?.


Right, unless it's something crazy elaborate. And then the editing at night— that's the part I love the most. It doesn't feel like a 16-hour day for me —because the last three or four hours are the editing reward for me. I'm sure if you did an MRI of my brain editing after a day of intense shooting like it'll looked like a Christmas tree because I'm like, "Okay. This is the cherry that after all that physical work. Now, I get to do the fun part." It's mental, not physical. It's more like leaning into it, it's a Jedi mind trick where you go, "It's not really that crazy a schedule." Because I'm always doing exactly what I want, time doesn't seem...

If you were working on a show in which you felt like you were never getting to do what you want, it would seem interminable. I got to the end of season two and I was like, "That was more fun than season one and maybe it's because we went twice as fast." Greg Jacobs felt the same way. Same length of shoot, bigger, more difficult canvas, but I just had so much more fun. I realized that's what it was. It's like, "Oh, I made all these decisions."

After the end of season two, you've blown up the "The Knick" in nearly every way. Are you guys reinventing and starting over then with new casts, characters and locations?


[Pauses] The good news is we've got some time. I mean, it's not going to get shot next year. We need time to really write it out. Of course, I immediately start thinking of doing it one director and shooting it like a film because its really economically efficient. I'm thinking, "Oh, we have a year. Let's write both seasons and shoot both of them back to back and not stop at all." That'd be the superefficient way to do it. Now, that may be a little much. That's 150 days for somebody to work on it non-stop basically.

That's what you would want to do yourself. Other filmmakers not so much.


[Chuckes] It's fun to think about. In terms of the script especially, because the longer the ability to make the tapestry of the narrative threads more complicated is increased exponentially by how much time you've had with the whole thing before you shoot it.

The idea of like, "What if we do write seasons three and four and have both of them written by next fall but don't shoot until spring of 2017," then you really are talking about like a 20-hour thing where every line and every reference has some echo in connection to every other line. It's been conceived as a whole, you know? It could be amazing. That's what we're definitely thinking about.

"The Knick" seasons 1 and 2 are now available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on April 21, 2017, 05:36:03 PM
Adam Driver, Channing Tatum Speed Up In 'Logan Lucky'
via Entertainment Weekly

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FaHYsuyW.jpg&hash=49646bd2c8af24d1293c7727f2303239ab6ab069)

It's been almost four years since Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic and — according to him at the time — his final feature film before retiring from the medium. Since then, he's been busy, but in a format that has become home to more and more filmmakers like Soderbergh: television.

After directing all 20 episodes of Cinemax's The Knick and serving as executive producer on The Girlfriend Experience on Starz and Amazon's Red Oaks, Soderbergh is making a return to feature films, and he has an interesting reason why.

Logan Lucky is exactly the kind of movie you'd expect from Soderbergh, a fact that makes his return especially exciting for fans. Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and Riley Keough star as Jimmy, Clyde, and Mellie Logan, three siblings planning on robbing the Charlotte Motor Speedway just before the biggest race of the year, the Coca-Cola 600. They even have an accomplice, John Bang (Daniel Craig), who is an expert at blowing vaults opens, but there's one small problem: He's in prison.

What makes Logan Lucky different from Soderbergh's previous star-studded heist movies is how it's being released. On Aug. 18, the film will open in theaters across the country via Bleecker Street and the director's Fingerprint Releasing with an experimental model of distribution that could offer a unique option to filmmakers like Soderbergh. Ahead of the release, EW spoke with the filmmaker about how this plan is different and what drew him back into the features game.


ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What is your origin with the project? How does it end up in front of you?
STEVEN SODERBERGH: I was given the script through a friend and asked if I would recommend some possible directors. Not unlike Bud Selig when he was charged with finding a commissioner for Major League Baseball, I thought that I was the right person to direct this film, and the search was stopping. I really couldn't bear the thought of somebody else getting to do it. Now, that happened to coincide with some ideas that I'd had regarding distribution, and the timing seemed right. It was a movie that I very much wanted to make and also the opportunity to experiment with this new model was becoming possible, so I decided to pull the trigger.

I do want to dig in and talk about the model, because you've said that you're "testing out personal theories" with this release. What's the plan, and what are those theories?
By all standards, this is a studio movie. It's a very commercial movie with movie stars in it that's going to go out to 2,500 to 3,000 screens. The question is, "Can you do what the studios normally do from a distribution standpoint with a lot less resources and with a much better economic structure for the people who made the film?"

So this is your critique of studio distribution and an attempt to simplify it.
My feeling is that it's gotten way too expensive to release a film wide, and the way that the economic structure of a studio is set up, if you've what we've done on this movie — which is everybody's worked for scale — you're too far away from your money. That's why there is no middle man. There is no one talking a cut. The money is coming directly back to the creative pool.

This sounds like a much larger version of what Shane Carruth did on Upstream Color, which he released entirely by himself.
If it works, it's a lane for people like myself to drive in. We formed Fingerprint Releasing to do this and to be able to export this to other filmmakers. So if someone like Alejandro Iñárritu, Alexander Payne, or Sofia Coppola wants to use this model that we've set up, it's sitting there ready to be used.

Is there any kind of short explanation for what the plan is?
There's no one component that hasn't been done before, but I think it's a combination of components. There have been advancements in technology that make it a lot easier to get a movie out in 3,000 screens than it was even two years ago. The economic model is pretty simple. You sell the foreign to cover the cost of the [film] negative. We sell the non-theatrical rights to cover the cost of the [prints and advertising], and that's it. It's really simple. People have done this before. The distribution part is only a little different because we control it in a way that you normally don't get to control distribution.

And Logan Lucky is the movie to test that with?

It was just one of those moments where the planets aligned. All of the indicators are there, that I should be doing this. I'm excited about it creatively because it's the kind of movie that I like to make. It's the kind of movie that I like to see. Some of these issues that I've had in the past with the way movies are released can be mitigated. It seemed like all green lights to me.

What was in Rebecca Blunt's script specifically that sparked with you?

On the most obvious level, it's the complete inversion of an Ocean's movie. It's an anti-glam version of an Ocean's movie. Nobody dresses nice. Nobody has nice stuff. They have no money. They have no technology. It's all rubber band technology, and that's what I thought was fun about it. It seemed familiar to me, but different enough. The landscape, the characters, and the canvass were the complete opposite of an Ocean's film. What was weird is that I was working as a producer on Ocean's Eight while we were shooting Logan, and it was kind of head-spinning. That's like a proper Ocean's film. This is a version of an Ocean's movie that's up on cement blocks in your front yard.

How did the Coca-Cola 600 come into the picture? Was it the original intent to incorporate that specific race?
We worked very hard to get NASCAR on board as a partner because we really felt that it was critical, because if you couldn't shoot at the real race and put your people there, then it just wouldn't be compelling. Luckily, we started conversations with them very early. This script came to me while we were shooting Magic Mike XXL, so that would have been fall of 2014. And we immediately started conversations with NASCAR to get their assistance. If we weren't able to do what we did, I don't think we would have made the movie. It's such a unique event that I don't know what solve we would have come up with.

How did the day go?
It was great. We had no problems. It was all really well organized. NASCAR took really great care of us. I think we got everything we needed, and we didn't get in anybody's way. It couldn't have gone any better. It was exciting. That event's pretty crazy. The scale of it is massive, and on that day, we had five cameras running around. But we had it all plotted out. Everybody knew where they had to move at what point in the race and what they should be shooting. We got all of the stuff we needed.

You've come out of your retirement from feature films to make this. Was it always your plan to end the hiatus?

First, I was not going to be directing at all and just really take a sabbatical. Right as we were going to Cannes with Behind the Candelabra, which was in my mind going to be the official start of my enforced vacation, I got the script for The Knick. So I went from not doing anything and exploring my future as a painter to starting to shoot a ten-hour television show in four months. The Knick scared me. We had to shoot 600 pages in 73 days. I've worked on some films with pretty aggressive schedules. This was on another order of magnitude, and I was terrified. This was something that was keeping me up at nights, wondering if this was really too big a reach. About a week in, I realized that there was a rhythm that was actually really exhilarating to be had and we were going to make it. I was sitting there on set, realizing that this is the job that I should be doing. This is my job. I should be directing stuff. Nobody's waiting around for my paintings. So I kind of flipped a switch. I got reconnected with what I like about the job. For a while, I was just very, very happy to be working in that form. I loved working with a ten-hour canvass. It was really fun, and I wasn't really thinking about movies... until this script came in over the transom. If it hadn't, I think everything would be TV oriented.

When you sat down to do Logan Lucky, did you feel like a different director from the one who made Behind the Candelabra?

Yeah, I came out of the other end of The Knick different, and Logan benefited from that. It was a pretty short shoot, and obviously, you're trying to make the best film you can for a number. I wouldn't have been as aggressive with the schedule on Logan prior to The Knick. The Knick was like CrossFit for directing. That was a full-on workout, and I felt like I was in really good shape when I came out the other end of it. In many ways, Logan was — not to say that it was easy — but it wasn't as challenging from a schedule standpoint as The Knick was. Logan was 36 days. That's leisurely compared to what we had on The Knick.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on May 14, 2017, 06:57:30 AM
From Soderbergh's mailing list:

QuoteMay 12, 2017

READER'S DEPT.

The way I figured it, writing was a way in, because writing didn't cost anything.

In April of 1985 I had just finished the Yes concert film that would not catapult me to fame and fortune and I was sitting in the offices of Lookout Management on Sunset Blvd and saying to Mary Klauser, who ran the joint, that I wasn't sure what the concert film would really DO for me since making concert films wasn't really what I wanted to do, and in fact while I was editing the Yes concert film I saw Russell Mulcahy's AS THE LIGHTS GO DOWN and it was so awesome I wanted to shoot myself, and so I asked Mary what was all that FOR? And Mary said, YOU NEED AN AGENT—I KNOW AN AGENT and she called Ann Dollard, who turned out to be a not only an agent but a truly rare human being, and Ann and I agreed a good way for me to start making my way forward would be to write scripts while I continued to make short films so that I could get writing jobs to support myself. I was living in Baton Rouge at the time, and I sat down at my Kaypro computer and wrote three scripts back-to-back over the next eight months (I had one script I'd been trying to make as a low-budget feature, PUTTING ON AIRS, but I didn't consider it the right kind of calling card as a writer). The link below, PROOF POSITIVE, was the first of the three specs. I had recently seen THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE and thought it could be transported to another time and place (later someone else would have the same idea, the result being SOMMERSBY). Again, I did this as a writing sample, not as a project for me to make. I then wrote a script called CROSSTALK, a comedy about a mildly dysfunctional suburban family, and STATE OF MIND, a psychological thriller about some spoiled kids who stage a false kidnapping to extort money from their parents. PROOF POSITIVE is the least bad of the three, and I don't think you'll find anything exceptional in it; I wrote it (as I wrote the others) to show I could write a functional screenplay. My scheme worked, sort of. I got a job writing an hour-long after school movie for Disney called CITY TO COUNTRY that was never made but got me into the WGA (which I'm not a voting member of now, long story), and then a musical(!) for Tri-Star called ACROSS THE LINE. This was fortuitous because the executive involved, Casey Silver, would later become head of Universal and allow me to make KING OF THE HILL, THE UNDERNEATH and OUT OF SIGHT during his tenure (our relationship continues; he is now producing MOSAIC for me). Meanwhile, in early '87 I wrote another script, DEAD FROM THE NECK UP, an AIRPLANE!-style detective film, and this found its way to Bobby Newmyer, an executive at Columbia. He tried to get DEAD set up for me to direct, and while he was doing that, he slipped me a little money to write a spy film called REVOLVER. This was now late 1987 and I had decided two things: I had to leave Baton Rouge once again for Los Angeles to make a real play at getting a feature film made, and there was no way I was going to get past the first act of REVOLVER. I'd been making notes for a CARNAL KNOWLDEGE-type film and while driving from Louisiana to California in January 1988 I started writing SEX, LIES. I gave it to Bobby in lieu of the spy movie and he felt he could get it financed.

The success of SEX, LIES created a paradox I didn't see at the time: On the one hand, writing had gotten me to the place I'd always wanted to be, but on the other—and this is what I didn't understand then—I wasn't a writer. I had WRITTEN, but I wasn't a writer. It would take me several years and several films to understand this. Once I did, and began to work with REAL writers, my career advanced dramastically.

The reason for all these words is, of course, commerce: we have a new, Joe Gillis-themed t-shirt to offer. Let's hope we all make it back to the copy desk in Ohio before some deranged movie star plugs us full of holes...

Yours,

Sam Lowry

READ PROOF POSITIVE: HERE (https://s3.amazonaws.com/extension765/post_assets/10/cc9db12ec592d1fc7c6756070380cc63-original.pdf?1494607329)
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on July 19, 2017, 04:39:59 PM
Steven Soderbergh Directs Secret iPhone Shot Movie Starring Claire Foy
via The Playlist

Last summer, David Lowery called up his pals Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, headed to Texas, and working with a small crew, under the radar, directed the acclaimed "A Ghost Story." Now, Steven Soderbergh has spent part of this year quietly making a new movie that has already wrapped and certainly has us excited.

"The Crown" star Claire Foy and Juno Temple take the lead roles in "Unsane," a new movie from Soderbergh, that was shot on Apple's iPhone and is already in the can. Of course, there are no plot details at the moment, however, during a recent Reddit AMA, the director said to "stay tuned" for a movie that would touch upon similar subject matter as his thriller "Side Effects." Could this be it?

At the moment, there's no indication when the film will be released, but Soderbergh does plan to handle domestic distribution through his new shingle, Fingerprint. And let's not forget "Unsane" now marks the second movie the director has sitting and waiting to see the light of the day; there's also his HBO effort "Mosaic," though Soderbergh is apparently working on a unique narrative device to accompany the picture before its released.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on August 18, 2017, 04:39:15 PM
Steven Soderbergh Reveals 2 Versions Of HBO Project 'Mosaic'
via The Playlist

"Logan Lucky" races into cinemas today, with Steven Soderbergh firing on all cylinders for his hugely enjoyable heist comedy. But as always, the director is shifting gears for his next effort, the HBO project "Mosaic." The project, which has been kept under wraps for quite some time, stars Garrett Hedlund and Sharon Stone, with Ed Solomon ("Men in Black," "Charlie's Angels") writing the script for the story that will allow users to pursue different narrative paths, utilizing a new state-of-the-art app. However, how it all works has been a mystery for quite some time....until now.

Speaking with Film Comment (https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-steven-soderbergh-logan-lucky/), Soderbergh revealed that this fall, the app for "Mosaic" will be unveiled, and it sounds like something that might make you fall down a bit of a rabbit hole.

"[It'll be available] for your phone, iPad, desktop, Apple TV. Anything. We started thinking we'll just do iOS. But after long series of conversations, we said it makes no sense while we're building this thing not to include Android and desktop. While we have the hood open, don't we want as many eyeballs on this thing as possible? And it's a free app. So set aside your time, because if you watch all the various nodes, it's like seven and a half hours," he said. "I was very aware while we were making it that this is the cave painting of this format—that somebody else is going to take this thing and push it way further. I was just trying to get a working story. Ed Solomon, who wrote 'Mosaic,' has another piece that's built on what we did and is going to be much more complex."

"You download the app, and the first chapter begins. At the end of that chapter, you are given the possibility of going right or left, and after that you just keep going. There are a couple of companies that are playing with branching narrative," Soderbergh added.

That sounds completely fascinating, and given the story — which the filmmaker is still keeping somewhat guarded — it looks like this is the kind of narrative that can really go in a multitude of directions.

"It's a murder. Not a murder mystery so much. There are two different time frames, one contemporary and one four years ago. This case that everyone thought was solved gets reexamined with interesting results," he said. "So you get to go back and forth depending on who you want to follow at what point. It seemed to be a kind of story that benefited from this multiverse perspective. The writing and the editing of it was tricky. The giant board that Ed and I had was a real head-scratcher."

However, if you're looking for a more straightforward experience, Soderbergh has you covered, as "Mosaic" will be unveiled next year as a more traditional series on HBO. That's right — it was never a movie as many assumed.

"There will be a linear episodic version that's set to air on HBO in January, but ideally going forward, it would just be an app. I offered HBO the possibility of doing a linear cut because I needed more money to develop the technology," he explained. "I called them and said I have a lot of material that's not in the app; 'I can cut a six-hour episodic version of this that will be its own thing.' And they said, absolutely."

So it sounds like there are two different versions of "Mosaic" you can explore.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: WorldForgot on August 26, 2017, 05:11:40 AM
The Soderbergh Talks, Pt 3 (https://www.gq.com/story/soderbergh-talks-part-3-mosaic-journals)

Touches on Mosiac some, but the interviewer really goes for Yung Soderbergh territory, referring back to his writing in Getting Away With It

Some choice bits --
Quote
How did you find L.A. when you finally got there?
My experience of it was really limited to working and going to the movies. Because when I got there, I got there because I was working for someone who was teaching a film class at LSU and was kind of my mentor. So I got a job working for him as an editor. So I was either literally in the editing room, and when I wasn't, I was going to see a movie. It was just work and watching stuff. And I didn't really then, and I don't now, have any interest in the social aspects of the business. I just didn't and I don't. I do not have FOMO when it comes to that kind of stuff because all I can think of when I go to any event like that is, "I can be working right now. I could be two hours better at something. Instead I'm here."

Does getting older change the work at all?
It would be hard for me to judge from my proximity to it. I think somebody else would have to look at it and see if they feel there's been some shift. I don't think so. I think there's a before and after with Che. I came out of Che a different filmmaker, and the necessary lessons that were learned during the making of that have continued to be utilized on everything that I've made since. It cured me of any desire to make anything "important" again ever. But it also stripped my process down to a very elemental level and I've retained that even in circumstances that you would think didn't necessarily require it.

In 1999, you released a book of interviews with the director Richard Lester, Getting Away With It, that also contained a daily journal of your activities in the late '90s—do you still keep a diary that way?
I tried this year, because I felt this was going to be an interesting year for a couple of reasons. The Logan Lucky experiment was going to finally be tested. Mosaic is going to come out, which I hope will be viewed as a new way of laying a story out. And on the booze front with Singani, we've been working very, very hard on our petition with the TTB, the Tax and Tariff Bureau, to get Singani it's own category type within the Brandy category. We want our own designation. You know, it goes very slowly. But I feel like this could be, 2017 could be the year where we get our category, which would be a game-changer for us over night.

Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Drenk on August 26, 2017, 07:40:26 AM
It must be exhausting to always think about how you can be efficient all the time with the time you have.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on January 05, 2018, 05:22:45 PM
Soderbergh's end of the year read/watched list (http://extension765.com/soderblogh/32-seen-read-2017)
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on February 06, 2018, 01:05:28 AM
Steven Soderbergh Reteams with André Holland for NBA Drama 'High Flying Bird,' Shooting This Month
via IndieWire

No rest for the weary when it comes to Steven Soderbergh's 2018. In between all of his media consumption, the director's app-turned-TV show Mosiac is now airing on HBO and in just a few weeks he'll premiere his iPhone-shot psychological horror film Unsane at Berlinale. Then he's back to New York City to shoot a new film, and more details on the project have now been revealed.

Set to begin production at the end of the month, the NBA drama High Flying Bird will be led by his break-out star of The Knick, André Holland. It will also mark another reunion for Holland as the script is written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the Oscar-winning co-writer of Moonlight. While the project was initially revealed last fall, we now know more about the drama thanks to the first logline: "During an NBA lockout, a sports agent, Dean (Holland), presents his rookie client, Erick Scott, with an intriguing and controversial business opportunity."

With the shoot lasting only a little over two weeks and Soderbergh's recent comments about how iPhones are the future of filmmaking, one would imagine he'll utilize the smartphone for this yet again. As we await word on additional casting, Soderbergh also just lined up another project with the action thriller Planet Kill. Producing with an eye to direct, the undisclosed story comes from Scott Z. Burns (Contagion) and James Greer (Unsane), Deadline reports. Soderbergh truly never left, but as Logan Lucky proved, it's a welcome sight to have him taking on a plethora of feature films once again.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Alethia on February 06, 2018, 12:00:45 PM
My best friend of nearly 25 years is working on this. He had to sign one seriously loaded NDA.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on April 05, 2018, 05:42:23 PM
Steven Soderbergh And Writer Lem Dobbs Team Up Again For New Six-Part Series
via The Playlist

Steven Soderbergh is teaming up with semi-regular collaborator, writer Lem Dobbs, yet again, for an untitled six-part series. Not much else is known about the project.

The pair of Soderbergh and Dobbs have previously worked on three films together over the last two-and-a-half decades, starting with 1991's mystery-thriller film "Kafka." Since then, they have reteamed on films that are about a decade apart with "The Limey" and  2011's "Haywire." It stands to reason that it's about time for the two to work together again. Each of their previous three films have received positive critical reviews but have never been breakout hits. Perhaps, a change of venue, like moving to the small screen, is what the duo needs to reach a mass audience.

Since "Haywire," Lem Dobbs has written a couple other films. First, in 2012, he wrote the film "The Company You Keep," which was directed by Robert Redford. And this year sees the release of the long-awaited John Gotti biopic, aptly titled "Gotti," starring John Travolta.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: polkablues on April 05, 2018, 05:53:29 PM
I would love if there was a corresponding documentary series following Soderbergh doing his damnedest to salvage Dobbs' scripts and Dobbs bristling with barely-contained rage at every single change.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on July 23, 2018, 05:53:06 AM
"I Don't Care If It Never Shows in a Theater": Steven Soderbergh on sex, lies, and videotape, 4K HDR and the Studio System
via Filmmaker Magazine

Some films make a splash on their initial release and are largely forgotten just a few years later; others are ignored but rise in stature with the passage of time. Steven Soderbergh's 1989 debut sex, lies, and videotape is one of those rare movies that was a phenomenon in its time and has only gotten better with age, a razor-sharp exploration of the ways in which we lie to each other and ourselves and an inquiry into what those lies say about our relationships, our desires, and our society as a whole. An extremely specific movie about a precise social class and cultural moment, it's nevertheless a timeless study of issues that couldn't be more pertinent to our current age, most notably in terms of the role technology plays in creating both distance and intimacy. It's also impeccably acted, photographed, edited and directed, with a depth of feeling and an economy of expression that earns comparison with the best of Ingmar Bergman – not to mention Mike Nichols and Peter Bogdanovich, two of Soderbergh's acknowledged influences on the film. It's a remarkably confident debut, a movie that doesn't feel the need to force its effects and thus is all the more affecting; the climactic sequence between James Spader and Andie MacDowell remains one of the great emotional set pieces in all of American cinema. A new Blu-ray of the movie is now available from Criterion, and it's chock full of great supplements detailing not only the making of the film but its evolution over the past 29 years as Soderbergh and sound mixer Larry Blake have continually finessed the picture and sound for various home video pressings. This particular release, transferred from a 4K scan of the original negative, is spectacular and represents the definitive edition of sex, lies, and videotape to date. I talked with Steven Soderbergh the day after the disc's release and began our conversation by asking him why there have been so many incarnations of sex, lies over the years.   

Soderbergh: Well, I think it was a movie that ended up being around for a lot of different format shifts, you know? When the movie was first released we were still looking at cassettes, and we had the glory of laserdiscs. Then DVDs showed up, so we had to prepare for that. Then high-def showed up and we had to prepare for that. The technology that exists to create these masters continues to improve. So for instance, even though we might've ingested the movie at 4K 10 or 12 years ago for the Sony Blu-ray, the scanners that exist today are a lot better – and now we have HDR. So even though, in this case, it was just coming out on Blu-ray, I requested, and Criterion agreed, to create a 4K HDR version of the master in preparation for a time when either Criterion starts making those kinds of streams available or there's a decision down the road to put out a physical 4K HDR Blu-ray. I wanted to be ready for all of that.

It also coincided with a project that I think is going to take a long, long time, which is to attempt to get everything I've done re-mastered and brought into the 4K HDR world. We've been spending a lot of time lately focusing on some of the titles that have reverted back to me and that I control. I'm reaching out to all the companies that I've worked with in the past to see if they'd be interested in going back and re-mastering the films in this new format. The good news is that totally coincidentally, Fox decided on their own to go back and re-master Solaris in 4K HDR and I just saw that two weeks ago. So we're chipping away at it.

Filmmaker: When you look back at a movie like Solaris or sex, lies for these new versions, how do you feel about them? You're such a different filmmaker and presumably a different person from who you were when you made sex, lies, so does it still feel like a part of you? Or does it feel like you're supervising a re-mastering of someone else's film?

Soderbergh: A little bit of both. On the one hand, it's obviously very much a part of who I am as a filmmaker. I'm still making movies about two people in a room. That's how I started and that's what I'm still interested in. So I still feel connected to it in that way. It seems totally in line with most of the things that I've done. At the same time, looking at something 29 years later, there was an aspect of seeing it through a pane of glass and feeling as though a slightly different person made that. But typically, unless we are doing some sort of remaster, I'm not going back and looking at these things for good reason, which is, I think, that it's better to look forward.

In this case, I would probably do some things differently now and they might end up doing as much harm as good. I think it's a very intimate movie. The emotional lives of the characters are right in your lap, and a large part of that, I think, is due to Andie's performance. The opening section of the film, with her talking and Graham arriving, puts you in a very specific emotional space that's required for you to lock into the wavelength of the movie. So, yeah, even seeing it now, it seems like a very emotional piece of work from someone who's often been accused of being clinical or cold.

Filmmaker: I love the sound design in that opening sequence and in the movie in general. Where did the idea come from for all the pre-lapping and post-lapping of the dialogue?

Soderbergh: Probably The Graduate. I mean, there were a lot of people, as part of the French New Wave and then the British New Wave, experimenting with this idea of unlocking the picture from the sound. I was very intrigued by that, so that whole opening was built to take advantage of the things that you can do when you uncouple those two elements. It was written very specifically to go that way. As it turned out, again, she turned out to be the right vessel to pull people through the story. It's interesting in retrospect, all these years later, to see how focused the movie is on her experience. All the distance and the time enabled me to see it from 30,000 feet up and I realized, oh, part of the appeal of her character is this idea that she's not hip. She's not really with it. She doesn't really get it. She seems to be the least enlightened person in that quartet. And yet, in a critical moment, she has a clarity that none of the other characters are able to muster. There's something very appealing about that, watching that transformation happen with her. She ends up having an experience in this conversation with Jimmy Spader's character that ends up doing something to both of them that neither of them, I think, anticipated. I think that, just from an emotional standpoint, is satisfying, to watch that transformation. All of these characters, without knowing it, are heading into this collision that's going to reverberate for them for the rest of their lives, but they're completely unaware of it.

You see it as an audience. You can feel it starting to tighten and you feel like something's going to pop here, you just don't know in which direction it's going to pop or who's going to get caught in the blast radius, but something's going to break. I wasn't conscious of the math of the plotting when I was writing it or making it, I was just going on my sense of "something needs to happen now." But looking back on it, I feel like, oh, the math of that is pretty clean.

Filmmaker: Yeah, it's almost like a suspense movie in places. You mentioned The Graduate – what other films did you have on your mind?

Soderbergh: Primarily Carnal Knowledge, I would imagine. This was my variation on that structure, which is a four-character chamber piece, very contained with peaks and valleys in it. That was a movie that had a big influence on me. Obviously, my setup allowed for a larger female presence over the course of the entire film than something like Carnal Knowledge, where the last section of the film is really about Jack Nicholson's character and his relationship with Art Garfunkel. In trying to do something beyond just imitating a movie that I liked a lot, I decided to give more primacy throughout to these two female characters.

Filmmaker: Something else that's a little different from Carnal Knowledge is the fact that you have several interesting minor roles and supporting characters beyond the four characters in the chamber piece. I'm thinking about people like Ron Vawter in the psychiatrist role and Steven Brill as the barfly. Because there are so few speaking roles in the movie, did that make each one feel exponentially more important to you, or was the casting of the smaller roles fairly casual? I mean, Brill wasn't really an actor, as far as I know.

Soderbergh: No, he was just a friend of mine that I'd spent a lot of time with in an office, waiting for something to happen. That's very much a snapshot of Brill's personality and sense of humor based on us being across the desk from each other. In the case of the psychiatrist, Ron was someone who I wasn't aware of, because I hadn't spent very much time in New York in the theater scene. The casting director, Deborah Aquila, brought him in. I learned about his background and thought, "Oh, his baggage is actually very good for this. He's got serious hardcore theater street cred and I want to draft off that as much as I can."

But you're right, in any movie with a cast this small, all of the roles become really critical. And even looking at the lead quartet, if anybody there doesn't bring their triple-A game, the whole movie kind of falls apart. They all have to be equally strong or you're going to have a problem. You're going to have an issue where at some point somebody appears on screen and the audience is less interested in that character than the other three. Then you've got a serious problem.

Filmmaker: One thing I found fascinating on the extras for the Blu-ray was the revelation that so many people, particularly when it came to the actors' agents, saw the script as somehow pornographic and turned it down. How aware were you at the time that those discussions were going on between the casting people and the actors and their agents?

Soderbergh: Very. Deb Aquila was keeping me abreast of all of these conversations that were taking place. And look, I wasn't totally surprised by that because as you know, there's a version of that movie, depending on how it gets executed, that you probably don't want to be in. The writing itself was very spare and you could imagine this going off in a very different direction than the one we ended up taking. So I understood it; it didn't bother me, I was kind of amused by it. The only time it really created an issue was when Elizabeth McGovern's agent refused to give her the script. But again, you get who you're supposed to get, and Andie's performance, I wouldn't alter a frame of it.

Filmmaker: She's incredible. How extensive was the audition process for her and the other three leads?

Soderbergh: We saw a lot of people, and it was tricky. I mean, I knew we would eventually get a group together that would work for the movie, but when I started telling people that I wanted to cast [Andie], they were surprised, because she hadn't had the opportunity to really show what she could do. She was a model and wasn't getting a lot of support for branching out and trying to do something that was strictly performance based. But the bottom line is, she came in and read for Deb. Deb said, "You need to see her." She came in and read for me and I went, "That's it."

There might have been a little ripple of concern at how quickly I decided, with people wondering if some sort of hypnotic transference had taken place. But when she came in and she did a couple of scenes, it was there – it was everything that you see in the movie. It wasn't like I had to go in and pull this performance out of her. She understood it completely from the get-go. And I asked her, while we were shooting, "You seem to understand exactly what to do, no matter what the situation, no matter how I change things. You seem to know exactly how to behave. What are you using as your compass?" And she goes, "Oh it's my sister. I'm just playing my sister. So I just think about what she would do or she would say." So the whole thing felt very natural to her, which is why it's such a completely unconscious performance. Everything she's thinking and feeling just seems right on the surface. Seeing it again, I was really struck by it.

Filmmaker: Have you ever had a situation like that where someone gives a fantastic audition, but then they don't have it when you're on the set? What do you do then?

Soderbergh: I haven't had it go in that direction. I've had people audition—poorly is not the right word, but I've had people struggle during their auditions. What I would do typically then is just interview them. I'll just talk to them or have the casting director talk to them for 10 or 15 minutes, just so I can see them in their semi-natural state. That helps a lot. There was one instance not that long ago where somebody gave a good audition, but it was the interview portion that really sold me. When I saw how they were when they were just being themselves and talking to the casting director, I went, "Okay, that's exactly what I'm looking for, so let's cast that person and I'm going to make sure going forward when we work on the script that we sort of calibrate it to amplify the part of this person's personality that I find really compelling." Because I'm aware that auditioning is a very unnatural process. It's necessary, but it's just not ideal for anyone. But I haven't had anybody crush an audition, cast them, and find out that they left it all in the audition room. I've never had that happen. I know there are people that have.

Filmmaker: I don't think MacDowell is the only one who surprised people at the time – Spader, for example, was mostly known as a kind of slimy jerk from stuff like Less than Zero and Pretty in Pink. He has a reputation for liking to really dig into a script and talk about every facet of a part. Was that your first experiencing working with an actor who was that obsessive about the text? How did you know how to communicate with actors? Had you had any training in that area?

Soderbergh: Since high school, I'd been friends with a lot of people in the drama department at LSU, because they were either part of the film class that I was crashing or were in some of my short films. So I knew all these young, aspiring actors; they were friends of mine, so that process didn't feel mysterious to me. I'm willing to be whatever director I need to be to get the actor in the right space. And Jimmy is somebody who wants to make sure that he's explored all the potential avenues, so we had a lot of discussions, all of them relevant and fruitful. Some of the other actors, not so much, so I was going on my instincts, just trying to be the director each actor needed me to be. I really don't have a lot of parameters other than show up on time.

Filmmaker: Well, in terms of being the best director that each actor needs you to be, do you ever run into a problem where maybe you've got multiple actors in a movie and you've got somebody who hates rehearsal, somebody who likes rehearsal, somebody who's best on the first take, somebody who's best on the eighth take, that kind of stuff? How do you reconcile compatibility issues if they come up?

Soderbergh: I don't recall ever having a situation where you had to course-correct the whole boat to accommodate somebody's personality. We make it really easy for people to be nice and have a good time. From the first point of contact through being on set and preparing to shoot, it's a very, very comfortable environment. If you start acting up or acting out in a way that affects the environment or the atmosphere, you're going to get a lot of stares. You're really going to isolate yourself because everyone is going to look at you and be asking silently, why are you acting like this? Because it's so work focused and it's so about, let's get on set and let's figure this out. That kind of thing comes from the top, you know? If you have a project that's being run by someone who's mercurial and likes to manipulate people and play games, then that's the kind of set you're on. We just don't work like that. It's as clear as it can possibly be, what the priorities are. And also, by reputation, I avoid people that are known to be assholes.

Filmmaker: Has the fact that you operate your own camera now changed your relationship to the actors for the better?

Soderbergh: Oh yeah, for sure. That's a huge benefit for me and for them, to have no barrier between what they're doing and the capture device and the fact that I'm standing right there and there is no video village. There is none of that. The energy of the set is right where the camera and the actors are. That's it. That's ground zero for all the momentum. I think the actors really appreciate that. They spend all day acting. Once you walk onto the set, you're not going back to your trailer until we're done.

Filmmaker: So when they come on the set and you're there with the camera and you block it out and everything, they don't go back to their trailer while you light —

Soderbergh: No, we go right in. We just start. We go right into shooting.

Filmmaker: Got it. Speaking of the camera, watching sex, lies again I was surprised by how active the camera was. I remembered it as a movie with a lot of restraint, but there's a lot of camera movement. What was your philosophy about how and when to move the camera? And were the fancier camera moves, things like the Vertigo shot on Laura San Giacomo,  planned out ahead of time or were you more responding intuitively to what the actors were doing on the day?

Soderbergh: I was keying off of what I saw in front of me. In retrospect, there were a few times when I'm not sure why the camera's moving other than the fact that I was so excited that I had an actual dolly that I thought, well, we should use it, which is the classic young filmmaker mistake. I probably should have dialed back a little of it. Generally speaking, I was at least self aware enough to know that the performances were everything, and tried to make sure that the camera was in the right spot to capture the performances. But if I did it again today, there'd probably be less camera movement.

Filmmaker: According to your journal, you initially wanted to shoot the movie in black and white but found out that wasn't an option in terms of the financiers. I'm curious, what was your approach then in terms of color and contrast? Did you still try to retain something of the flavor of what the movie would've been like in black and white? Or once that option was taken away from you, did you just start from zero again, in deciding what the visual should be?

Soderbergh: Yeah, we probably wouldn't be having this phone conversation if I made that film in black and white. It would've
been a very, very different movie, and probably less accessible for very arbitrary reasons, which were me just wanting to do it in black and white. That would've been a mistake, ultimately. So what I then started thinking about was just a palette that I felt needed this Thursday afternoon kind of quality. In terms of the light and the color, that's what I was thinking about — a certain time in the afternoon where the day is just beginning to shift from one mode to another. I was always interested in that. There was a female friend of mine in LA, and we were both trying to make things happen for ourselves and met through a mutual friend. Every once in a while, we'd hang out. She had a house not far from where I was staying, and we'd sit in the living room in the afternoon and drink martinis and talk about movies and the movie business. I was trying to recreate that kind of quality in every way, in the staging and the dialogue, in the camera placement and the lights. I was trying to recreate the sense that I had of having these conversations where you felt like there was no one else alive. I don't think I ever articulated that to anybody, because it's so vague. But that's what I was looking for, and I felt that we managed to recreate that quality in that last scene between Jimmy and Andie. Obviously, very different text than when I was talking to my friend, but there are certain shots where I look at the light and think, that's exactly what it felt like to have those conversations.

Filmmaker: I know exactly what you mean. Amy Taubin has written about how tactile the skin and the environments of the movie feel. She talks about some of that coming from the movie being shot on 35. If you were doing a movie like this today, I presume you would shoot it digitally. I'm curious what you think would be gained and what would be lost by doing it that way.

Soderbergh: Well, it wouldn't take as long. We had 30 days to shoot that. That looks like a 10-day movie to me right now. You know, pictorially, I might have been able to do a couple of things that I wasn't able to do then in terms of staging and camera placement, but it would be different. I'm too aware of how important luck is in the moment to think that I could recreate what ended up taking place. I got lucky in a lot of ways that you can't really conjure; you just have to be open. So, unlike the now 15-year process of trying to re-edit and re-imagine Kafka, I don't think sex, lies would benefit from me getting too many fingerprints on it.

I'm really, really glad that Larry Blake and I got to go back and solve some issues with the mix, issues that we had always had. We would've done this before, but we couldn't find the edited dialogue tracks. We spent years tracking them down, and finally found them not long ago. And I said to Larry, "Well, okay. So we're going back in, right? We're going to go back in now that we've got the original tracks." And Larry was kind of on the fence about it. He said, "Well, I did a lot of work on it with the stems. I don't know how much benefit there's really going to be." And I said, "I don't know. This just seems like a really good opportunity. Maybe our last one." Because talk about improvements in technology — just in terms of noise reduction, it's ridiculous what you can do. And within hours of starting to go back in, Larry emailed me and said, "I'm so glad we're doing this. You're going to be so happy. We can pull the noise out without touching the voice at all." And in a movie that it is really about intimacy, in which I didn't even filter the phone calls because I wanted the other side to feel as intimate as the on-screen side, to be able to go back and pull this noise out — which was there for no good reason other than not having a long enough cable run on the generator — that was really fantastic and made a big difference, I think, in the climactic scene of the movie.

Filmmaker: What's the line, when you go back and revisit a film like this to re-master it, between improving what was there before, and when you're starting to kind of mess with it?

Soderbergh: You have to be careful. In my opinion, all of the filmmakers from the '70s who went back and messed with their movies should've left those movies alone. They made all the right decisions back then and they should've just left those things alone, so I'm very sensitive to that stuff, and more prone to go in the direction of the Coen brothers, who made Blood Simple shorter when they went back and looked at it again. We did two minor visual things; one was something that had always bugged me that was kind of, if not a mistake, certainly weird. Andie's car was a rental car, and it had a sticker from a company in Kenner in Louisiana. It's very prominent in the frame and it's always bugged the shit out of me. So I finally asked, "Can somebody take the word Kenner off of that decal, please, because it's annoying." The other fix was – and how we didn't notice this on the day, and for decades after, I don't know – when Peter Gallagher picks up the tape of Ann's interview, there's a tape next to it and it has the same date on it as Ann's tape. Larry caught that one. He said, "Uh, unless I'm missing something, I don't think Graham did two interviews that day." And I said, "No, he didn't." So that was the other one that we fixed.

Filmmaker: Watching the movie again really took me back to when it first came out and felt like an explosion. Everybody I knew who was interested in film was talking about it for months before it came out, because of Sundance and Cannes and all of that. I'm wondering if, for you, it felt as seismic, or was the success incremental enough that it didn't change your life the way those of us on the outside might've assumed?

Soderbergh: Each phase was such a surprise that it was not hard for me to put it where it belonged. The sense when we were making and finishing the film was that we probably weren't going to get a theatrical release because a home video company paid for it, and the home video rights are the most valuable part – what distributor is going to want to make a deal in which they don't have home video? We felt like we already kind of were on the wrong side of the tracks, in terms of getting a theatrical release.

So when Miramax stepped forward with an offer of $1 million, which seemed crazy to us, that was very exciting. The response at Sundance — again, not anticipated, really exciting. Cannes was a surprise because we weren't supposed to be in competition. We were supposed to be in Directors' Fortnight and we got pulled across the Croisette because another film fell out. So it was a surprise that we were in competition. We screened on day two of the festival. Typically, films that screen that early are not remembered very well at the end. We all went there, had a great time. People seemed to like it. We went home and thought that was it. So that was all a surprise. At that point, it'd gotten so ridiculous that I was kind of waiting for the backlash to begin. And it makes you wonder now, if backlash is just inevitable on anything in the environment we're in culturally and on a technological level. I wonder now if we would've survived from January to August, when the movie was released, the gauntlet that every movie has to run nowadays. You know what I mean? There are people that, for whatever reason, sometimes just for the fuck of it, want to hate on something. And given the nature of the movie, I really wonder if by the time August rolled around, there'd have been enough people who just decided, "I'm going to go after this thing." I feel very fortunate that I came up at the time that I did. It was really hard to get a movie made, but if you got it made, it wasn't as hard to get people to see it, whereas now, it's completely the opposite. As I said, it just takes one person with a lot of time on their hands to do a takedown of something.

Filmmaker: Well, it's interesting, because the next four or five movies you made after sex, lies were all perceived by a lot of people in the industry as failures. I'm wondering how aware you were of the expectations people had of you, and how those expectations changed with each subsequent film, and how you kept all that from messing with your head? Because it seems to me that you had a very clear idea of what you were doing and why and there's a sort of logic to the choices you were making. But it was definitely not the path that was expected or desired of you from people in the industry and critics and things like that.

Soderbergh: There were a couple of things going on. First of all, when sex, lies was opening, I had moved to Virginia, gotten married and had a child. My interest in what was happening in "Hollywood" was pretty minimal. That being said, I knew enough about the business to know if you keep making things that nobody wants to see, you're not going to get to keep making things. But that was complicated by the fact that I was still trying to figure out what kind of filmmaker I was. So I viewed it all as kind of necessary, but was very aware that I was disappointing people. When you do something that people like, everyone basically takes the position of, well, just do that again, which was not in any scenario interesting to me. So the trick was to find new things to do that people liked and sort of move from one thing to another. It just took me a while, and I needed to make those movies. They all taught me things that I needed when Out of Sight showed up. That was really the time that I felt under the most pressure, making that film. I was aware of the stakes. I was very aware that if I screwed this up, I was really going to be in trouble. I had to do a Jedi mind trick on myself and show up on set and treat it creatively as though it was Schizopolis and I could do whatever I wanted.

Filmmaker: I was surprised to hear you say how much tighter the schedule felt on Out of Sight, which was a huge studio movie, versus the independent sex, lies.

Soderbergh: Oh yeah. But that's okay. I didn't want that part of the business to be off limits to me, because I knew occasionally there would be projects that were exciting that were studio projects with movie stars in them. So it was important for me to succeed in that instance, so that I had maximum mobility in terms of choices and opportunities. But it's not for the faint of heart.

Filmmaker: And where do you see yourself going now? Do you think you would go back to making studio movies again? Or are you more just interested in self-distributing and all that kind of thing?

Soderbergh: I don't know. I mean, look, I think you talk to anybody and we're all trying to figure out what's happening. It's difficult for me to imagine a scenario in which I would literally make a movie for a studio. I'm too frustrated by the way that system works, both economically and creatively. That's one of the reasons the Panama Papers project will probably end up at Netflix, because it's right in that zone of movies that the studios are not interested in, mid-level budget movies for grown-ups. We didn't even take it out. We went to Netflix first and they seemed inclined to do it. And when we had a meeting, they said, "So we're assuming you're going to want some kind of theatrical release or festivals?" And I said, "I don't care. I don't care if it never shows in a theater and I don't care if I ever go to a festival again. You do whatever you need to do to get eyeballs on this thing. If that's the way you want to do it, that's fine. I'm just telling you, I don't care." I have a creative process now that I'm happy with, both in terms of developing projects and then making them and then putting them out. I'm now driven solely by what stories attract me.


Jim Hemphill is the writer and director of the award-winning film The Trouble with the Truth, which is currently available on DVD and Amazon Prime. His website is www.jimhemphillfilms.com.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Drenk on July 23, 2018, 06:54:58 AM
(Some rambling thoughts.)

It's easy for Soderbergh to not care. He's already Soderbergh. I'd even say: He has already been Soderbergh. Didn't he try to retire multiple times because he knew that he couldn't be Soderbergh anymore? He found an alternative.

His creative process is what matters to him now, only that. He can accept being buried in the Netflix library. That's why he doesn't care about movie theaters or the next generation or even the possibility that movies are being weakened. The way you watch things affect the things that are done. You think that the six years old growing up watching Lego: The Movie, made with frenetic shots of two seconds, six years old who've always lived in the era of scrolling, superficial reading, don't influence the movies that are being made? Literature doesn't cost that much. It can exist with more or less the same chore, the same experience—even if I know that it's more and more difficult to stay concentrated on anything, screen or page—, but movies are fucking expensive. Unbreakable is twenty more times expensive than Glass—at least, it looks like that. So what about the younger generation? It's always been hard. Few people make it, not for a long time, but if the big names, the ones who made it, are now happy to exist in a strange no man's land...

I don't want Soderbergh to fight or anything; he's right, what's the point. It only makes me fear the future of movies. If Soderbergh is the one being buried in Netflix, having his movie half-released for half a day between the Direct to Netflix movies, what do the new filmakers do? Interesting movies are still made, new filmakers emerge, still. But I have a hard time picturing the landscape in ten years.

If movies are not, even for a week or two, released, if they're not immersive experiences and not even intended like that anymore...then why are we calling them movies anymore? And can a movie, made for the big screen and people who are paying attention for 90 to 120 minutes, be called a movie if it's watched by fragments?

More and more people are treating the movie theater as a living room, anyway. I hope we'll face at some point how technology is transforming us and how it affects the way we watch movies and the way they are made to conform to our weaknesses.





Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on August 15, 2019, 11:23:12 PM
Steven Soderbergh Announces New Secret Film 'Let Them All Talk' With Meryl Streep & Gemma Chan
via The Playlist

Steven Soderbergh doesn't have much of an off switch. He tried to take a sabbatical in the summer of 2013 following Cannes and that "vacation" turned into directing every episode of "The Knick" for Cinemax a few months later. Time off just wouldn't take. Now, with the world premiere of his latest film, "The Laundromat" set to screen at the Venice Film Festival in two weeks, the filmmaker is taking some much-needed downtime... by shooting a secret new film called "Let Them All Talk."

Most details are being kept under wraps, but sources close to the project tell us the movie features his 'Laundromat' star (and Oscar royalty) Meryl Streep and Gemma Chan from "Crazy Rich Asians," "Captain Marvel" and Marvel's upcoming "The Eternals."

Soderbergh had been hinting at working on something new on Twitter and revealed the title of the film yesterday. Sources have confirmed to us that the project is indeed Soderbergh's next feature-length narrative movie.

One feature of the film is that it's being shot on the brand-spanking-new RED Komodo Dragon camera, a state-of-the-art digital RED camera meant to be the new platinum standard for digital cameras. As Soderbergh has already suggested on Twitter, along with Jarred Land, the President of RED DIGITAL CINEMA, the Komodo Dragon is hot off the press and was just made production-ready at the last minute after some 11th hour troubleshooting (Land just posted an Instagram story about getting the camera ready with 48 hours notice, see below).

Soderbergh was a test guinea pig for the RED ONE cameras on his two-part "Che" movies in 2008 and he's opted to be the patient zero test case subject again for "Let Them All Talk." The Komodo cameras are also expected to be used for David Fincher's upcoming "Mank" film for Netflix starring Gary Oldman.

Soderbergh had intended to finish the film and then take it out to market, but the word is out and various studios and streaming platforms—some that haven't even launched yet—are already getting their checkbooks out and readying for the bidding war. Netflix, who is putting out "The Laundromat" in the fall, and released Soderbergh's previous 2019 film, "High Flying Bird," is definitely expected to be one of the bidders.

"Let Them All Talk" is currently shooting in New York.

https://twitter.com/Bitchuation/status/1161698835799924736
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on November 15, 2019, 09:50:24 AM
Steven Soderbergh To Produce Frankie Shaw's Directorial Debut Feature 'Ultraluminous'
via The Playlist

In this era of Peak TV, there are an incredible number of shows that debut and disappear before you even get the chance to check them out. Sadly, that's probably the case with many people and "SMILF." The Showtime dramedy series was one of the best series on TV for the two years it existed but fell victim to controversy and was canceled before its time. Thankfully, the series creator-star Frankie Shaw has found a great project to transition to, teaming with Steven Soderbergh.

According to Deadline, Steven Soderbergh is set to produce Frankie Shaw's writing and directing feature debut, "Ultraluminous." The film comes as part of a recent agreement between Platform Media and producer Jennifer Fox, who worked on films such as "The Report," "Michael Clayton," and "Nightcrawler."

"Ultraluminous" is a revenge film that follows a high-end sex-worker that returns to New York City after a decade of being abroad. The film is based on the novel by Katherine Faw Morris, which was released less than two years ago and has been compared to gritty, nihilistic novels such as Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho."
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on November 20, 2019, 01:35:18 PM
Steven Soderbergh Plots Crime Thriller 'Kill Switch' With Don Cheadle, Josh Brolin & Sebastian Stan
via The Playlist

"Kill Switch" is a crime drama, with elements of home invasion thriller, that is set in Detroit during the mid-'50s. The film follows a group of criminals that are brought together under mysterious circumstances and have to work together to uncover what's really going on when their simple job goes completely sideways.

"Kill Switch" is written by Ed Solomon, who worked with Soderbergh on the experimental murder mystery app/HBO limited series "Mosaic". In discussions for lead roles are Don Cheadle, Josh Brolin, and Sebastian Stan. John Cena is being eyed for a role, as well. Longtime Soderbergh ally Casey Silver ("Out Of Sight," Mosaic") is producing.

Cheadle will play the lead in the film, who finds himself forced in the middle of the criminal proceedings, but with plenty of secrets of his own. He and Soderbergh, who have not worked together since the "Oceans" trilogy," have been looking for the right project to team up on, with "Kill Switch" likely serving as their long-awaited collaboration and Cheadle may also come on board as a co-producer.

With "Let Them All Talk" in post-production, "Kill Switch" may begin shooting sometime in the middle of next year.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on December 16, 2019, 09:47:24 PM
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on May 20, 2020, 12:18:05 AM
Steven Soderbergh Has Written A 'Sex, Lies & Videotape' Sequel; Says George Clooney & More Set For 'Kill Switch'
The Playlist

The recurring Film Twitter joke that made the rounds when quarantine first started, was uber-prolific filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (the 'Oceans,' trilogy "Out Of Sight") had likely already made a few films in the weeks that had passed. And that's basically turned out to be correct. On Flaviar's interactive livestream show, The Nightcap live. hosted by Dan Dunn for spirit lovers—Soderbergh owns the tasty spirits company Singani63—, the filmmaker with no off switch has confirmed, that self-isolation does not mean an end to creativity.

Describing the importance of storytelling as a fundamental human need, the hope it provides, and how "stories keep us going and keep us believing in tomorrow," Soderbergh revealed he's never been more productive.

"During the lockdown, I've done more sustained writing I've done than since the summer of 1985," he said. "I never considered myself a writer, I wrote as a way to get into the business because nobody can stop you from sitting down in front of a keyboard and writing."

Those three screenplays? He describes them as an original, an adaptation and casually, you know, just a little sequel to his Palme d'Or winning breakthrough 1989 film "Sex, Lies & Videotape."

"When the lockdown happened here in New York, in order to stay organized and stay sane, I decided I'm going to write," he explained. "I've gotta go back to writing, so within the first six or seven weeks of the lockdown, I finished three different screenplays. One of them was a rewrite, one of them was an original, and one of them was an adaptation of a novel I've been wanting to do."

"The original a sequel to 'Sex, Lies & Videotape,'" he continued. "It was an idea that had been circling for a while and I felt like I came up with a way to get back into [the story] and so, I wrote it and I wanna make it."

Next up, is an adaptation of "City Of The Sun," a crime/suspense novel by David Levien, one half of the writing duo Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the creators and showrunners of Showtime's "Billions," and writers of "Rounders" and Soderbergh's "Ocean's 13" and "The Girlfriend Experience."

The book, the first of a series of four novels that centers on a private detective who once served as a police officer, focuses on the abduction of a young boy, his father's search for him, and the detective who reluctantly accepts the case.

There's more, as Soderbergh was on a real roll. What happened to "Kill Switch," the period crime film set in 1955 written by Ed Solomon ("Bill And Ted's Big Adventure")? Well, it was two weeks from shooting in Detroit when COVID-19 hit and production shut down.

We've known that Don Cheadle, Sebastian Stan, and Jon Hamm were set to star in the crime drama, but there's more. Benicio del Toro, rumored, has been confirmed, plus Ray Liotta, Amy Seimetz, Frankie Shaw, and George Clooney, a longtime member of Soderbergh's troupe who hasn't appeared in one of his movies since 2007's "Ocean's 13."

"I'm missing a lot of people who will be angry," the director said of the additional cast name he forgot to mention in the moment, "But the point is, we were two weeks out when we got shut down. We shot 'Out of Sight' in Detroit with Don [Cheadle] and George [Clooney] and I was really excited about coming back. We are gonna come back, we're just gotta figure out when."

Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: jenkins on May 20, 2020, 02:36:56 AM
to mention the obvious here, to write a script like pta instead of writing three scripts at once put three times the effort into one script. soderbergh isn't a writer he's a concept creator
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Alethia on May 20, 2020, 09:22:28 AM
To be fair, the man did tweet a novella some years back, over the course of like a week, gotta count for something. More things from Soderbergh please.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: jenkins on May 20, 2020, 11:14:51 AM
(he, um, tweeted a novella.) that counts for being a content creator. i'm referring to the guy's statements about his own writing btw. he's fine. it's whatever
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Alethia on May 20, 2020, 11:21:27 AM
Just being playful  :)
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: jenkins on May 20, 2020, 12:30:54 PM
xx. it's not as if tweeting a book isn't a certain type of accomplishment. i don't know what he tweeted but it's not as if Soderbergh isn't capable of certain types of accomplishments that don't inspire me to own a single movie of his yet still respect him
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: Alethia on September 29, 2020, 07:04:36 PM
https://deadline.com/2020/09/no-sudden-move-steven-soderbergh-don-cheadle-benicio-del-toro-jon-hamm-hbo-max-movie-1234586267/

'No Sudden Move': Steven Soderbergh Sets Starry Cast For HBO Max Crime Thriller

Steven Soderbergh has commenced production on his latest film No Sudden Move (f.k.a Kill Switch), a crime thriller that is being produced under his recently formed overall deal with HBO Max. The starry cast ensemble includes Don Cheadle (Black Monday), Benicio Del Toro (Sicario), David Harbour (Stranger Things), Amy Seimetz (The Comey Rule), Jon Hamm (Mad Men), Ray Liotta (The Many Saints of Newark), Kieran Culkin (Succession), Brendan Fraser (Doom Patrol), Noah Jupe (Honey Boy), Bill Duke (Black Lightning), Frankie Shaw (SMILF), and Julia Fox (Uncut Gems).

Written by Ed Solomon, the film is set in 1955 Detroit and centers on a group of small-time criminals who are hired to steal what they think is a simple document. When their plan goes horribly wrong, their search for who hired them – and for what ultimate purpose – weaves them through all echelons of the race-torn, rapidly changing city.

Casey Silver is producing the HBO Max and Warner Bros. Pictures film, which is shooting on-location under strict COVID-19 safety protocols in Detroit.

"The last time I shot a movie in Detroit with a great script and a great cast things worked out really well, so I'm very excited behind my mask right now," said Soderbergh.

"It's a pleasure to begin production on another project with Steven Soderbergh, Casey Silver and Ed Solomon," remarked Casey Bloys, Chief Content Officer for HBO and HBO Max. "We have an incredible partner in Warner Bros. Pictures and an extraordinarily talented cast – we couldn't be happier to bring No Sudden Move to HBO Max."

"Steven is a prolific, forward-thinking director who has a two-decade history of making movies at Warner Bros. We look forward to continuing his legacy at WarnerMedia with his intense crime thriller," said Toby Emmerich, Chairman, Warner Bros. Pictures Group.

Soderbergh has another film at HBO Max, Let Them All Talk, starring Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest, Lucas Hedges, and Gemma Chan. The drama is about a celebrated author (Streep) who takes a journey with some old friends to have some fun and heal old wounds. This film is expected to launch on the streamer sometime this year.

No Sudden Move marks the third collaboration between Solomon and Soderbergh, having recently worked together on the Bill & Ted Face the Music and the HBO limited series and interactive app Mosaic. Solomon credits also include Men in Black Charlie's Angels, X-Men, and Now You See Me.
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: WorldForgot on September 30, 2020, 09:39:00 AM
Julia Fox.... Frankie Shaw!... AMY SEIMETZ!!!
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on December 11, 2020, 05:19:47 AM
Steven Soderbergh Is Working On A Box Set Of His Restored Films With New Versions Of 'Kafka,' 'Schizopolis' & 'Full Frontal'
The Playlist

"I'm hoping next year to put out a limited-edition box set of the seven titles that have reverted back to me, or that I have some control over," he explained. "We've been remastering them and cleaning them up. 'Kafka,' I'd always wanted to go back in and alter in some radical way—not to make it more palatable, but to make it into something that I felt mitigated what I wasn't able to fix. 'Schizopolis' and 'Full Frontal' are just shorter, and the rest are as they were. It'll be a collection of titles that weren't made for studios, and in the case of 'Kafka,' hasn't been available for a long, long time."




and a recent interview (https://www.thedailybeast.com/filmmaker-steven-soderbergh-on-hbo-max-the-death-of-cinema-and-vibing-with-meryl-streep)
Title: Re: Next in line for Soderbergh
Post by: wilder on February 14, 2022, 11:49:03 AM
Steven Soderbergh on Superhero Movies' Stunning Lack of Sex and What 'Contagion' Got Wrong
The Daily Beast
by Nick Schager
February 7, 2022

(https://i.imgur.com/tI1kuSo.jpg)

Steven Soderbergh isn't just one of the world's most accomplished directors; he's also one of its most eclectic, segueing between genres—and cinematic techniques and formats—with bold and inventive flair.

On the heels of last year's stellar 1950s crime drama No Sudden Move, the restless director once again shifts gears with Kimi, a lean Hitchcockian thriller about a single woman named Angela (Zoë Kravitz) who, while analyzing data streams collected by an Alexa-style personal assistant, stumbles upon what she believes to be a recording of a violent crime. Getting to the bottom of that mystery, however, proves more difficult than initially appeared, not only because her Big Tech superiors have ulterior motives for keeping things quiet, but because she's an agoraphobic with a powerful urge to stay holed up inside her Seattle apartment—an impulse further stoked by the pandemic.

Interacting with society through both her high-rise residence's windows and her various digital screens and devices, Angela finds herself ensnared in a predicament that Soderbergh fashions as a 21st-century variation on Rear Window-via-Panic Room-via-The Parallax View. Debuting exclusively on HBO Max on Feb. 10, it's a suspenseful effort rooted in fears about surveillance and privacy, led by a formidably anxious performance by Kravitz. It also reconfirms the peerless genre skill and dexterity of Soderbergh, who has numerous additional projects on his plate, including the six-episode limited series Full Circle and a return to the Magic Mike franchise that he first launched 10 years ago with Channing Tatum. Add to that a sizable list of producing endeavors, and it's clear that Soderbergh is as astoundingly prolific as ever.

The 59-year-old filmmaker is also one of the most contemplative and insightful voices in the industry. Consequently, it was our immense pleasure to once again sit down with him to talk about his latest film, the threats posed by technology, the state of the theatrical and streaming businesses, and the main reason he doesn't see himself spearheading a superhero blockbuster any time soon.




Kimi's story revolves around an Alexa/Google Home personal assistant. Do you own one yourself?

No, I wouldn't be able to deal with that—while admitting that I know my phone is listening to me. You know your phone is listening to you. You've seen your phone push ads to you regarding something you were talking about 15 minutes earlier. So, for me to take a position like I would never have an Alexa in my house is kind of ridiculous because I have a smartphone right here. Now, I don't take it upstairs with me. When I decide I'm going to sleep, I don't want this thing anywhere near me.


One of the film's underlying ideas is that we've willingly (and unwillingly) surrendered our privacy to non-stop techno-surveillance. Is there any way to reclaim or manage it? Do people even want to?

I don't know. It's a really interesting question, whether or not a generation will evolve that rejects this concept, and the necessity for it. It's hard to argue that we really have to have this—that society is going to split apart at the seams if we don't have Siri and Alexa doing shit for us. We don't need it. And I wonder if it activates a pleasure center in the brain that, over time, is really not working in our interests.

There's a famous thing that you may have heard of called the Marshmallow Test that they give to 4-year-olds. The whole idea is, they explain to them—they put two marshmallows in front of you and you're going to sit here for five minutes. If you don't eat one of them, you'll get another marshmallow after five minutes. Then they watch and see how many kids can't resist and eat one of the marshmallows. That is an indicator, even at that young age, that our brain is wired in such a way that impulse control may become an issue. I wonder if this kind of immediate satisfaction triggers a dopamine hit that makes us kind of dependent. It's an open question. I think it's a possibility that you get addicted to getting instant gratification about these things, and if somebody takes it away, you have withdrawals. I'm sure that's happening right now.


The film paints an unflattering portrait of such technology—albeit not totally. Did you see Kimi as a cautionary tale about the need to turn off all electronics, because they imprison more than they liberate? Or did you want to take a more evenhanded approach?

My attitude to technology is not binary, ironically. Technology doesn't care. Technology doesn't know that it's technology; it's agnostic. It's just present. It's how we employ it, and what sort of role we give it, that matters. Unfortunately, we're a species that, from the moment language—and stories that could be passed from one person or group to another—emerged, we've been convinced that whatever problems we're experiencing will be solved by a new piece of technology. We are absolutely convinced of this all the time. And it's just not true. The inability to acknowledge that technology isn't going to fix the things that really need to be fixed right now, and that we need to do some people work—the longer that gets delayed, the more concerned I become. I fall prey to that too, like everybody. If you've gotten a new phone the last couple years, there was a part of you that felt like, my life is going to be better when I get this new phone. You're excited about it. I do that.


Genre-wise, this is a departure from No Sudden Move, which was a departure from Let Them All Talk, which was a departure from High Flying Bird and The Laundromat. Is switching things up a conscious effort—and vital to keeping yourself artistically energized?

I'd say there's a bit of calculation in the lack of calculation behind the choices. I typically have a few things in various stages of development, and so I don't always control when something's ready. I certainly didn't control this process, because it was David [Koepp]. David pitched me this idea in London four years ago, and wrote it 1.5-plus years ago, and when the first draft came in, I turned it into Warner and said this is what I want to do next, after No Sudden Move. It all happened very quickly, and it could have been a different project that showed up ready. I liked that it was different. That it had some connections, in terms of storytelling arithmetic, to No Sudden Move, but it was a more tightly focused box. That presented challenges that are different than the challenges of No Sudden Move. And I just love thrillers, and David has a very deep understanding of movie storytelling, and of ideas that only work in the movies, or work best in the movies. Storytelling ideas, character ideas. There's a reason he's the most successful screenwriter in history.


I'm surprised that Kimi originated four years ago, because it feels so closely connected to our present moment. Was the decision to set the film during the pandemic driven by practical circumstances, or by a desire to tap into a contemporary sense of anxiety/claustrophobia/disconnection?

No, that was imposed upon us when we made the decision that the film would occur now, for the audience. That just became a discussion about how do we want to do it and how much real estate do you want to give up to COVID? That's an important discussion to have, because the movie is going to be seen 10 months after you've shot it. We shot March-April of last year, and I don't think we'd hit Delta yet, and then we had Omicron. We were guessing, and nobody likes guessing.


The film taps into a type of quarantine madness that I think everyone has experienced, where we feel both a burning desire to escape home, and also a fear of going outside. How much did you and David discuss that dynamic, as well as how Angela's agoraphobia would tie into it?

What we wanted to do was present a three-dimensional character who is not above—at certain moments, because of her issues—using COVID to make her case for why she is the way she is. We wanted to make Angela a fully rounded character. She's smart, she's diligent, and she is also, at times, very self-serving and inconsiderate. You like her because she's capable and she's intelligent, but she's kind of prickly sometimes. To me, part of the fun of it was watching Zoë just lay it all out there and not be protecting anything. She didn't care how Angela came across; she wasn't trying to make her look like a perfect person. We talked about it, obviously, before we started shooting, but you never know until you get there, how much is she willing to just be an asshole when she needs to be an asshole? Like Darius [Angela's tech friend, played by Alex Dobrenko]—she does use Darius! He's not wrong; she only calls when she needs something, and then she hangs up on him. That's not nice.


How did Zoë become a part of the project?

She was someone I was really intrigued by and had gone into the master file of people that I want to work with—or find something to collaborate with on. When this script came in, those two planets were in the same orbit, and it needed her. It really needed somebody that can do all of the things that she can do. She read it quickly, said yes quickly, and it all happened fast.


Who decided to give Angela blue hair?

That was Zoë. She said, what I have witnessed in the world during the pandemic is a lot of people self-dyeing and changing their hair, just to create a sense of something changing. I loved that idea. She came up with the cut and the color, and it's unthinkable now that she wouldn't have her hairstyle that way. It ended up becoming a really crucial connection point between you and her.


The film has some obvious ancestors: Rear Window, first and foremost, and also Panic Room, The Parallax View, and The Conversation. Did you discuss those movies with David? And once those connections are out in the open, do you have to work against them to make sure you're not replicating them too closely?

The algorithm of that relationship is complicated and not fixed. To what extent you're being influenced, to what extent you're outright stealing, to what extent you're blending influences and thefts—it's all happening in front of you, at all times, when you're working on the script, when you're working on the design of the movie, when you're shooting and editing the movie. It's this continual process of your relationship with the movies that you're standing on the shoulders of. And then the very real necessity of knowing what you bring to this kind of film. It may not be one big thing; it may be a series of little things that give it a flavor that makes it not a clone of one of those other films. Fortunately, David and I are the same age, very much have the same influences, and really didn't have to have explicit conversations about Repulsion or The Conversation or Parallax or Three Days of the Condor. We live there as a default.


Is modern technology, as a subject, the way to make the sort of paranoid thrillers that were popular during the 1970s?

I'll say this: there are no conspiracies anymore. It's all out in the open. You read Scott Galloway's book The Four, and deep-dive into what these gigantic companies are up to and about, and that's not paranoia—that's happening. We're in a really unique situation now where these companies have more power than governments, and yet nobody there is elected, and we don't know what their plans are, and we only find out about the bad shit they're up to when some whistleblower comes forward. All of the mistrust that came out of the 1970s because of Vietnam and Watergate has now been sort of redirected and fragmented so that it feels like it's taking up more space in our daily lives than it did back in the 1970s. The idea that there are powerful entities and people having a real, direct influence on how you live your day-to-day life—that used to be a thing that somebody on a street corner would be screaming in a loop, and it's the reality that we live in now.


Other than Spider-Man: No Way Home (and some other superhero tentpoles), the theatrical business has struggled during the past year. You told me a couple of years ago that you had faith that theaters would adjust to the evolving film/streaming landscape. Do you see that happening yet, or is the pandemic stymying such change?

Certainly, Spider-Man proves that if people want to go out to see something, they'll go out to see it—I mean, that was in the middle of Omicron. Personally, I just have to go where the audience for the kind of things I like is hanging out. The good news is: all the data that I've been able to squeeze out of the platforms that I've made movies for indicates that original movies are a really significant driver of new subscribers and get a lot of eyeballs for people who are already on the platform. It turns out, they still matter over here [on streaming] in a way that they don't in the theatrical exhibition context. That's great news for somebody like me, that these mid-level movies for grown-ups have a real audience on HBO Max. All I ask HBO Max is, are you happy with how that went, and would you do it again? Because I can't get any hard numbers. So far, they've said yes, because as it turns out, the people that are interested in us love seeing new movies.


You have an ongoing relationship with HBO Max, which is where Kimi is exclusively premiering. Now that it's 2022, what's your assessment about how Warner's 2021 release strategy—i.e. debuting everything day-and-date in theaters and at home—worked out?

When all that happened, I just thought it was disingenuous for people to assume that a studio—and especially in this case, Warner—would have any interest in not being fully in the theatrical exhibition business. That's just a ridiculous premise. When a movie works theatrically, there's nothing like that. There is no equivalent jackpot in the streaming world. Warner's best-case scenario is putting movies into theaters, believe me. The way information was released, I think, subsumed a rational discussion of the very real issues they were facing economically, with these giant movies holstered. They made the move they had to make. It wasn't what they wanted; it wasn't about abandoning filmmakers. Somebody just got in a room with the numbers and went, we don't have a move here. This is what we have to do.

So, it got done. We've learned some things; that's always a positive. But any studio is absolutely thinking, how do we get that business back? There's no streaming equivalent of a movie that goes out and grosses $1.8 billion. That's a unique bonanza, and they all want it. So, they're desperate for this thing to go back to where it was. They're not abandoning it.


Do you get approached to make franchise blockbusters? Is that ever on your radar?

Not really, and I'm not a snob; it's not that I feel it's some lower tier in any way. It really becomes about what universe you occupy as a storyteller. I'm just too earthbound to really release myself to a universe in which Newtonian physics don't exist [laughs]. I just have a lack of imagination in that regard, which is why the one foray I had into pure science-fiction [2002's Solaris] was essentially a character drama that happened to be set on a spaceship. Also, for a lot of these, for me to understand the world and how to write or supervise the writing of the story and the characters—apart from the fact that I can bend time and defy gravity and shoot beams out of my fingers—there's no fucking. Nobody's fucking! Like, I don't know how to tell people how to behave in a world in which that is not a thing.


These universes are pretty conspicuously sexless.

The fantasy-spectacle universe, as far as I can tell, typically doesn't involve a lot of fucking, and also things like—who's paying these people? Who do they work for? How does this job come to be?


Right, and avoiding those practical things is part and parcel of stories that aren't rooted in real life.

If people want to go experience that universe, that's fine. As a filmmaker, I just don't know where to start.


You have a lot of upcoming projects, beginning with the third Magic Mike. What brought you back to the series, especially as a director?

The live show that Channing and Reid [Carolin] and Alison [Faulk] thought and created. The live show completely blew me away. I'd never seen anything like it. I'd never seen dancing like this, anywhere. I walked out of the theater and started calling everybody to say we need to make a third film about how Mike created that show.


So there's going to be a life-imitating-art-imitating-life element to the sequel?

Yeah. Through a set of very odd circumstances, Mike is presented with the opportunity to make something like this happen, and the film is about another crazy collection of characters who are trying to pull this off. It's another of my disguised procedurals, but it's got massive amounts of dancing in it, and I'm super excited about it. It's as close to a full-blown musical as I'm ever going to get.


What sort of challenge is that?

Talk about standing on people's shoulders. West Side Story came out two months ago, so that now has to be reckoned with. If you're just talking about staging, you now have to deal with that, and that's a lot. But you have to be smart about it, in the sense that, again, you have to extract from anything that you're watching—as an influence or reference—the things from it that you feel are really strong and within your capabilities. Then you have to find ways to add something of yourself that makes up for the ways in which you can't compete with it. So you go, okay, I can't do X that this person can do. But I can do Y that they can't do. So I've got to make sure that Y is wrapped into this thing so that they look at this thing and go, oh, that's interesting, I can't do that.


Do you feel the need to live up to movies you admire from great directors, especially when they're in a genre you want to tackle?

It depends on what you like. When you see an amazing version of something that you like, your impulse is, I want to be able to do that. I want to have the ability to do something that's that good. But you also have to be realistic about your capabilities. I'm always watching stuff and looking for ideas that I can steal or repurpose or appropriate. I want to be better five years from now than I am today. I also know what things are beyond me, and so it's important that I cultivate things that are specific to me.

I get excited when I see something great; I'm not jealous of it. It makes me want to go to work. But at the same time, I know what kind of filmmaker I am in the sense that, it's possible—and probable—that I can't make, for instance, The Red Shoes. I can't make that. There's so much going on, on so many different levels, and I know what it takes to make something like that, conceptually and practically. I can't do that. Now, what I can do is have a longer career than Michael Powell, doing what I want to do the whole time. I can't compete with him on the film-by-film basis, so I have to take a step back and go, I'm going to put together a career that adds up to something like that.


Is a sex, lies and videotape sequel still a part of that career plan?

I want to do it. I think there are legitimate ideas in it, and I really want to do it. That's another matter of timing, but I think its origin was as pure, in terms of my idea of what it could do that the first film wasn't able to do. It was similarly organic and written at a similar speed. It came out fairly formed, very quickly, once I'd understood what the core of the movie was. I hope I get to go back to that and revisit two of those characters.


You're also planning the six-episode miniseries Full Circle with Mosaic and No Sudden Move screenwriter Ed Solomon. Are you interested in returning to episodic TV, or does it just have to do with opportunity?

I think it's chance. It's timing. It just turned out that there's been a run of features over the last couple of years. That could have gone a different way. Ed and I have been talking about Full Circle for a long time, and I like that canvas. It's six hours, and we're trying to do things that six hours allows you to do. We're trying to really take advantage of the detail that you can load into something that's six hours, that accumulates in a way that—no matter what you pack into a two-hour, 10-minute movie—the potential for it to really get on a trajectory and throw you somewhere isn't as pronounced. If you have 5.5 hours to take somebody to a point and push them off a cliff, that's a lot!

I'm excited that I'm able to move back and forth, and the industry has evolved to the place where these kinds of distinctions aren't discussed anymore. It's more just, what's best for this story? Some ideas are two-hour movie ideas. And some things I read and go, why shouldn't this be a series?


Kimi isn't your first film to deal with a pandemic—that would be 2011's Contagion. Were you surprised that, during the early days of COVID-19, so many people revisited it? And have you?

I didn't really need to go back to it, because it was really obvious that what we thought would be a niche voice, or a single note within a chord—the Jude Law character—we had no idea that that would become the dominant chord. That that sort of attitude, and skepticism, would really turn into the primary issue. We stupidly didn't imagine that people, when given the opportunity to not get sick, wouldn't take it. It just didn't occur to us, on a mass scale. I think we always assumed there'd be a small percentage of people that would take that position, but that generally people would be happy to be immune. Yeah... we missed that by a wide margin.