Xixax Film Forum

Soderbergh to direct 'Girlfriend'
Koppelman, Levien to write script
Source: Variety

Steven Soderbergh will direct "The Girlfriend Experience," a feature that focuses on the world of prostitution from the vantage point of a $10,000-a-night call girl.

Brian Koppelman and David Levien will write; the pair hatched the project when they and Soderbergh were working on "Ocean's Thirteen."

Pic will be financed by 2929 Entertainment partners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner through their HDNet label. It will become the second film -- after "Bubble" -- in the six-picture pact they made for Soderbergh to direct low-budget films that get distributed simultaneously in theatrical, on cable TV and on DVD.

Greg Jacobs ("The Good German") will produce.

Rather than go for star power, Soderbergh may set an adult film actress to play the lead role. Soderbergh shot "Bubble" using mostly non-pros.

Project marks the director's first exploration of sexual relationships since his breakthrough film, "sex, lies & videotape."

Much the way that Coleman Hough and Soderbergh wrote a detailed outline for "Bubble" that was used as the basis for a partly improvisational shoot, Koppelman and Levien worked out the beats of the call- girl film with Soderbergh. The director waited until he shot two installments of his Spanish-language Che Guevara biopic before turning his attention to "The Girlfriend Experience."

Soderbergh will lense "The Informant" with Matt Damon for Warner Bros. as his next film. Then he'll turn to "The Girlfriend Experience," which will be shot over 14 days this fall.

The title refers to a phenomenon in which wealthy men pay not just for the quality of a sexual encounter but also for a woman who will play the role of a perfect girlfriend. The arrangement apparently involves more intimacy than the usual prostitution relationship. Soderbergh, Koppelman and Levien interviewed numerous women and fixed on an interior look at a woman who makes $1 million a year in the business.

Not to be a sexist in my own right, but how many guys do we need to make a movie from a call girl's point of view?

(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fa330.g.akamai.net%2F7%2F330%2F2540%2F20081016015530%2Fwww.variety.com%2Fgraphics%2Fphotos%2F_mugg%2Fgrey_sasha.jpg&hash=fa95b47d5085e55e9be049942db3fa46cd7fb1f0)

Porn star cast in Soderbergh film
Sasha Grey boards low-budget 'Experience'
Source: Variety

Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh has cast precocious porn star Sasha Grey as the lead in his upcoming feature, "The Girlfriend Experience," Adult Video News reported.

The low-budget drama, currently shooting in Gotham, chronicles the life of a high-price call girl, is part of Soderbergh's six-pic deal with multimedia entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Pic was written by "Ocean's 13" scribes Brian Koppelman and David Levien and will bow under the Magnolia Pictures shingle.

The 20-year-old Grey entered the skin biz just after her 18th birthday and has appeared in scores of XXX flicks. In January she became the youngest recipienct of AVN's Female Performer of the Year award.

For Grey, who lists Jean-Luc Godard, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Catherine Breillat among her favorite filmmakers, "Girlfriend" will be her third legit film appearance in 2009, having notched small parts in Dick Rude's indie "Quit" and Canadian horror project "Smash Cut."

"To have the opportunity to work for an Academy Award-winning auteur is truly a great honor," Grey told AVN. "I've been an admirer of Soderbergh's films for years, and I am elated that I have been given a leading role in a character-driven film." (//)

From this hoe's MySpace.

QuoteMovies   French new wave Godard , Italian Neo-Realism Antonioni, Dogme95 Von Trier, German New wave Herzog, American films of the 1970's, the night porter, Night Jobs for men, really good documentaries, the pornography of Belladonna,John Stagliano, modern works of Gasper Noe, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater, ,David Lynch, Gus van Sant, Steven Soderbergh,David Gordon Green, P.T. Anderson,larry clark dumb funny junk food movies (i'm not telling but you know what i mean) anything cinema verite oh and duh Harmony Korine,Hiroshi Teshigahara, Monte Hellman,Bernardo Bertolucci,Agnès Varda, Terrence Malick,Louis Malle,William Klein

You can't fake alot of those names. She may genuinely know her shit.

http://www.myspace.com/sashagrey

"Sasha Grey won't be doing any scenes for about a month. Porn's leading existentialist is on the injured reserve list. She's got a horrible case of anal warts and requires extensive medical treatment."


suddenly not so hot.

Quote from: Stefen on October 15, 2008, 10:45:25 PM
You can't fake alot of those names. She may genuinely know her shit.

http://www.myspace.com/sashagrey

Criterion Collection made her top friends.

Huh.  She and I have a lot in common.  I like a lot of those directors and I want to be a porn star, too.

do you also have anal warts?

Perhaps it's the lowered expectation that comes with her being a, well, porn star and all, but I am thoroughly impressed.

Steven Soderbergh On Casting Porn Star Sasha Grey For 'The Girlfriend Experience': '[She'll] Surprise People'
Source: MTV

Though Steven Soderbergh has featured unknown, untrained actors in his movies in the past, he has raised a number of eyebrows recently by casting porn star Sasha Grey in the lead of his forthcoming feature 'The Girlfriend Experience.' To be sure, Grey is certainly outside of the mainstream of Hollywood actors, but she certainly is famous and has had quite a bit of experience on camera. Does Soderbergh consider her to be a true amateur?

"No, of course not, but the key is dealing with people who haven't learned anything about acting," he recently told MTV News. "She's not trained and that's what I'm looking for. She's going to surprise people. She's great in the movie."

So that's good to know! But what is "The Girlfriend Experience," anyway?

"I was working with Brian Koppelman and David Levine and we were in a bar and I saw this woman on the other end of the bar and something wasn't fitting. Her affect, the way she was alone, there was something that just drew your eye. What was going on there? This is not typical. Brian and David both said "GFE," and I said "What's that?" And they explained the girlfriend experience. They explained this whole world of high end escorts wherein its not just a straight sexual thing. It's almost like a full on fake relationship. You go out to dinner and you talk and if you saw a transcript of it you'd think these people are in a relationship. I was really intrigued by that and we whipped up a story, a week in the life of somebody who does this."

Given that Grey is experienced in having sex on screen, was Soderbergh tempted to have the actress perform unsimulated sex acts in the movie? No, says the director. "I guess I felt like that's been done. That boundary has been broken. I don't want that to distract. But I was looking for someone who was comfortable in scenes that were sexual. There's a scene early on where she's watching a guy get undressed and she's standing there. She's almost undressed already and the look on her face is fantastic. I don't know how to describe it. She is absolutely in her element. That only comes from being in situations like that and being in control. She looks comfortable and in control. You can see it on her face. Its kind of awesome."

Perhaps it's nit-picky, but wouldn't a cheap video whore who probably gets a few grand per shoot be the ultimate miscasting when dealing with a $10000-a-night (insane amount of money most likely meaning she deals with high-level politicos, and corporate power men) call girl?

Wouldn't a stuck up actress actually portray that illusion of high-class-ness much better?

The Movable Buffet: Dispatches from Las Vegas by Richard Abowitz
Sasha Grey: 'I wanted porn to be more creative'

Mark Spiegler is among the best known talent agents in the adult business. He is by his own description a legal pimp. He supplies women actresses to adult movies. Covering the Adult Entertainment Expo for a decade I have had many chances to meet and interview Spiegler. But only once has he called me to speak about one of his clients. That was two years ago and the client was an 18-year-old named Sasha Grey.

Spiegler insisted Grey was going to be the biggest star he had ever come across. Two years later she is the name who most comes up when discussing stars who are transforming the adult industry. Interestingly, our first interview did not go well. It was brief and awkward. She just seemed very young to me and I did not see the spark behind all the excitement she was even then generating. In fact, John Stagliano had already cast her in the sequel to his successful "Fashionistas" film. For 2009 she is in the "Pirates" sequel that is the film that has hoarded so may of the AVN nominations this year.

Among Grey's more recent accomplishments are being cast in a Steven Soderbergh film and being put on the Rolling Stone annual Hot List. Grey has become such a star these days that, since I did not plan in advance, her schedule was too full yesterday and I was told she had no time for an interview with me. But Grey amazingly recognized me from our brief and awkward conversation of a couple years ago and called me over to speak:

Richard Abowitz: Two years ago Mark Spiegler told me I had to interview you because you were going to be a huge star.

Sasha Grey: I remember that actually. I remember we met briefly but did not get a chance to speak.

Abowitz: Well, we have a lot more to talk about now. Are you surprised how quickly all of this has happened for you?

Grey: I am surprised. I got into this business just wanting to make a change. I did not think my ideals would reach that far. I did not have any self doubt. But I did not think on my own I could have such an impact in such a short amount of time.

Abowitz: How has your work impacted your private life?

Grey: My fiance is a photographer and I have made him my photographer. I kind of stole him. It is pretty awesome because we get to work together a lot now.  We have similar artistic interests; we have a similar vision, and we work well together. But as far as the relationship, I think the first three months are the hardest. You learn so much about yourself in such a short amount of time. Obviously, jealousy is part of it. It is more the type of sex that you get to do in films I would like to have in my private life, but I don't have the money for even the gear for some of the stuff I do on film. I am not going to invest my money in that. I am going to invest my money in my own goals.

Abowitz: You are still only 20. What are your goals?

Grey: My goal right now is to continue to brand myself. I work on my website. I want to direct. I have a feature I really I want to come out of the gate with and that is my goal right now.

Abowitz: Next year I'll ask you if alcohol tastes like you expected it to. Do you find in the industry when it comes to getting opportunities to direct that your age is a barrier?

Grey: Absolutely. My age and my gender. Inside and outside. I wish they would say it to my face but they don't. I hear things said behind my back and I wish they would say it to my face.

Abowitz: Do you have any sense of what it is about you that in an industry of people fighting for the spotlight  has made you such a magnet for attention?

Grey: It is hard to answer that without sounding pretentious and stuck up. I think the difference with me is that I sought my way into this industry. I had a goal. I think that has made me a lot different. I did not get into this through a friend, or because I was a stripper or because I wanted to pay college tuition.  That and I am completely into film, music and art. I am into art house films.

Abowitz: OK, outside adult what art have you been enjoying?

Grey: I've been listening to a lot of black metal. For the past month I have been reading nothing but my script. I am on the fourth draft of it. Movies: I really loved "The Wrestler." It was incredibly intense to see him so vulnerable. I love when an actor does that. I did not like some of the dialogue. But I felt something that night.

Abowitz: Didn't you just do a mainstream film? Was that one of your goals?

Grey: No. I keep getting asked that question and it is a bit annoying. Stephen was brilliant. But unfortunately I can't really talk about it. You know how a lot of people make art you admire but you never want to meet them. But Soderbergh far surpassed my expectations. I have a huge respect for him. He is  very focused on process and not just the outcome and getting there is the exciting part for me as well. I guess most people know that the movie is about a $10,000-a-night escort and how she perceives herself to be in control of her life.

Abowitz: Was it an acting challenge for you?

Grey: I am sorry, I can't answer that part. But as far as trying to get into mainstream that is a silly idea. I got into porn because I wanted to get into porn. I did eight months of research before I entered the industry. And, as I told you before, I entered porn because I thought there was a void -- a lack of quality production. You see the same thing over and over and there was just so much titillation missing from porn. I really wanted to see two people perform like they are into each other. I want to see the titillation. I wanted porn to be more creative.

http://www.cinematical.com/2009/01/21/sundance-review-the-girlfriend-experience/
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/01/girlfriend_expe.php
http://blog.spout.com/2009/01/21/the-girlfriend-experience-and-steven-soderbergh-at-sundance/
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/01/steven_soderbergh_premieres_th.html

Both reviewers seemed to not like it, but weren't willing to say it since it wasn't a finished film. It was interesting reading commentary about a female high-end escort from both a male journalist and a female journalist. Their opinions weren't as different as I'd imagine considering the subject matter. Maybe that's just my own sexism. Yeah, it definitely is.

I'm still interested in it. Not so much for the story or idea, but more for the experimental element of it all. It's important to reward creativity and trying something different right now in times where American independent cinema seems to be dying with the American economy. The only movies getting made right now seem to be sure things.

Soderbergh Shares The Girlfriend Experience
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon

Every year at the Sundance Film Festival, there are a couple of unexpected surprises and to coincide with the 20th Anniversary of Steven Soderbegh's Sex, Lies and Videotape premiering at the festival, there was a last-minute addition to the program billed merely as "An Evening with Steven Soderbergh." Word quickly got around that the filmmaker would be using the Eccles Theater's vast space to sneak preview his new movie The Girlfriend Experience to an audience for the first time.

After being introduced by the festival's director Geoff Gilmore, Soderbergh tried play the sneak preview cooly as if he hadn't planned on showing anything, but that ruse was quickly dropped to the delight of the packed theater. Before rolling the film, Soderbergh made it clear that the film was a work-in-progress, and one can expect changes before the movie gets its inevitable release later this year. Even so, the film, shot using the same Red digital camera technology Soderbergh used on his groundbreaking Latin American epic Che, looked absolutely amazing and was clearly a step up from his last film in the HDNet series, Bubble.

Shot for just $1.7 million, the film features 20-year-old Sasha Grey, best known as the star of over a hundred adult films, playing Chelsea (née Christine), a high-priced Manhattan call girl making her way through the lucrative escort business while trying to maintain a relationship with her personal trainer boyfriend Chris. Surprisingly, Chris doesn't seem to have a problem with her profitable career decision until she decides to go off for a weekend with one of her clients, a married man who offers support when Chelsea needs it most.

Told in a non-linear format, the film spends much of its running time following Chelsea around New York, as she spends time with clients, lunches with friends and potential managers, as well as being interviewed by a journalist for a piece on the Manhattan escort business. Through these interactions, we learn more about what she does, as well as how and why she does it. At the same time, Chris has been invited to travel to Las Vegas by one of his own clients and tries to make his own way through the less lucrative career of physical training, while contending with his girlfriend's planned infidelity. It was pretty obvious how recently the film was shot, since there are references to the impending election and the country's economic collapse, things that make the film seem even more relevant and timely.

Some might be surprised that besides a little bit of nudity, there's absolutely no graphic sex of any kind in the movie, which is something many might have expected when they learned Soderbergh had cast Grey given her chosen profession. In fact, Grey proves to be quite a terrific and talented find at delivering straight dialogue-driven drama, creating a character that's very believable to the viewer.

"I read about Sasha in an article in 'Los Angeles Magazine' a couple years ago, and I've never really heard anybody in the porn industry talk about the industry the way she did, and why she wanted to go into it," Soderbergh said later about casting Grey in the film. "When the idea of this movie came about, I contacted her and we sat down and talked and I described the way we work on these things. I said, 'It would just be interesting for you' because I wanted somebody who even on a film that's not very explicit, there's a comfort level that she obviously has from making all of those films that I think is difficult to fake. There's kind of an attitude, and she said, 'Look, I want to try it and see what happens.' She's the only person in the film that's been in front of the camera before. Everyone else in the film is a real person that was cast based on their similarity to the character description. It's really fun as a director to watch and I really like the idea of people speaking in their own words, really speaking for themselves."

One of the film's standouts in this regard is a funny cameo by former Premiere film critic Glenn Kenny--now sharing his vast film knowledge on his own blog SomeCameRunning--as a creepy adult entertainment reviewer who convinces Chelsea to provide complimentary services as a "review copy" to help further her career. We've seen creepy film characters before, but Kenny's ten-minute appearance and his bitingly cruel review of our heroine (and the effect it has on her) becomes the catalyst for what happens to Chelsea and Chris later in the movie.

During the Q 'n' A after the screening, Soderbergh answered questions about the process used for creating these scenes. "We're sort of using the same method that we used on 'Bubble' which is we're working from a kind of detailed scene-by-scene breakdown that the actors are improvising. This is a more complex attempt to implement that approach, more characters and a city that imports a lot of activities, so a lot of times, since I'm dealing with improvised performances and they're usually one or two takes, I have to compose in such a way that doesn't lock them up and that allows them some movement because I'm never telling them where they should go or not go. Almost every time you see a conversation between two people, there are two cameras shooting simultaneously, so that drives a lot of the framing and the visual esthetic. One of the filmmakers that I think is most proficient at placing characters within a landscape and just giving a sense of them being a part of it is Michelangelo Antonioni, especially in a film he made called 'Red Desert' which has some really extraordinary visual sequences. He just had this great gift for having an environment embellish the characters. I thought about that a lot and that's why the frame is loose a lot of the times."

"It's the first time we've shown it in front of anyone really, so it's always interesting," Soderbergh said about experiencing the film for the first time with an audience. "You can feel things. The structure is very tricky, so it's helpful to get a sense of where people are going in and out, where they sort of lock in to the way the story is being told. There are people who do not like stories told like this. I remember we had a preview of 'Out of Sight', and it went horribly. They started the focus group and the first guy raised his hand, before the person even asked a question, and he said, 'I just want to say something right now. I hate stories that are told like this.' And then it went downhill. There are some people who as soon as they realize the structure is going to be like this, it's just not their thing. The couple of times I've done this I've tried to find that balance of interest and intrigue but also playing fair. There is a line there where if you don't really play fair and dole out information in the right way. The last time I had a structure this elaborate was ten years ago and 'The Limey' so I'd been looking for a way back into it."

Even so, Soderbergh said that the film was written and shot chronologically. "You're sort of working without a net but you're only four feet off the ground, so it's not too terrifying. What you're trying to do is through these structure improvisations, after you've compiled all the footage, you start finding the connections between what people have talked about in all of the scenes. The film has this loose structure that's not entirely arbitrary. There's sort of a business section, then there's the client section, then there's the break-up and talking about the break-up. You're culling all of the footage and making little sub-clips and labeling what they're about, and then you're sitting down and starting to pull similar subjects together."

Soderbergh continued by talking about one of the running through-lines of the movie that helped pull all of the disparate scenes together. "The interview with the journalist--who is a real journalist, Mark Jacobsen, who wrote the definitive piece on this young guy Jason Itzler, who was running an escort service in New York a couple years ago and got busted--so through a friend I contacted Mark and I shot 30 minutes of him interviewing Sasha, and that was sort of like the shrink in 'Klute,' it was a great way to organically have her talk in a way that's sort of guarded and then weave it in and out, which is something we're still working on. You have a sense of where it's going to go but day by day, you're discovering it."

Soderbergh ended the evening by telling the audience "You weren't here," although obviously, with so many journalists and critics in the audience, word quickly got around that Soderbergh's latest film The Girlfriend Experience was something worth seeking out whenever it gets its theatrical release. While a release date hasn't been set yet, one can expect it will be released similarly as Bubble.

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Quote from: macage on April 01, 2009, 04:14:28 PM
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That is the best poster I've seen in a very long time.  2010 Xixax award-worthy.

Agreed.  I wonder what the barcode means.

That poster just had its way with my brain.

Suddenly I am wanting to see this movie.

This is screening at my school at the end of April.

The special guest there to introduce the film and do a Q&A is.......... Sasha Grey.  I'd still rather have Soderbergh.

Be sure to go. Let us know how it is.

I wonder if Sasha Grey is actually good. I mean at other things besides getting banged.

going to see this at the Tribeca Film Fest in a few weeks...

trailer here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/68046/movie-trailers-the-girlfriend-experience

mod, hook it up.

you could eat off that beauty...

That trailer was awesome.

Yeah, it was a great trailer. Very atmospheric and cool.

My only beef is it didn't really show any of Sasha Grey's acting. That's the big question mark I have with this film.

http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/The_Girlfriend_Experience.html

i'm going to the Apr 28 9pm showing because the one with Soderbergh & Sasha was already sold out.  you can buy tickets now if you have an AMEX. 

Quote from: Stefen on April 16, 2009, 09:20:53 AM
Yeah, it was a great trailer. Very atmospheric and cool.

My only beef is it didn't really show any of Sasha Grey's acting. That's the big question mark I have with this film.

Her Acting? She's a porn star, the acting is going to be AWESOME!

Quote from: Stefen on April 16, 2009, 09:20:53 AM
My only beef is it didn't really show any of Sasha Grey's acting. That's the big question mark I have with this film.

her acting looks pretty decent from the snippets of it they just showed in the featurette on HDN. the escort scenes look interesting enough but the girlfriend stuff must have been most challenging for her. or so it seems. it's the next free HDNet movie on May 20th--such a damn good channel synced w/magnolia pictures.

Review:

The Girlfriend Experience
By RONNIE SCHEIB, Variety

A Magnolia Pictures release and presentation, in association with 2929 Entertainment, of an Extension 765 production. Produced by Gregory Jacobs. Executive producers, Todd Wagner, Marc Cuban. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Screenplay, Brian Koppelman, David Levien.

With: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos, Philip Eytan, Glenn Kenny, Timothy Davis, David Levien, Marc Jacobsen.

With characteristic eclecticism, Steven Soderbergh follows "Che," his sweeping four-hour epic about a revolutionary hero, with "The Girlfriend Experience," a small-scale, digitally shot 77-minute chamber piece about a high-priced prostitute. Despite the pic's erotic subject matter and star (vet porn diva Sasha Grey), nothing could be less sensationalistic -- or moralistic -- than this fascinating study of free enterprise in free fall. While it may disappoint thrill-seekers, "Girlfriend" should still delight Soderbergh fans and niche auds. Sundance-sneaked (in rough cut) and officially preeming at Tribeca before a May 22 opening, this arthouse gem finds the helmer in top, and truly topical, form.

Pic follows upscale call girl Chelsea (Grey, in an interestingly opaque perf) and her trainer boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos) over five chronologically scrambled days in the weeks before the 2008 election. Set in the trendy, low-lit haunts of New York's high rollers (the venues looking far sleeker and more anonymous than in the bright pastels of "Sex and the City" and other glossy Gotham fantasies), the pic presents a society in which every interaction reps a form of commodity exchange.

Everything is a brand: Chelsea advertises herself on her website, while her apparel designers figure more prominently than her johns in her journal (read in voiceover). Everybody has a get-rich scheme: Chris tries to shop himself around at various gyms and hawks a line of sports clothes on the side, while Chelsea yearns to own a boutique and quizzes her clients about recession-proof investments.

Soderbergh's complex, never-gimmicky shuffling of time subtly fragments the narrative to reveal the characters' untoward depths of self-delusion. Sometimes the irony proves less subtle, as in Chelsea's back-room encounter with the Erotic Connoisseur, a super-sleazy porn reviewer (portrayed convincingly by former Premiere critic Glenn Kenny) who mercilessly disses her charms in cyberspace, the narration of his review counterpointed by street muscians' rousing rendition of "Everyone's a Critic."

Like Godard, Soderbergh views prostitution as the ultimate paradigm for capitalism. But where Godard saw the hooker as a tragic or exploited victim ("My Life to Live," "Two or Three Things I Know About Her"), Soderbergh suggests there are no victims, only failed traders, in the post-Reagan era of DIY capitalism. Subverting the helmer's own megabuck "Ocean's" franchise, "Girlfriend" exposes the downside to those films' shiny, expensive stars and money-snatching thrills ("Ocean's Thirteen" was penned by "Girlfriend" scripters Brian Koppelman and David Levien).

Furthermore, in contrast to "Bubble," Soderbergh's earlier HD experiment with an other-end-of-the-telescope dissection of lower-class specimens, the helmer here wields total control of the pic's uniquely detached, seriocomic tone. The nervous hype of a group of hedge-fund managers, who insist on treating Chris to a private-jet weekend in Vegas, seems organically connected to the handheld camera swinging wildly from one partygoer to the next.

Chelsea, meanwhile, is a creature of cool surfaces and static interiors, ensconced in tony galleries, pricey restaurants and luxurious hotel rooms as she delivers the full "girlfriend experience" -- complete with thoughtful inquiries about clients' wives and kiddies, informed appreciation of "Man on Wire" and commiseration over the nose-diving economy.

Tech credits mesh faultlessly, as Soderbergh lensed and edited under his usual pseudonyms. Score by Morcheeba's Ross Godfrey hits all the rightly stressful notes.


Camera (color, HD), Peter Andrews; editor, Mary Ann Bernard; music, Ross Godfrey; art director, Carlos Moore; costume designer, Christopher Peterson; supervising sound editor, Larry Blake; casting, Carmen Cuba. Reviewed at Deluxe, New York, April 13, 2009. (In Tribeca Film Festival -- Spotlight.) Running time: 77 MIN.

i saw this.  i liked the poster better.

watch it now for 9.99

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00284GCEE/

Someone needs to rip that shit.

Alright well... I saw the movie last night.  It was decent.  A lot of it seemed like Soderbergh just fucking around and doing weird things with the camera.  It was shot on Red One if I'm not mistaken?  This film looks a lot more "digital" than Che did.  The pacing was very strange... Sasha Grey said that the original cut (which showed at Sundance) had a lot different pacing than this one.  The acting was wonderful I thought all around, except for Sasha Grey.  She has this thing with her eyebrows... they're just always always up and she always has this kinda tongue-in-cheek look going on for her, like she's sitting there going "Hey look at me, I'm acting, look at me act, can't I act so well?" 

The Q&A was kinda awkward honestly because any little thing ("I don't wanna shove information down peoples' throats", "Let's bang out some rapid-fire questions") that could be construed as sexual innuendo got about a two minute long laugh from the audience and it just got old after a while.  One of the funnier parts of the night where was she said that she wants to change porn and, "I hate quoting Jack Horner from Boogie Nights, but I wanna keep them watching after they've cum."  That only got a laugh from me and one of my good friends sitting next to me which seemed to bother Grey.  Then she said that she likes to psych herself up before a porn shoot a-la Raging Bull and when no one except me and my friend laughed again she called out the audience for not having seen any movies.  It was a fun night in all.

You probably could have fucked her.

What?

Clip:

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810066471/video/13242808

Quote from: Convael on May 01, 2009, 03:19:12 PM
What?

She was into you, bro. You should have slam dunked that.

Quote from: Convael on May 01, 2009, 10:41:33 AM
she always has this kinda tongue-in-cheek look going on for her

that wasn't a tongue.....bro.

I don't understand this place at all.

I guess I understand a knee jerk reaction to Sasha's acting. However, I think it worked incredibly well. I was impressed by her performance in this movie. I personally don't care if someone sucks dicks for a living. I thought she did a really good job, but I'd like to watch it again. Her boogie nights reference might read utterly naive, but I have no problem with the sentiment she conveyed. Do I feel like it's possible for porno to become a truly viable "art form"? Probably not. But if that's the profession she chooses to take part in, I don't mind her wide eyed optimism concerning it's potential, however misguided I feel it might be.

Quote from: Convael on May 02, 2009, 02:11:11 AM
I don't understand this place at all.

Me neither but I stay for the dick and fart jokes.

Quote from: martinthewarrior on May 02, 2009, 02:46:31 AM
Do I feel like it's possible for porno to become a truly viable "art form"? Probably not.

Porn has played at Cannes before and relative to other arts, artists that could be called pornographic in today's conservative age have competed at a high level.

An artistic porn can be made if the aesthetic interest isn't just getting someone off. The main difference between most porns and films is that basic idea, but both mediums play with extreme content in their own ways.

One-on-One with Steven Soderbergh
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon

Ever since he received two Oscar nominations in the same year, director Steven Soderbergh was a filmmaker who needed no introduction, and its somewhat surprising that was just eight years ago, considering how prolific he's been, often cranking out two movies a year, whether it's the three big-budget "Danny Ocean" movies he did with pals George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon or more art-driven films like The Good German and Solaris.

His latest, The Girlfriend Experience, continues the tradition of indie filmmaking he's frequently revisited in the 20 years since Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It's the second film in Soderbergh's deal with HDNet, starring adult film star Sasha Grey as high-priced New York escort Chelsea, who balances her demanding job with spending time with her personal trainer boyfriend (Chris Santos) until she connects with a client, threatening her existing relationship. Mostly improvised, it follows Grey as she interacts with various people who might be able to help her career, including the creepy owner of an adult entertainment website, played by film critic Glenn Kenny, who hopes to get a "review copy" of Chelsea's services.

While it's already been playing on video-in-demand for a few weeks, having seen the film twice on the big screen, it's an amazing looking film that really deserves to be seen in that environment.

ComingSoon.net had a rare chance to spend a half hour with the prolific filmmaker talking about the process of making The Girlfriend Experience. We'd been wanting to do longer interviews with filmmakers for a while now, and we were thrilled to learn Soderbergh felt the same way, so it was great to have an opportunity to talk to him at length about a New York-based film we genuinely love, as well as other aspects of his career.

ComingSoon.net: We spoke a few years ago when you were promoting "Bubble" and you had signed a deal with HDNet to do five more movies using this process, so at what point did this project come about?
Steven Soderbergh: This is like spring of '06 we wrote the outline for this, so it's only a couple months after "Bubble" came out. It seemed to be a story that could fit within this methodology that I'm hoping to employ on all six of these. David (Levien) and Brian (Koppelman) and I kind of knocked this outline out and then kinda stuck it in a drawer 'cause I wasn't sure when I was gonna get to it. Then of course the (Elliot) Spitzer thing broke a year ago and I actually felt like, "Oh, maybe we want a little bit of distance from that." As it turned out, it wasn't really a factor, so we'd been percolating on it for a while. We did a lot of interviews in the spring of '06 and then we did a second round just before we started shooting like last fall. That's where the hobbyist idea came in. It wasn't in the original outline. In the intervening two years, the escorts we talked to said that this was becoming more of an issue for them, these reviewers that were getting kinda increasingly just snarky, you know? Just how frustrating it was for them.

CS: I wasn't even aware there were sites in the adult entertainment industry that reviewed escort services. The most surprising thing to me was that you only shot this last October and November and how much of this stuff is just so recent and timely. Once you started shooting, was this a faster process to finish it than normal?
Soderbergh: Yeah, by design the shoot's very quick and the edit's very quick and they're designed to be churned out in a way. I don't mean that in the sense that nobody cares, but the design of them in terms of how much money we're spending. In this case, we have an element of topicality that we want to maintain, so we were trying to turn it around quickly. Initially I wanted it to come out Valentines Day, but as it turned out, Magnolia felt like we couldn't get the machine up and running in time, so we bagged that. The good news is that the economic stuff is still going on, and I think the thing that saves it from being harmed by the topicality is the fact that it's not the core of the movie. The narrative doesn't turn on some topical event, it's just this filigree that's going on around the edges that makes it feel specific.

CS: Were all the actors sitting down together and all of the economic stuff just came up in their improvised conversations?
Soderbergh: Yeah, that's where everybody ended up going which to me was sort of telling in a way that may not be apparent at first blush. For instance, in "Bubble" when we would do some sort of structured or extended improvisation, invariably the characters would end up discussing something personal that happened to them. They would bring their personal history into the conversation. People in this movie could've done the same thing. They chose to talk about money, like every one of them, and that tells you something both about this specific slice of people in Manhattan and then also something about Manhattan and then also something about the country. I mean, not that anybody would know that that's how it all ended up here, but it was certainly interesting to me, given that they could talk about anything they wanted that everybody basically wanted to talk about money.

CS: That's one of the many layers of the film, the fact that despite the economic problems, people still have money to pay for company and sex from these women. There's also its explorations of being a real girlfriend vs. fake girlfriend - Christine vs. Chelsea. When you went into this, did you have any idea that so many different things would come out of it?
Soderbergh: Well, you're hoping. What's fun about it is you've created a net of a certain size and a certain shape that's designed to catch certain things, but you never know until you're rolling whether you're gonna get what you want or not. What you have to do in a way is let go of the idea of what you want and release yourself to what you get and sort of let it move where it's gonna move and then, the trick is you're collecting this material and then you sit down and you break it all down into pieces and build bins that have different subject matter headings and then I'll start to connect things like, "Oh, that reference in this scene is connected to a reference in this scene. This section of the film is gonna revolve around this idea." Then I'll move them and you sort of just begin to mold it out of what you've got.

The key is to have this sort of basic structure so that people kind of feel like they're moving in a direction and it's not just a free-for-all. At the same time, I'm literally encouraging as we're getting ready to shoot something and I'm saying, for instance, Sasha and Chris Santos, the breakup scene where she comes in and says, "I'm going away." I'll have a conversation with Sasha where I'll say to her, "Under no circumstances are you staying in this apartment tonight and going on this trip. No matter what happens you are leaving this apartment to go on this trip." Then I take Chris aside and I say, "Under no circumstances should you let her go on this trip. Like, do whatever you have to do to keep her from going on this trip." So you've given them their goals. They're in opposition and then in that case, I'm watching to see how long it's gonna take one of them to pop because that's a very polarizing scene for people because it goes on so long. What I like about it is, it sounds real to me. It feels like that circumstance in the sense that it's repetitive. Both of them keep thinking. "If I frame my position in a sentence that's slightly different I'm gonna get a different result." They both keep thinking that and they keep coming back and back and back. They're both sort of using language that you can tell they've heard somewhere else that they've incorporating from a movie or something that somebody said somewhere. Again, they're trying to find a way to unlock this. They're convinced, "I'm gonna say this thing and it's gonna make everything okay." It's just not happening. Eventually, it implodes.

CS: With that scene in particular, was that 20 minutes of straight shooting and then just grabbing a chunk that worked as a whole?
Soderbergh: I think the shot ended up being like five and a half minutes. I think the whole take was probably 10, it continued on from there and then she finally just gets up and goes to the back and says, "I'm going to pack and then I'm leaving." So like I said, I shot it and I thought, "Okay, I know I can make something out of that. I don't know how I'm going to use it, I may fragment it, I may whatever, but I've got enough to build something with."

CS: A lot of people try to make naturalistic movies using improvisation and non-actors rather than a written script. This seems natural but it also seems like every single line could have been written by a good writer. Even so, it's somewhat strange to see two writers credited for a movie that's largely improvised. Did they help work out the structure after you'd finished shooting?
Soderbergh: No, it was really just the three of us kind of sitting down and generating this detailed scene-by-scene breakdown of what we were gonna shoot and what the subjects are in each of the scenes that we want the people to hit. But from that point on, yeah, you're fishing.

CS: Was all of that figured out before you started shooting, or was some of it done while shooting when you realized you had to tie things together?
Soderbergh: No, while we were shooting we didn't add any. We stuck to the outline and we shot in sequence 'cause that's very helpful for the performers to sort of be moving even though I knew when we were shooting it that I was gonna fragment it, which is why I was very conscious before shooting a scene somewhere that I know it's gonna be part of a kind of memory sequence. I'm trying to pick up images that I can use as recurring keystone images that I layer in that you realize, "Oh, she's going upstate. Now I know why in seeing that." You know, stuff like that.

CS: Shooting chronologically probably was important to working with Sasha, but how does that work as far as locations? Except for the UN scenes in "Che," I couldn't think of another movie where you actually shot on location in New York City.
Soderbergh: I did three shots at the beginning of "Full Frontal." (This) was the first time I've really made a New York movie.

CS: So you did it chronologically, shooting at specific locations but without the budget to really block off streets and sidewalks?
Soderbergh: Well, that's the good news and that's why I'm so happy with all the street stuff. The Red camera is so small and really doesn't present like a movie camera, so I could set it up on a tripod and it would be me and somebody sort of standing next to it to kind of block it and then we'd tell Sasha, "Go across the street and walk toward us." Nobody would know this was happening and you'd get a much – first of all, we got this free production value, like these giant street shots, but also, the way people are moving doesn't look like that typical, "Background action!" It has a more naturalistic feel and that's because of our totally stealth, low impact working method. All in, it's about ten people.

CS: So in New York, you can get away with ten people standing around making a movie.
Soderbergh: Oh yeah, and if we'd go out on the street, it'd be just me and two other people and we'd keep everybody else away. Most people, if you saw us on the street you'd go, "Oh, that's a news crew," 'cause we looked like a news crew. The camera looked like a news camera, small tripod and two people standing next to it. You just felt like, "Oh, they must be shooting some exterior shots or something for some news story." It just didn't feel like that. There's no trucks, there's no lights, there's nothing.

CS: A lot of attention has been paid to Sasha's performance and deservedly so, but I want to talk about Chris because he really is in the movie quite a bit, probably 30-40% of the movie. I want to ask how you found and cast him and the decision to spend so much time showing his everyday life as a personal trainer.
Soderbergh: He was a friend. He was training David Levien, the writer who plays David in the movie. So when we were talking about the movie and I said, "I want the character to be a personal trainer. I want them both in the personal service business." He said, "Oh, you should meet Chris. He's that guy." So, I met with Chris in Los Angeles and sort of walked him through what we were gonna do. I mean, that's sort of him. He's a very open, verbal, energetic guy and I thought he'd be great for this.

The trickier part was what in the outline was called Client F, which is David, that was how he was referred to at the time. I was talking to Carmen, the casting director and Greg the producer 'cause I wanted him to be somebody that worked in the entertainment industry. "How do you picture this guy?" I said, "He's like David a little," and both of them said, "Well, why don't we just get David Levien?" I wanted a contrast between the two of them. I wanted there to be something, I wanted him to be a little older, I wanted him to have a certain sense of gravitas. I didn't want him to be a caricature of a Hollywood person. David's a very genuine, sincere person, but also, nothing escapes him. He has a very sort of detailed vision of what's going on around him. You cannot throw bullsh*t past this guy. So I wanted someone that Chelsea would meet and feel like, "Wow, he's so different than Chris." It took a little bit of strong arming to get him to commit to doing it, but in the last scene they have together which is the first scene they meet in the hotel room, when she comes in and is upset, he's so good, he's so still. The way he looks at her and the way he listens to her, I'm telling you, there are a lot of actors it would take you half a day to get them to strip it down to that, the way he's just looking at her and listening. I think she's really good in that scene too where she gets upset. You finally get the sense that there's something going on, that you really see, "Oh, she does have to work to keep this stuff pressed down." So those are the pleasures of working in this way. You see things happen like that in front of you that are unexpected.

CS: I didn't realize that was David, the co-writer of the film, until Sasha told me; I watched the movie twice without realizing it. This is such a strange cast because Brian found Sasha, David found Chris and you have a real critic playing an exaggerated version of a critic.
Soderbergh: Exaggerated?

CS: Well, yeah, I'd say so. The character Glenn plays might be the creepiest movie character I've seen since Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet."
Soderbergh: Really? First of all, that location's fantastic. When Greg and Rob Striem the location manager said – 'cause that wasn't what was scripted at all, it's an apartment – and they said, "Look, this is a sort of left field idea, but we found this furniture store in Brooklyn and you gotta check it out." When I saw the pictures, I went, "That's spectacular." We didn't touch anything. The combination of that and what he's saying is really unnerving.

CS: It kind of reminded me of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in "Punch Drunk Love," how he was running a phone sex operation from a furniture store. It also takes the idea of a casting couch to another level. Having directed Julia Roberts to an Oscar, how did you feel Sasha stood up as an actress? When I spoke to her, she was well aware of the stigma about coming from the adult film world. Do you feel she has what it takes to get past that and go up against other actresses who come from more traditional backgrounds for roles?
Soderbergh: Look, if I had something else that I thought she was good for I wouldn't hesitate to use her again. I think how she's used is really gonna determine whether or not her career moves in this other direction. I don't know how much of a conscious or unconscious stigma there is. I don't know that people care that much. I think it's really gonna depend on her and the choices she makes and how she performs. Porn has become so mainstream that I just don't think people are really thinking, "Oh, I don't want to see that because there's a porn actress in it." The level of traffic would indicate that people really don't have a problem with it. It'll just be interesting.

CS: It's really something you almost can't avoid talking about when interviewing her, which is unfortunate. With other actresses, you don't really ask about their previous jobs of being a waitress or whatever they were before. It never really comes up. But with Sasha, I feel like it will always come up.
Soderbergh: Yeah, but the thing about her--the reason she's such a mold breaker--is her back story and her attitude about the adult industry is just very atypical. She's not the kind of person that normally ends up in that business. The fact that she did it by choice because she felt like, "I have this part of me that's gonna speak. Well, I have two options, I could go work in an office somewhere and then on the weekends go out and try and find somebody who's into the same sh*t I'm into, or I can turn this thing that's inside of me into a business and make money off of it." Those are two choices.

CS: It's pretty amazing actually, even the fact that she's been working on a documentary about her three years in the adult entertainment industry, and she's only 21-years-old.
Soderbergh: Yeah, she's 21. She has a lot of very formative years in front of her. The years of 21 to 24 for me, a lot of stuff happened to me personally that ended up generating a lot of material. It's a crucial period in your life.

CS: Obviously you're very comfortable both working in the studio system and making films independently, you do jump around a lot. The advantages and disadvantages to both are very obvious. I was curious about that because you don't really see a lot of filmmakers who can do that, who can easily jump back and forth from one movie to the next. Is it just something in way your brain works and you can do that?
Soderbergh: Well, I think it's about understanding the business and understanding the place for art in the business. I mean, it's really about analyzing, let's say there's an idea that you're attracted to and you feel could be a movie. Then you've gotta analyze, "Well, what is the audience for this? Who's gonna go see this thing potentially? On what scale should it be executed? If the appropriate scale of execution is disproportionate to how big you think the audience is, can you do it another way? If you can't, should you continue to try and talk someone into doing it or not?" Now, I make mistakes. "The Good German" lost every penny - Warner's lost every penny they spent on that movie. There was a sort of calculated risk. In retrospect, we made an assumption that we would get enough critical support to sort of build the movie out through a platform release. It didn't happen, it just didn't happen. We got crushed and we couldn't get any traction because nobody like it.

CS: But can you separate the artist who wants to make a certain type of movie from the producer/businessman who knows that you have a certain amount a movie needs to make back?
Soderbergh: Well, I look back on that and as a piece of art, that's as close as I've ever gotten to getting what I had in my head. The problem is, look, with $32 million, me, George, Cate, and Toby all working for very, very, very low money to pull it off. I look at it now and if I had a similar thing now, I would say, "If I can't figure out how to make it for $15 million I'm not gonna do it." You can't just keep losing people money. There's sort of an inverse thing happening on the "Ocean's" movies, which is: within the parameters of a big budget movie with stars in it, how weird can I get? What sort of stylistic tricks and loops can I inject in it without totally pissing everybody off? It's fun to see how much of a piece of crazy pop art can I put into this? So that's a long way of saying I think you've just gotta be smart about. What is the idea? Who's it for? How much is it gonna cost to do it properly? On a gut level, do you feel like this has the possibility of returning its investment? You've gotta find this balance of doing stuff that you want to do and acknowledging that this is a very expensive hobby.

CS: The next two movies you're doing are book adaptations, "The Informant" and "Moneyball," working with two actors you've worked with before (Matt Damon and Brad Pitt) albeit as part of an ensemble. Can you talk about those two movies and how you read those books and decided those would be movies you'd want to make?
Soderbergh: We heard the story (for "The Informant") on NPR, got the rights to the book, started working on it - this is 2001, and this would've been Jennifer Foss and Ben Cosgrove, who were running Section A. We picked up the book, I sent it to Mattie, Mattie said, "I'm in." We hired Scott Burns to write the script. It was sitting there waiting for a long time, waiting for a slot for me and for Matt. Again, that's a $22 million movie and we decided at a certain point to make it a comedy, which I think was the best move. It's not "The Insider," it's more like "Citizen Ruth." I think Matt's genuinely hilarious in it, playing a kind of... sort of Willy Loman on acid.

CS: So I'd guess that "Moneyball" is more serious?
Soderbergh: No, it's gonna be funny. I think it's gonna be dramatic, but I think it's gonna be funnier than people expect. That's another situation where I'm injecting a lot of real people playing the roles.

CS: Yeah, I was reading that you were doing some documentary-type stuff for that movie. You mentioned that "Informant" started in 2001, and you seem to be attached to so many different projects that you're working on at any given time.
Soderbergh: Well, I try, as a director... there's only like two movies that I've developed that I haven't made. I like to have a lot of plates spinning, but at a certain point I want to grab that plate and put some food on it. So yeah, I think "A Confederacy of Dunces" and "Human Nature" are the only things that I tried to get going and couldn't.

CS: But in general when you're making a movie, you're always prepping something else?
Soderbergh: Always prepping, yeah.

CS: I wanted to ask about how "Che" did internationally, because I thought it would be a home run in Spanish markets, but I couldn't find any international box office information.
Soderbergh: Yeah, sometimes they don't. I don't know why they're not tracking that. Yeah, we got killed by piracy. We did really, really well in Spain when we opened in September, then after that every Spanish speaking country we went to we got crushed because the DVD had been out for months. It did well in Japan, and it did well in the UK. It hasn't come out in Germany yet. We did so-so in France; France we were disappointed; we thought we'd do better. Yeah, like I said, in Mexico and South America we just got killed. At some point I'm gonna sit down and collect all of it and find out exactly what we did.

CS: At Sundance this year, they were celebrating the 20th anniversary of "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" which to me seems surreal. I'm not sure how it feels to you. Filmmakers, critics and moviegoers often reference Fellini and Cassavetes and movies that generally came out over 20 years ago, but you don't really hear people doing the same thing for movies from the last five years. For instance, "Good Night, And Good Luck" was a great movie, but you don't really hear people today talking about it. I was curious about how you feel about that?
Soderbergh: Yeah, there's so many more movies being made that the burn rate is faster and like you said, things don't stick culturally. They don't stick the way they used to. When people made "Chinatown" that sort of lodged itself into people's consciousness and never went away and I don't know that movies function that way anymore just because of the volume of stuff that's coming at people. You just don't have those kind of benchmarks anymore. There's a benchmark every six days it feels like.

CS: As a critic obviously I see way too many movies, but I was thinking that as someone who studies a lot of older films, I wondered why you thought movies made these days just don't stick with people as much as the films of the '80s, '70s and earlier.
Soderbergh: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't hurt my life, but it's frustrating to think that, like I said, even movies that hit don't have the kind of influence that "The Godfather" had. Like the equivalent big box office hit, it becomes a big box office hit and people talk about the fact that it made all this money, but it doesn't have this cultural impact of something like "The Godfather." Although "Avatar"... Holy sh*t.

CS: Have you actually seen some stuff?
Soderbergh: I've seen some stuff. It's the craziest sh*t ever.

CS: Wow, that's a big recommendation.
Soderbergh: Yeah, that could just negate everything I just said.

The Girlfriend Experience opens in New York and L.A. on Friday, May 22, while continuing its run on HDNet's Video-on-Demand. Look for our exclusive interview with Soderbergh's leading lady, Sasha Grey, sometime next week.

Exclusive: Sasha Grey Talks about The Girlfriend Experience
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon

Before this year, your awareness of adult film star Sasha Grey would likely have outed you as a porn-loving pervert, but thankfully, Steven Soderbergh has made it okay to admire the self-made film star by casting her as the lead in his new movie The Girlfriend Experience. In the movie, Grey plays Chelsea, a high-priced Manhattan escort trying to balance her everyday life with a real boyfriend (Chris Stamos) with her job, which is essentially being paid by various men to be their girlfriend for a limited time.

Made via the same filmmaking techniques Soderbergh used for Bubble, working with non-actors, improvised dialogue and the newest in high-def digital cameras, the results are a far more layered effort than one might suspect. The film spends most of its time following Grey around both as Chelsea, being interviewed and having various lunch meetings, and as her "secret identity" Christine, trying to juggle the difficulties in maintaining a relationship with her desire to be the best in her business. Things get more confusing when she connects with one of her clients and agrees to go away with him for the weekend, something that doesn't bode well with her previously patient and understanding boyfriend. Soderbergh and his cast use this environment to explore diverse subjects, such as the current economical issues, take a couple shots at criticism via the use of real film critic Glenn Kenny as the sleazy "Erotic Connoiseur," as well as capture New York City from a very different perspective, one we rarely get to see.

It's a great role for Grey, who comes across as incredibly mature for someone who only just turned 21 a few months back. Then again, she had already been a huge star in the adult film business since entering it at the age of 18. Considering how few adult film actresses are able to make the transition to real dramatic acting, it's quite a breakthrough, and we're convinced that if anyone will break down the wall between mainstream filmmaking and the world of porn, it'll be Grey. (Bridging that gap, Grey co-starred with James Gunn earlier this year in the funniest episode of his Spike webseries "PG Porn," which you can watch here.)

ComingSoon.net was slightly nervous about sitting down with Grey, because we'd heard how feisty she can be with journalists, having been rather vocal about her disdain towards past interviewers in the past. We actually had quite a pleasant conversation.

ComingSoon.net: I made sure to check your Twitter feed before coming here to make sure you hadn't tweeted "The next journalist to ask me about that, I'm going to kill."
Sasha Grey: (laughs)

CS: I've seen the movie twice including the preview at Sundance, so did Steven just call you directly or go through your agent?
Grey: Brian Koppelman, one of his writers, actually contacted me through MySpace 'cause he and Steven had read an article about me in Los Angeles Magazine, and he said, "Hey, Steven's casting for a new film and we're interested in talking to you about a role." (I said,) "Yeah, okay, I'm not just going to come in and meet you at a café. How am I supposed to really know? So have Steven leave me a voice mail when I get home" and lo and behold, there was a message from Steven and I flip out because I'm a fan, so it was really exciting for me. We didn't meet the same day but within that week's time frame, I met with him at the Warner Bros. studio and had about a 45-minute meeting, that was it. It was a really unorthodox way of casting.

CS: What did he tell you about the movie? Did Brian already have a script he could send you or did he just say that it was with Soderbergh?
Grey: Oh, no, no. I can't recall to the best of my memory, but I know he just left it up to the meeting. I don't think he really said what the movie was about in the Email.

CS: Did Steven have any kind of script or treatment to show you or did he just tell you what he was going for?
Grey: There was no outline or script at the time. I'm sure they were working on one, but they didn't give me one. We just talked about the film and basically that the girl was in a relationship with a guy, but she was also an escort. Ultimately, she thinks she's in control, but at the end of the movie, we know that... (sorry, we're not going to spoil it for ya!)

CS: So he knew what he wanted to do but did he want you to do any research into the character or the escort business?
Grey: The day we met, I asked him "Are there any films on prostitution you want me to watch?" And he said (Godard's) "Vivre sa vie" but nothing else. He was like, "Don't cloud your mind with any other films, 'cause I don't want you to even subconsciously bring those characteristics into this film." He also said to watch "Pierrot le fou," not that it has anything to do with prostitution, it's more about the dynamic between the characters. I actually went home and started Googling "escorting" and "escorts." (laughs) Surprisingly, it's hard to find information, unless you want to buy one... but about two weeks before we shot the film, the casting director Carmen E-mailed Steven and I a bunch of links to escorting blogs and that really gave me an interesting insight into some of these women's lives.

CS: Is it very common for escort to keep a working journal of all their jobs like Chelsea does?
Grey: I think the way she did it was a bit different. The women who have the blogs, I think it's like an anonymous thing, and they just write about random stuff, where Chelsea or Christine went home and actually kept record of everything.

CS: How did Steven get you acclimated to the themes of the film of Christine being the real girlfriend vs. Chelsea as the fake girlfriend? Was a lot of the ways he wanted to differentiate the two characters in the script or outline?
Grey: Not so much. He kind of left that up to me and the rest of the cast, deciding how we wanted to take things and that was largely because the film was improvised. There would sometimes be key points we would have to hit, but whether or not that had to do with specific relationships, I wouldn't necessarily say that's the case.

CS: I was curious about the improv, because there are two writers credited to the screenplay in the end credits. Were they on set throwing out ideas before you started filming that you had to incorporate into your conversations?
Grey: We got an outline the day before we started shooting, so that was what they wrote. I know that Brian was on set a few times and so was David, because David is actually in the film. He played the guy I fall in love with.

CS: I guess he wrote that part of the script.
Grey: (laughs) Actually, Steven talked him into that, like right before we shot.

CS: Where did they find Chris? You only have a few scenes with him but were you aware of what was going on with his side of the story?
Grey: Chris was friends with David Levien, because at one point, maybe two years ago, Chris was actually a personal trainer in New York City, and he and David have known each other for ten years.

CS: Why do you think Chelsea falls for David? It seems like she has a very specific set of rules for the men she "dates" but she clearly throws out all her rules when she meets him.
Grey: Yeah, well I think that has to do with her personology. She sees that and thinks this is a perfect match and falsely translates that into their date, you know? She's hoping and she projects that she wants him to be everything that the book says he is.

CS: Do you know anything about that stuff personally or did Steven have you do any research into it?
Grey: There's like four or five books on this, and I took them home a couple weeks before we started shooting and I looked into it as much as I could and tried to have a general idea of what it was. But it's so dense and so involved because it's over 25 years of research, so I just tried to remember the things that were most important to the character.

CS: Do you know if there are a lot of escorts who use those methods to filter out their clients?
Grey: One of the women Steven and I met with does follow that. She does screen her clients like that. She asks for their birthday, and she says her personal safety has always been fine if she sticks to that, which is odd.

CS: It's especially odd when you see some of your clients over the course of the movie and some are fairly creepy, even if they're okay by the birthdays.
Grey: Yeah, exactly!

CS: Can you talk about some of the guys you ended up working with in those scenes? I saw Glenn Kenny earlier and he had shaved his beard so he looked more like his character.
Grey: Obviously Glenn and Mark Jacobson were two amazing characters just within themselves, not just within the context of the film. One of the guys was kind of creepy on set, and everyone was looking around like "Woah, he's kind of weird," the way he was looking at everybody, but he was the one exception. Everybody else was really personable and everybody got along.

CS: What did Steven tell the people who you did scenes with in terms of them knowing what was going on, since you'd obviously been involved in the process the whole time and they just came in for a day or two? Did Steven give Mark Jacobson questions to ask during your interview?
Grey: Yeah, there'd be a few keypoints that he'd want us to hit and be sure to put that in the scene, but everything else was kind of up to us, and that was a big challenge carrying the improvisation with non-actors, because they don't know how to keep that momentum going. But I think that's also what's unique about this style of shooting, that's why Steven wanted to approach it in this way. That's the beauty in it, but meeting some of these guys was so funny, because like the diaper guy, the conversation he's having on the phone is very similar to a conversation he was telling us he had earlier that morning.

CS: When you improvise a movie, it can go one of two ways. It can sound really natural but it could also sound forced. This sounds really natural, but I can definitely see a good writer writing this dialogue. Did he stop rolling at any point and feed you any lines?
Grey: No. We did maybe four takes tops per scene and that was it.

CS: Did Mark write the original New Yorker article about escorts that inspired Steven to explore this?
Grey: No, Mark wrote an article on... I don't think it was Ashlee Dupree but I think it was another girl right before Ashlee, around the same timeframe.

CS: He did mention at Sundance that one of the reasons he casts you was that he thought you'd be more comfortable with doing nudity, but in this movie, there's no sex in the movie at all, there's a little bit of nudity, but it's very innocuous. Was that him just preparing for doing that and then he decided not to have any of that in the movie?
Grey: I don't know. You'd have to ask him that, but going into the initial meeting with him, I just assumed I'd be naked, and then when we got the outline the day before we started shooting, it said "Sex Scene with Client So-and-So" and "Sex Scene with This" but I think that... just speaking off of my intuition, I think he decided he wasn't going to do that, at least a few weeks before we started shooting. But you'd have to ask him.

CS: There are obviously a number of shots at critics in this film including Glenn's review of Chelsea, which isn't very nice at all and it makes him seem much meaner than he really is. I was curious about some of the lines like the one about journalists being intrusive, was that all from you?
Grey: Part of it was from me and I think the intrusive part was more Chelsea. I've been asked all day, "So what are the similarities? You guys are a lot a like, right?" and I'm like, "No, not really."

CS: You mean that people who've just met you think that?
Grey: Yeah, like the one thing I would say was similar was the encounters with the journalists, because Chelsea or Christine is a very paranoid person. We see her buying pre-paid phones, she doesn't take her ID or any personal information on her dates, so that kind of translates into the meeting with the journalist where she's like, "Well, I dunno, you can give me up to the police." She doesn't know what is going on and she doesn't know what his true intentions are whereas me, I've just been burned by the media a few times (laughs) so sometimes I get defensive. So yeah, I definitely use a little bit of that frustration (laughs)... so it was a little cathartic for me.

CS: There's a lot in the movie about separating the real person (Christine) from the made-up one (Chelsea), so how do you feel about people seeing this movie and thinking, "Okay, she's just playing herself." Do you think that's just not the case?
Grey: Yeah, I think people think they know me from my adult films and they go in with a preconceived bias of "That's just Sasha Grey" because they can't forget watching me having sex, you know what I mean? (laughs) But the one thing I would say, if I was playing Devil's Advocate, is that Steven did want me to bring my personality and my confidence into the film, while at the same time creating this character. Trying to fuse the two together and being as natural as one can be in front of the camera, since it creates an interesting dynamic and for lack of a better word--interesting is an understatement--but it creates a very interesting film because it is so experimental.

CS: I think a lot of people who see this might not even be aware of your previous work or know that the Erotic Connoiseur is a real film critic, etc.
Grey: Going back to what you said. Robert De Niro has a thick New York accent, so are you going to watch him in "Goodfellas" and then watch him in "Casino" and say, "Oh, I'm just watching Robert De Niro"?

CS: The problem with that example is that Robert De Niro is one of those actors who just basically has this thing he does, and you can never separate his roles from being De Niro.
Grey: I think moreso now maybe. Okay, let's choose a more recent example of someone like Edward Norton, because his affect or the way he speaks may be the same in one film doesn't mean that he's just playing himself just because he sounds the same or looks the same.

CS: I'm really curious to ask Steven if he could ever imagine making this movie with someone like Julia Roberts, if it would even remotely be the same movie.
Grey: (laughs)

CS: I was also curious about shooting in New York, because Steven hasn't really shot here very much. Was he closing down streets and stuff like that?
Grey: No it was total Cassavetes style, just put up a sign "If you walk by here, you might be filmed" (laughs) so it was pretty cool.

CS: Did anyone see you on the street and recognize you while you were shooting?
Grey: Yeah, I actually saw a few friends like walking down the street and they were like, "Why are you in New York?" (laughs) in between takes, so that was pretty funny, but usually, I'd get the double take. People wouldn't actually say anything.

CS: Ultimately, what was the experience like going from doing adult movies to doing your first mainstream movie--I'm not sure what the proper term would be--with Steven Soderbergh, especially since he was working in a different style than he normally does? Are you going to look for other movie experiences like this one or do you want to go out and create a different character?
Grey: I would definitely love the opportunity to play another character maybe in more of a traditional sense whereas in "The Girlfriend Experience," it was very liberating as an actor to not having to hit your mark or worrying about running into a light when you're in the middle of a scene, but at the same time, having the opportunity to just do a traditional film would also be fun as well.

CS: I was reading something about you making a documentary about your life; is that true?
Grey: Yeah, I started it when I was 18 and I'm 21 now. I'm doing it with somebody else, and I'm actually trying to figure out if we're going to extend it past 21, because time flew, and I feel like there are a lot of moments that we kind of missed I would say, just because I don't have a camera with me all the time. That I'm still working on.

CS: Obviously, people write autobiographies when they're much older, but I don't think anyone's ever done a self-documentary at such a young age. Do you have a lot of footage right now that you'd eventually have to go through and edit together?
Grey: Yeah, we have an editor. The thing is I did this article... I was only in the industry for maybe about two months and I did this article for the Los Angeles Magazine--actually the one Steven and Brian read--and the guy followed me for three months, but he did a very piss-poor job and flaked out on me all the time, but it kind of gave me the inspiration to "Well, what if I did that and what if I started carrying a camera around?" I did get a lot of B-roll type stuff, which I think will fit pretty well in the documentary, because there are portions that are more relaxed in natural environments, more like a talking heads type scene where I'm just speaking to the camera or speaking to the person asking me the questions. I think finding a way to take in some of that B-roll footage that I took from very early on even up until now.

CS: Are you done in the adult entertainment industry now or still making movies?
Grey: I want to do both, I'm pretty optimistic.

CS: It's strange that there aren't more actresses from that realm who jump over. There are obviously a few who'll come over and do small roles in movies like Katie Morgan in Kevin Smith's latest, but you'd think they would be more interested in that. Why don't you think it happens more?
Grey: Well, I think you're either talented or you're not and people will see that. The second thing is that obviously the stigma that comes with being in the adult industry, that's always going to be a challenge for somebody coming from adult into the quote-unquote mainstream world.

CS: I don't know how hard it is to break into the adult industry, especially with anyone being able to get a camera and post stuff on the internet, but it seems a lot harder to make it in the regular film world. Have you gone through the process of going to auditions and trying to get work that way?
Grey: After I shot the film, I did a couple auditions, even films I knew that even if I got the part, I wouldn't want to do them (laughs) just for the sake of practice, you know? Because after the film comes out and everybody sees it, I'll probably try to get an agent after it.

CS: You'll have to have a separate agent to do that?
Grey: I am my own agent in adult. I have my own agency, but I'm the sole client right now, and then I have a wonderful manager sitting right behind you, so she kind of does it all right now.

CS: Do you have any idea if you'll be doing more PG Porn with James Gunn? He seems rather fixated with you, since he's had your picture as his Twitter avatar since doing that.
Grey: He's hilarious, man. Yeah, if they ask me to do it, of course I'll do another one. It was fun.

CS: Was that fully scripted?
Grey: Yeah, that was scripted, but it's funny because towards the end of the day, he would go off and just riff and he would say the end line a few different ways because they didn't know if Spike would allow them to say certain things. So he would go off and he'd just be riffing and that was actually a challenge for me since I feel my stronghold is in dramatic acting and comedy for me was a bit of a challenge, but it was fun, because he's so quick, he's so on point, and that's somebody you can definitely learn from.

You can see Grey in Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, opening in select cities on Friday, May 22.

Director Soderbergh uses nonactors for latest film

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With a cast of nonactors led by a porn star, director Steven Soderbergh describes his new low-budget film "The Girlfriend Experience" as a "fictionalized documentary" -- a style he now plans to bring to Hollywood.

"The Girlfriend Experience," due for release in some U.S. theaters Friday, follows an upscale Manhattan call girl who provides more than just sex; she offers clients a complete romantic relationship experience, playing their girlfriend.

The call girl is played by Sasha Grey, 21, an award-winning actress who has appeared in more than 80 porn films, while the other 38 cast members are all nonactors, including personal trainer Chris Santos, who plays Grey's boyfriend in the film.

"It's kind of like a fictionalized documentary because all the people in the film do those jobs that they're doing in the film. Like the guy at the prepaid phone store is the guy at the prepaid phone store," Soderbergh told Reuters in an interview.

"It really makes you analyze how much we buy into this construct of what acting is because when you see someone who's obviously not acting, it's really different. It's kind of startling," he said.

The Oscar-winning director said he had a very detailed scene-by-scene treatment for the film, but no script. The cast were given a goal for each scene, which they then improvised.

Known for experimental methods with films like 2008's epic "Che" and his 1989 feature debut "Sex, Lies and Videotape," Soderbergh plans to cast up to 60 percent of his next Hollywood studio film "Moneyball," starring Brad Pitt, with nonactors.

"'Moneyball' for me is going to be the culmination of this thing that we've been messing with for 10 years of fusing real people into the world of a movie," said Soderbergh.

"I'm ... trying to do something that's just going to be different, that's going to feel more like life than a movie."

"SENSE OF COMMAND"

Soderbergh, who won a best director Oscar in 2001 for "Traffic," said he cast Grey after reading a profile of her in Los Angeles Magazine in 2006.

"I needed someone who, in sexual situations, felt a complete sense of command," he said. "That's hard to fake."

The director said the idea for the film came after he met with screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan in 2006 and his attention was drawn to a woman in the bar, who he was told was a "GfE" or "girlfriend experience" call girl.

"I didn't know what this acronym stood for so (Koppelman and Levien) explained to me this form of super high-end escort and I was really fascinated by this idea that there was a surcharge for intimacy," he said.

He said several escorts who offered this particular service were interviewed as research for the film.

The Magnolia Pictures movie, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, has received generally positive reviews with Variety calling it an "arthouse gem."

Made for $1.7 million, "The Girlfriend Experience" is the second of six low-budget films that Soderbergh signed a deal with Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment to make. The first film made as part of the deal was 2005's "Bubble."

Soderbergh said he will begin filming "Moneyball," due for release in 2011, in the next few months. The film follows Oakland A's baseball team general manager Billy Beane and his bid to use a computer generated analysis to draft players.

The director said that among the nonactors in the film will be many of the real players from that team. "The reason I think it will work is that they are playing themselves and there's really no wrong answer there," he said.

Quote from: MacGuffin on May 19, 2009, 10:15:57 AM
He said several escorts who offered this particular service were interviewed as research for the film.

Ha, yeah... "Interviewed".

This is my favorite film of the year (so far). Either 2009 is shaping up to be the next 1999 or, sadly, I'm the new Peter Travers of the board who loves everything he sees... :yabbse-undecided:

(JB I think you'll really dig it).

its good, i actually started to write a review of it and then gave up. but i recommend it.

^What an endorsement.

Soderbergh is one of those filmmakers who I always find interesting. The final product is usually hit or miss. I'm hoping this one is the former.

it's the latter. sorry cbrad!

yeah.. it's great visually, but the underlying message is either just really vague or way too simple for an 80 minute movie. i love soderbergh, though, and i don't think he's bullshitting necessarily... a really good analysis/review might make me want to give it another chance.

I'm going to try and see it tomorrow.

God, I love Soderbergh.

He may not hit it out of the park, but he'll go down trying.

I find filmmakers like Soderbergh and Van Sant the most refreshing because they stay busy and are always putting out quality work. This film is no exception. The lack of narrative may be a little off-putting, but it's so beautiful to look at. I think this is Soderbergh's prettiest film to date. He acted as his own DP and I think that's how he works best (visually at least)


Spoilers.

I did like the free-flowing narrative. I thought it worked for this type of film. It abandons the basic flow of a regular film but clues us in through narration and O.C dialogue. Everything from the acting and the writing is very loose. It makes it feel very genuine and organic. A lot of the techniques Soderbergh uses is simple point and shoot. He lets his actors act and I'm sure improvise as they see fit. Not very many cuts. I liked that.

If you watch it, view it more as a short film (it's only like 77 minutes long) instead of a whole film and I think you're enjoyment of it will increase ten fold.

Sasha Grey is basically playing herself but she exudes a certain type of sexiness and confidence that I don't think any other actress could have pulled off. She has sex for a living but she never comes off as sleazy or trashy. She's very classy and upperclass and that was very appealing to me. The sex always took a backseat to an actual girlfriend experience. Sometimes sex wasn't even had and men were paying her more for the companionship than any sort of intimate relationship and she pulls it off very well. When she's with these men she really makes it seem like she cares for them even though it's really just a job. As a person, she's very ambitious and seems to realize that this isn't a job that lasts forever and she puts a lot of effort into other things.

I need to put more emphasis on how fucking beautiful this movie is.

maybe i should start watching movies w/you. i did not care for this. and visuals looked like me fartin off with my Sony handycam back in the day.

you, me, this & Wendy vs. Chico Blood & Seagal's Pistol Whipped  :?:

Chicano Blood would beat the shit out of Girlfriend Experience, but GE could outsmart Chicano Blood.

Chicano Blood would also rape Wendy but Lucy would steal its heart.

HAH!

I'm with Stefen and pic on this. It's visually stunning not only in HD, but the composition of shots. I liked it, but didn't love it. Soderbergh does right by the film in the editing and letting scenes play out. The film got better as it did start going more in Christine's story. We got a good sense of Chelsea right off the bat, especially when she says this great line, "If they wanted you to be yourself, they wouldn't be paying you." But when Christine was stood up, got the bad review and generally having her bad day, it made her human and vulnerable, like how the interviewer wanted to see her past that steel door she had up. I liked the juxaposition between Christine's (the real side) and Chelsea's (the business side) lives. If the film included more of that and less guys on the plane and talk of the economy and the gym, it would have made me like it more. And now I'm curious about the alternate cut included on the DVD to see what was changed around.

anyone listened to the commentary?

Quote from: I Love a Magician on October 22, 2009, 01:14:14 AM
anyone listened to the commentary?

I did. It isn't as insightful as Soderbergh's other tracks (no talk of the cinematography), but Grey is no wall flower to the track either. She contributes a lot about how she went about the character (talking with escorts; her acting process) and her acting choices (being hidden and playing it low key in the break-up scene, for example).

Good interview here (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6885684.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1063710) with Soderbergh. Here's a particularly funny bit:

"[Soderbergh] rejects the idea that with Grey he has resorted to stunt casting, insisting that the pornification of mainstream culture is so complete that it hardly matters.

For example? He confesses to being quite the consumer. In fact, he says, he has been known to storm out of hotels if they don't offer pay-per-view porn. "I was in a hotel in Anaheim about five years ago, and after checking in I literally went down to the front desk and said, 'I don't understand, there's no pay-per-view porn!' I called my producer and said, 'I can't take this, I'm checking out'. And I went to the hotel across the road. I think it should be in the bill of rights — when you're travelling, access to pornography should be the number three thing on the list after clean towels and 24-hour room service." He rolls his eyes upwards, to indicate the hotel rooms above, and sighs, "They don't have it here!"

I liked it. The idea of presenting this society in which everything is a business transaction sounds cliche until you actually see it and realize this horrible aspect of our culture is never exposed in movies in such a direct way. If Soderbergh would take a little more time to make these films he might have gone fully into this aspect of the story with more refinement and we could be talking about some sort of parallel between this and something like L'Eclisse, a film where the single most emotional scene takes place in a stock broker's hysteria. However, the film was quickly planned and made, and the result is good, although as usual wwith Soderbergh, it left me feeling a little cold. The only filmof his that has had any kind of true emotional impact on me is Che.

Sasha and the rest of the cast are wonderful, and I do hope she would get more jobs like this from time to time, because she seems smart enough to pull of some great performances with the right people (she certainly seems smarter than A LOT of the supposedly serious actress out there).