Soderbergh Replacing Malick on Che
Source: Variety
Steven Soderbergh will replace Terrence Malick as the director of Che, the film about Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara that will star Benicio Del Toro, reports Variety. Focus Features is in early talks to distribute the project.
Soderbergh has committed to begin production in South America in August 2005, and he will supervise the writing of a new script. The story of Che, a handsome and charismatic physician killed while still a young man, has attracted attention from many filmmakers over the years.
The helming change resulted after Malick abruptly dropped his plan to shoot Che this summer and instead committed to direct a film he'd been developing simultaneously, Colin Farrell starrer The New World, for New Line.
The producers are hoping that Javier Bardem, Benjamin Bratt, Ryan Gosling and Franka Potente will remain involved if their schedules allow them to be in South America next year. That quartet had been set to play Guevara's key group of revolutionaries.
:multi:
JB YOU DIRTY FUCKING COMMIE ! !
oh, and great news
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Well he was a flawed man... I hope they show that side of him. But the Soderbergh direction and script involvement certainly makes me happy.
yeah soderberg is a great choice for this project
In the words of Cartman, "Hooray!"
Yeah, this was definitely coming. Like Terence Fuckin' Malick was gonna make back-to-back movies. Sad thing is, I don't expect the other one to go forward and we'll have to wait another decade.
He was the original person supposed to direct this before Malick came.... I dont know why he decided not to do it in the first place... but its good that he is back
I'm reading John Lee Anderson's "Che" biography right now, and if Soderbergh uses half the stuff in there, a third of it even, this could be one of the greatest movies ever. There's even potential for awesome black comedy, and great guerrilla warfare sequences. He has to do the battle at Santa Clara in particular. Che's 340 rebels beat Batista's 5,000 soldiers. So Awsome. And Del Toro will own.
I know absolutely nothing about this.
Explain to me why Che Guevara isn't a terrorist.
Again, I know nothing about this -- please no angry rants.
he was a terrorist... but people are dumb and nobody knows what the hell they admire about them
everyone uses the CHE tshirt as if they were Mickey Mouse tshirts...
Quote from: RonenI know absolutely nothing about this.
Explain to me why Che Guevara isn't a terrorist.
Again, I know nothing about this -- please no angry rants.
it was good terrorism,. it wasn't against bush so don't feel threatened.
my advice to u is to NOT get ur information about historical figures from an internet message board.
P is right. Read the aforementioned John Lee Anderson's "Che."
...but i personally prefer to think of che as a guerrilla warrior rather than a terrorist, who was handicapped by his iron convictions, which were thankfully shaken somewhat when Russia got involved and he saw that the utopian communist society was not what he'd imagined. unfortunately, che was not one to admit he was wrong, so he kept on fighting for what he originally believed to be humane, despite his waning confidence in fidel in the world around him, which was both brave and stupid, and led to his death fighting for, what were at this point practically imaginary ideals, in bolivia. but of course, he looks so good in that picture, so his pigheadedness becomes doggedness (a word?) and his refusal to give up the utopian ideal becomes endearing and empowering, rather than childish. Oh, I love Che.
And as for all those murders...well, Raoul Castro was a heck of a lot worse, and if you look at Che's killings, they did tend to have military or political motivation...not a justification for Che, but, from his point of view and that of the revolution, they were necessary, rather than Raoul's obvious enjoyment of execution (he did that whole line 'em up in front of a ditch, shoot, bulldoze routine)
Here, then, since it's clearly necessary, is an exhaustive historical perspective on the man, the myth, the anti-capitalist logo which has made somebody a pantsload of money, Che.
Che Guevara was a man who had wild coming-of-age adventures on a cross-country motorcycle trip. Then he did... something. And then Steven Soderbergh made a movie about him.
Public schools work!
I have mixed feelings about Che, myself. It's very complicated for me to have a clear opinion about him and most of his attitudes, simply because I can never agree with anything that results on the death of whoever. Be it islamic terrorism or the invasion of Iraq by that Texas Ranger guy who happens to be called Walker. That said, I'd love to see a movie directed by Soderbergh about a personality as complex as Che Guevara and learn a bit more about him.
Guerrilla is Next for Soderbergh
Source: Production Weekly December 9, 2005
Steven Soderbergh will next director Guerrilla, a biopic about Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara that will star Benjamin Bratt, reports Production Weekly.
Born in 1928, Ernesto "Che" Guevara first trained as a doctor before becoming Fidel Castro's chief lieutenant. In 1967, he was captured and executed by Bolivian forces.
Guerrilla is set to begin production January 21 in New York, with locations in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
Soderbergh is also scheduled to helm Life Interrupted, the monologue that Spalding Gray was working on when he died in the early winter of 2004.
This is a real difficult subject for me because my family came from Cuba in the 60's, barely, after my grandfather managed to avoid being hunted down by idealists like Che for simply doubting Communism. How Communism, which has killed millions more innocent people than even nazism did, manages to get a free pass in our popular culture really boggles my mind. No one would wear a t-shirt or make a glorifying movie featuring one of Hitler's right-hand guys and expect to be taken seriously. If this film is a real biography and not just another Rebel Without a Cause-style hero-worshipping porn film about Che, then I might see it. But I wouldn't expect a film that was honest about Che could even get funding in Hollywood, frankly.
Was there no honesty in The Motorcycle Diaries?
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Quote from: killafilm on January 21, 2006, 02:32:08 PM
Was there no honesty in The Motorcycle Diaries?
not much.
I'm going to have to disagree.
you're going to have to read more than one book on what became of che guevara.
That's what became of him. I think his view of the world as portrayed in M. Diaries is a very pure and honest feeling. One of care for other people, HIS people. I don't think that the movies lack of his later life takes away from the beauty of seeing ones country and finding a feeling belongingness, love, sorrow, anger, what have you...
It certainly made me want to see more of America.
New movie on Che Guevara's life films at UN
With little hoopla, the United Nations has hosted its second-ever film production, serving as a backdrop for parts of a coming epic about Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara starring Latin heart-throb Benicio Del Toro.
Scenes for the film "Che," expected to be released later this year, were filmed at the world body's New York headquarters last weekend, making it only the second movie to be shot inside the U.N. compound since it was built in 1952, U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday.
"Che" is being directed by Steven Soderbergh, whose previous works include "Ocean's Eleven" and "Sex, Lies, and Videotape."
Ernesto Che Guevara was Cuban leader Fidel Castro's right-hand man during the revolution that brought Castro to power in 1959.
He later traveled to the United Nations -- a visit immortalized in the film -- before being killed in Bolivia in October 1967 while attempting to foment revolution there.
Director Sidney Pollack's "The Interpreter" starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn was the first film to be shot at the United Nations, filmed there over 18 weekends in 2004 and released last year.
Before then, the United Nations had a history of refusing to allow the building to be used for commercial purposes, turning away even Alfred Hitchcock's request to film in the delegates' lounge for the 1959 "North by Northwest."
Among his other films, the popular Del Toro plays the role of hard-working cop Javier Rodriguez in "Traffic" and Dr. Gonzo in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 26, 2006, 05:11:09 PM
Scenes for the film "Che," expected to be released later this year
Bubble, Good German, Che all 2006?!? who does he think he is, Ryan Adams?
Quote from: modage on January 26, 2006, 06:21:08 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 26, 2006, 05:11:09 PM
Scenes for the film "Che," expected to be released later this year
Bubble, Good German, Che all 2006?!? who does he think he is, Ryan Adams?
i'm sure soderbergh could write better songs than ryan adams
Ormond Cast in Soderbergh's Che
Source: Variety January 29, 2006
Julia Ormond has been cast in Steven Soderbergh's Che, about the Latin American political revolutionary. Ormond will play a female reporter in the film, which is currently shooting in New York City.
Ormond recently wrapped David Lynch's Inland Empire. Her credits include Sabrina and Legends of the Fall.
Soderbergh turns a Che double play
Del Toro set to play revolutionary in Guevara pics
Source: Variety
Steven Soderbergh is finally ready to make his long-gestating biopic of Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara.
And the film's backers are betting that Guevara, who continues to sell books and T-shirts almost 40 years after his execution in Bolivia, has an aura large enough to sustain two films.
Soderbergh will shoot them back to back, using mostly Spanish dialogue. Production begins next May in Mexico and other South American locations.
Benicio Del Toro will play Guevara, and Javier Bardem, Franka Potente and Benjamin Bratt are in talks to play key roles. Producer is Laura Bickford, who began working on the project with Del Toro and Soderbergh right after they made "Traffic" together.
Lead financier is Paris-based Wild Bunch, which also hung in through twists and turns that included Terrence Malick committing to direct and then dropping out to make "The New World" in 2004. Wild Bunch will co-finance and shop the pictures at AFM.
The films will be made as Spanish co-productions, with Spain-based Morena Films and broadcaster Telecinco in final talks to be co-producers. Combined budget for the pic pair is less than $70 million. Talks are under way with domestic distributors.
Both films pick up after the formative Guevara years captured in the Walter Salles-directed "The Motorcycle Diaries" in 2004.
First film, "The Argentine," begins as Che and a band of Cuban exiles (led by Fidel Castro) reach the Cuban shore from Mexico in 1956. Within two years, they mobilized popular support and an army and toppled the U.S.-friendly regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista.
The second film, "Guerrilla," begins with Che's trip to New York, where he spoke at the United Nations in 1964 and was celebrated in society circles.
Soderbergh has already shot that opening footage with Del Toro and Julia Ormond, who plays TV journo Lisa Howard. Journalist acted as an informal intermediary between the Kennedy White House and Cuba.
Guevara disappeared into the jungles of South America. When he tried to use Bolivia as the catalyst for more revolution, he was captured and executed.
Both scripts were written by Peter Buchman, who, with Del Toro, has been working with a translator to put the dialogue into Spanish.
Filmmakers also have been shooting a companion documentary while researching the film, including interviews with many of those who fought alongside Guevara in Cuba and in Bolivia.
Soderbergh recently completed Europe-set WWII film "The Good German."
Buchman scripted one of the unmade Alexander the Great pictures and most recently wrote the Fox fantasy film "Eragon" and the currently casting "The Piano Tuner" at Focus.
Along with "Diaries," Guevara was the subject of another recent pic, 2005's "Che Guevara," directed by Josh Evans.
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THE BLOODY TRUTH ABOUT CHE
Source: Page Six
SOME historians are already concerned about "Che," the movie Steven Soderbergh is directing with Benicio Del Toro starring as the Communist revolutionary. Soderbergh seems intent on portraying Ernesto "Che" Guevara as a hero, who battled alongside Fidel Castro to free Cuba from a corrupt imperialist government, and then was martyred by the CIA. Soderbergh will no doubt gloss over the six months after Castro seized power in 1959, when Che was in charge of La Cabana fortress, overseeing the trial and execution of 600 political prisoners. "To witness such butchery is a trauma that will accompany me to my grave," recalled José Vilasuso, a lawyer who worked under Che. "The walls of that medieval castle received the echoes of the rhythmic footstep of the squad, the clicking of the rifles . . . the sorry howling of the dying . . . the macabre silence . . . " Soderbergh had no comment.
"B" Script Review for The Argentine from Latino Review...
SPOILERS
http://www.latinoreview.com/scriptreview.php?id=45
"D" Script Review for Guerilla from Latino Review...
SPOILERS
http://www.latinoreview.com/scriptreview.php?id=46
Soderbergh seeing Red for 4K shoots
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Director Steven Soderbergh is planning to shoot "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla" using prototype Red One 4K digital-cinematography cameras.
The films, starring Benicio Del Toro, are a two-part biopic on revolutionary Che Guevara. Laura Bickford and Laura Bickford Prods., Telecinco and Wild Bunch produce.
About 15 months ago, Red said that it was developing the Red One camera with 4K capabilities at a price of $17,500 for the basic camera. That combination generated a lot of attention in the production community.
According to Red, Soderbergh has been testing the cameras in the Los Angeles area, and plans call for the features to be shot in 4K using the Redcode Raw system. The company also said that the prototypes are two generations newer than the ones used by director Peter Jackson to create "Crossing the Line," a short that was screened in the spring at the Red booth during the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.
Production is slated to begin this month on location in Spain and Puerto Rico.
Sandino Moreno joins 'Che' pics
Soderbergh projects start to shoot July 25
Source: Variety
MADRID — Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno, Oscar-nommed for "Maria Full of Grace," has been added to the cast of Steven Soderbergh's two film project about Latin American revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, which begins shooting July 25 in Spain.
Entitled "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla," the two Spanish language-pics have a combined budget of around $70 million. Benicio del Toro toplines as "Che."
Other thesps attached include Julia Ormond, Germany's Franka Potente and Cuban Jorge Perugorria, as well as Spanish actors Jordi Molla, Oscar Jaenada, Eduard Fernandez and Ruben Ochandiano.
U.S.-based Guerrilla has teamed with Spanish production houses Telecinco Cinema and Morena Films to co-produce. Wild Bunch handles international sales.
The Spanish partners contribute 25% of total budget, according to Alvaro Augustin, CEO of Telecinco Cinema, the recently renamed film production division of broadcaster Telecinco.
Shooting begins in Spain's central Castille La Mancha region and will continue in other locations in Madrid and Andalusia for nine weeks.
After putting up majority financing for the $28.8 million Viggo Mortensen starring swashbuckler "Alatriste," a blockbuster in Spain, and Guillermo del Toro's $18.9 million Oscar winner fantasy "Pan's Labyrinth," Telecinco maintains its film ambitions, betting on high-profile, internationally targeted productions.
"We always want to be in big projects that shoot in Spain, and this is an excellent opportunity, which follows up on our previous successful productions," Augustin explained to Daily Variety.
Bichir tied to star in Castro films
Actor set for 'Guerilla,' 'Argentine'
Source: Variety
Mexican thesp Demian Bichir is set to co-star as Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh's upcoming films "The Guerrilla" and "The Argentine," opposite Benicio Del Toro's Che Guevara.
The actor joins Catalina Sandino Moreno, Julia Ormond, Germany's Franka Potente, Cuban Jorge Perugorria and Spanish actors Jordi Molla, Oscar Jaenada, Eduard Fernandez and Ruben Ochandiano.
Soderbergh began shooting the two-flm project about Latin American revolutionary Guevara earlier this summer in Spain.
The two Spanish-language pics have a combined budget of around $70 million with U.S.-based Guerrilla teaming with Spanish production houses Telecinco Cinema and Morena Films to co-produce. Wild Bunch handles international sales.
Bichir starred opposite Salma Hayek in "Time of the Butterflies" for Showtime. He's also in the upcoming "Fuera del Cielo" (Beyond the Sky) and "Enemigos Intimos," (Intimate Enemies) and "American Visa."
Source: Hollywood Elsewhere
This shot of Benicio in the bush was taken during the filming of Guerilla, the second of two Steven Soderbergh films about the definitive up and down chapters in the life of Che Guevara, near the Spanish town of San Pablo de Buceite, which was chosen to sub for Bolivia. The first film, The Argentine (which I feel is the better of the two, by which I mean the more rousing and engaging), is now lensing in Puerto Rico.
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Benicio Looks Forward To 'Demented' Journey As Iconic Revolutionary Che Guevara
Source: MTV
Are you a disaffected college student? A semi-educated poser? Chances are you've heard of Che Guevara, but that you know him more for being the ubiquitous t-shirt guy than for anything he actually believed or did.
That's about to change, insisted Benicio Del Toro. The 40-year-old thesp is set to star in not one, but two films centering on the legendary Marxist revolutionary with director Steven Soderbergh.
"Not many people know much about him, especially here - they know about him but they don't know a lot about him," the Oscar winner told MTV News, no doubt referencing Che's iconic image. "[But] being Latin American, the history is important to me. It's about going and doing justice to [that] history." Both movies, "Guerrilla" and "The Argentine," will be shot in Spanish. It's an authentic touch, Del Toro said, that's indicative of their quest for accuracy.
"I don't want to invent stuff," he declared. "In other movies you can say, well, we'll have the character do this and that. It's harder [this] way. It's difficult but it's interesting. "
In re-teaming with Soderbergh (the pair both won Academy Awards for their work together on "Traffic"), Del Toro thinks he's got the perfect companion for this intense historical journey.
"We're in good hands," he said smiling. "It'll be a demented, hard fun."
both che and jesus christ are debating over whos image got tarnished more. kurt cobain stays silent
I love this:
"On the set I told the actors that I'm not going to be able to take care of you. I'm just trying to get this movie shot on schedule. And they formed a support group to survive it."
- SS
Is it odd or typical of Cannes to give the Crystal Skull a standing ovation and then for The Argentine/Geurilla to be criticised for not being dramatic enough.
Soderbergh challenges Cannes with epic Che tale
Unless it is one of his "Ocean's Eleven" casino romps, Steven Soderbergh never makes things easy for an audience.
With his epic film biography of Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Soderbergh defiantly has made the story he wanted to see, one that will prove a very tough sell to some audiences.
The two-part saga runs four hours, 30 minutes. It is almost entirely in Spanish, a particular challenge for U.S. viewers who dislike subtitles. It dispenses with many cliches of the biopic, offering virtually no insight into the origin of Che's brand of humanism, instead presenting impressionistic glimpses of Che's idealism in action during the Cuban revolution and his attempt to foment a similar transformation in Bolivia.
Soderbergh was prepared for reporters' skepticism on all fronts at a Cannes news conference Thursday.
On shooting in Spanish:
"You can't make a film with any level of credibility in this case unless it's in Spanish," Soderbergh said. "I hope we're reaching a time where you go make a movie in another culture, that you shoot in the language of that culture. I'm hoping the days of that sort of specific brand of cultural imperialism have ended."
On the length:
"Just the further you get into it, it felt like if you're going to have context, then it's just going to have to be a certain size," Soderbergh said.
On the unconventional structure:
"I find it hilarious that most of the stuff being written about movies is how conventional they are, and then you have people ... upset that something's not conventional," Soderbergh said. "The bottom line is we're just trying to give you a sense of what it was like to hang out around this person. That's really it. And the scenes were chosen strictly on the basis of, 'Yeah, what does that tell us about his character?'"
Starring Benicio Del Toro, the Oscar-winning co-star of Soderbergh's "Traffic," as Guevara, the two films were shot as "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla." The cast includes Franka Potente, Catalina Sandino Moreno and Demian Bichir as Fidel Castro. Soderbergh buddy Matt Damon, part of the star-studded "Ocean's Eleven" ensemble, makes a brief appearance.
"The Argentine" juxtaposes Guevara and Castro's late 1950s triumph in Cuba with flashbacks to their early planning days in Mexico and Che's visit to New York City in the mid-1960s, when he was greeted with condemnation and death threats over the Castro regime's iron-fisted rule.
"Guerrilla" follows the downfall of Guevara as his grass-roots campaign in Bolivia degenerates into a handful of scraggly, starving rebels on the run from vastly superior government forces in the jungle.
Che was executed in Bolivia in 1967. Much of the world now has only a superficial grasp of Che as a symbol of revolution from T-shirts and posters depicting his boldly smiling face.
While it may be hard to persuade audiences to see it a first time, the story requires repeated viewings to really appreciate it, said Del Toro, also a producer on the project.
"It reminds me of the painter who did a portrait of this lady, and when he gave it to the lady, the lady said, `That portrait doesn't look anything like me.' And the painter said, 'Oh, it will,'" Del Toro said. "I really think that eventually, those people, when they see the movie for the third time, they'll start seeing things, they'll start seeing dimensions and angles, maybe a look or a smile or the use of this or a character here and there. ... I know them very well, but I'm still finding stuff."
The films were presented as one entry at Cannes under the name "Che." They played without credits, the way Soderbergh would prefer to see it initially released to general audiences.
"Here's what I would like to do is, every time it opens in a town, let's say, that for a week, you can see it as one movie for the first week, and then you split it off into two films," Soderbergh said. "That's what I would like to do is have a sort of roadshow engagement, no credits ... a printed program that comes with the movie. To me, that would be an event."
How the films actually will play in the U.S. and other countries will depend on deals Soderbergh strikes as he shops it around to distributors at Cannes.
"Che" is competing for the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d'Or, which Soderbergh won with his feature debut, "sex, lies and videotape," in 1989.
While Soderbergh talked seriously and passionately about his desire to make the films, he also had a ready wisecrack for his motivation:
"It's all a very elaborate way for us to sell our own T-shirts," Soderbergh said.
Steven Soderbergh resists splitting 'Che'
He's willing to divide the four-hour film, but with a caveat
Source: Hollywood Reporter
CANNES -- Steven Soderbergh said Thursday that he was willing to split his epic four-hour, two-part "Che" into two separate movies upon release -- with one caveat.
"What I'd like to do is that if it opens in a town, you can see it for a week as one movie, and then you split it up," the filmmaker said. "To me that would be an event."
Distributors have said privately that they'd prefer the option to break it up, as has been the case with double bills like "Grindhouse," which the Weinstein Co. split up overseas. Soderbergh previously was thought to be steadfast about the two parts screening together, as they did in Cannes (with an intermission).
Soderbergh did not say whether he'd be willing to cut the project to a single two- or 21⁄2-hour film.
The Benicido del Toro-toplined film is an examination of two revolutions which Ernesto "Che" Guevara undertook; the first explores the successful uprising he led in Cuba, and the second looks at his failed revolt in Bolivia.
The Wild Bunch production has yet to sell to a U.S. distributor. Buyers gave it a tepid reaction after the marathon Palais screening Wednesday night, in part because of its length.
At the news conference, Soderbergh explained the length as a matter of historical necessity. "If you're going to have context, it's going to have size," he said.
He also took a defiant posture when asked his response to those who said he should have taken a more conventional biopic structure.
"I find it hilarious that people say that movies are too conventional," Soderbergh said, "and then when (something comes out) that isn't conventional, they seem annoyed."
Quote from: MacGuffin on July 10, 2007, 11:58:01 PM
Soderbergh seeing Red for 4K shoots
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Director Steven Soderbergh is planning to shoot "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla" using prototype Red One 4K digital-cinematography cameras.
The films, starring Benicio Del Toro, are a two-part biopic on revolutionary Che Guevara. Laura Bickford and Laura Bickford Prods., Telecinco and Wild Bunch produce.
About 15 months ago, Red said that it was developing the Red One camera with 4K capabilities at a price of $17,500 for the basic camera. That combination generated a lot of attention in the production community.
According to Red, Soderbergh has been testing the cameras in the Los Angeles area, and plans call for the features to be shot in 4K using the Redcode Raw system. The company also said that the prototypes are two generations newer than the ones used by director Peter Jackson to create "Crossing the Line," a short that was screened in the spring at the Red booth during the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.
Production is slated to begin this month on location in Spain and Puerto Rico.
Soders talkn aboot using the RED One camera to shoot Che: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo32Zn70LIw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo32Zn70LIw)
p.s. Che remains my mostest anticipated.
Bootleg Trailer here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsyGJbuU9Q)
i'm seeing this at the New York Film Festival, which is cool because last year i didn't get tickets to most of the stuff i wanted to see.
'Che's' journey: From English to Spanish
Soderbergh pic undergoes language conversion
By ANNE THOMPSON; Variety
Che" began as a labor of love for Benicio Del Toro and producer Laura Bickford, who started talking to Steven Soderbergh about producing the movie while working on Soderbergh's "Traffic."
At one time, Terrence Malick was going to helm "Che," but after years of painstaking research, Soderbergh agreed to direct.
The filmmaker tried to wrangle the unwieldy mass of material with writer Peter Buchman, but the script never jelled. "We could have kept researching for the rest of our lives," says producer Laura Bickford. Soderbergh finally decided the only solution was to break the film into two parts. "When we started, it was going to be one two-hour movie about Bolivia," he says. "But when we got further into development, Bolivia without the context of Cuba didn't make a lot of sense."
The decision to shoot in Spanish -- a language Soderbergh does not speak -- with actors from Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Spain, Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, Puerto Rico and Brazil also sent Wild Bunch scrambling to partners in foreign territories to renegotiate all the deals.
"Wild Bunch stayed with us through thick and thin," explains Bickford, "as we went from one movie in English to two movies in Spanish."
After the New York unveiling, the next step is mounting a late-year roadshow in New York and L.A., along with December's Havana Film Festival, where the filmmakers hope to show the film to one of the few people still around who fought alongside Che: Fidel Castro.
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Che Release Strategy
Source: Sproutblog
Ever since word broke at Toronto that IFC had picked up Steven Soderbergh's Che for US distribution, there have been conflicting rumors as to how the company, known for its day-and-date theatrical and VOD releases, would handle a film of this length, scope, and potential Oscar cachet. At yesterday's NYFF press conference, Soderbergh talked a bit about the "roadshow" concept, through which the entire two-part film will first hit theaters.
He confirmed that in each market the film enters, it'll screen for just one week, on one screen, with ticket buyers paying a premium (probably $25 each, including full-color printed program) for the experience. "I think that's the ideal way to see it," the director said, although he acknowledged that "it's a lot to ask of an audience, to throw away an entire day."
A source told me last night that IFC is banking that a lot of people are going to want to throw away their days on Che.
After the film completes its initial one-week run at the Zeigfeld theater in Midtown Manhattan in early December, it will move on to other cities (and premiere on VOD), but then the roadshow print will come back to New York in January to take up residence at the IFC Center downtown. The theater will then screen the full 4-something hour extravaganza daily, until demand runs out. The person I talked to said the theater's operators are confident that there will be enough curious cinephiles and Che obsessives to keep the movie playing there for "a loooong time." Certainly, if Benicio Del Toro gets the expected Best Actor nomination, you'd think there'd be at least one or two people in the tri state area who'd want to come out and see the film on a big screen.
this news supports my initial suspicions that i'll never see it. ever.
I missed this one at TIFF :(
My "friend" was insisting it was a David Cronenberg's film... sigh...
I need to move to New York.
it's too long.
oh.
nice...
eh.
Aaargh!
Soderbergh takes a revolutionary approach to 'Che'
"Che" is either Soderbergh's greatest masterwork or his grandest folly.
By Mark Olsen; Los Angeles Times
Charging across the globe like an insurrectionist guerrilla cadre, Steven Soderbergh's sprawling, Spanish-language epic "Che" has been playing at international film festivals and leaving controversy in its wake. The film depicts Argentine doctor turned international revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara ( Benicio Del Toro) as a hard-nosed idealist, a dreamer with military discipline.
Both in its contentious content -- Guevara is a hero to some and a scoundrel to others -- and its demanding form, the film is a direct challenge to audiences. Depending on who you ask, "Che" is either Soderbergh's greatest masterwork or his grandest folly.
"I hoped that there would be discussion," said Soderbergh of the divisive response the film has received. "If you've made something that doesn't get people going in one direction or another, then you've probably made a mistake.
"It's not a typical biographical film. That's not what I was interested in making. I knew the approach was going to be one that some people would really take to and some people would be angered by. And that's fine."
Saturday, the film will make its sold-out Los Angeles premiere at the historic Grauman's Chinese Theatre as part of this year's AFI Fest, screening in what is being referred to as the "roadshow" version, one film with a four-hours-plus running time and an intermission break. It is this version that will be submitted for awards consideration and will play L.A. and New York for a one-week run in December. In January, "Che" will be released to theaters as two separate films, "Che Part 1: The Argentine" and "Che Part 2: Guerrilla," and be made available for video-on-demand service.
"The Argentine" includes Guevara meeting Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution of 1956-59, which saw Guevara's rise from medic to fighter to leader as he helped to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. It also includes Guevara's 1964 visit to New York City to make a speech at the United Nations as a representative of the new regime. "Guerrilla" follows Guevara's 11-month attempt to export the Cuban revolutionary model to Bolivia, a campaign that ended with his capture and execution in 1967.
More than a T-shirt
Due in part to the enduring popularity of Alberto Korda's 1960 photo of Guevara, his image is well known, but his story less so. His transformation into a free-floating signifier of romanticized revolutionary chic made the task of capturing the essence of Guevara's life that much more challenging.
"I think a lot of people know the T-shirt but don't really know that many facts about Che," said Peter Buchman, screenwriter on both films (sharing credit with Benjamin A. van der Veen on "Guerrilla").
Che's image-issue is addressed toward the end of the film, when he is asked by a reporter how it feels to be a symbol. "A symbol of what?" comes his response.
"I knew a little about who he was and I had no idea how his life ended," Soderbergh said of the original intention to tell only the story of Guevara's fatal expedition in Bolivia. "For most people, that's question No. 1. It felt very much like a John Huston movie, that story had a very quixotic aspect to it. The problem was this thing just kept expanding, like 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,' it kept getting bigger and bigger. We tried to make it one giant script and it was unreadable. And I thought, 'Let's just break the thing in half.' "
Del Toro -- who won the actor prize following the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival -- describes Guevara as "a weird combination of intellect and action, like Gregory Peck meets Steve McQueen," and his portrayal is of a man enigmatically committed to a rigorous set of ideals. The film has nevertheless received criticism for leaving out "movie moments" and the sort of definitive psychological keys -- a past trauma, an unfulfilled wish -- used in many biographical films.
"I was making a mental list of all the things I didn't want to do," Soderbergh said. "I didn't want to have the scene where the guy goes, 'Why do they call you Che?' Or his hat flies off in a battle and somebody offers him a beret. I just didn't want to do that stuff."
In the months since "Che" screened at Cannes, it has been criticized for leaving out other less flattering parts of Guevara's history, including the post-revolutionary period in Cuba, in which his administrative power included overseeing war tribunals that led to the executions of hundreds of people. It is, without question, the period of Guevara's life that most complicates the simplistic depiction of him as a poetic freedom fighter, and Soderbergh acknowledges the controversial omission has become an easy way to dismiss the film.
"The most virulent anti-Che people usually focus on the events in the immediate aftermath of the revolution," Soderbergh said, "and that was something I addressed through his U.N. speech, but I was never interested in doing that part of his life as a bureaucrat. I'm sure some people will say, 'That's convenient because that's when he was at his worst.' Yeah, maybe -- it just wasn't interesting to me. I was interested in making a procedural about guerrilla warfare."
A hard sell in U.S.
The offscreen saga of "Che" has been nearly as much a battleground as what's shown on screen. The film, made for just under $60 million, was financed by the French production and sales company the Wild Bunch, with some additional funds from the Spanish company Telecinco.
"A lot of people think the reason the movie didn't have any U.S. financing was because it was about Che Guevara," said producer Laura Bickford, "and that's not the case. Nobody cared about the politics.
"When the movie was in English and one movie, everybody wanted to do it. When we went to Spanish and two movies, the studios' pay-TV deals are for English-language product only. So the pay-TV money disappeared and, at that point, nobody wanted to step up."
Despite the fact that many specialized film companies have recently fallen by the wayside, this four-hour, two-part, Spanish-language biopic about a controversial revolutionary leader was ultimately able to find a U.S. distributor. Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment, says he is "over the moon" to be releasing the film, likening "Che" to such epics as "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Spartacus." "There are a lot of shortsighted film executives out there who are afraid of the scope of the project."
While the most obvious solution to the film's distribution and exhibition situation might have been to simply edit it down into a single film, doing so would lose some of the film's key structural conceits. "I don't feel like you can have the kind of dialogue between the two films," Soderbergh said of editing it down to one movie, "that's sort of the whole point. They literally are mirrors of each other."
The "Che" project has lingered with Soderbergh, even though he has already moved on to other projects, in ways he finds difficult to articulate. Even while conceiving "Che," something about the idealistic, revolutionary subject matter sparked within him.
"I felt like we had to do something as crazy as they did," Soderbergh said.
Teaser Trailer here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRzcYxplyL4)
I'm not trying to be a douche here (sure sign of being a douche) but I'm going to be seeing this next Wednesday! Oh the excitement!
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fl.yimg.com%2Fimg.movies.yahoo.com%2Fymv%2Fus%2Fimg%2Fhv%2Fphoto%2Fmovie_pix%2Fifc_films%2Fche_part_one%2Fche_galleryposter.jpg&hash=75a4d368d58d7b008d9079d0dd5196697bd462c4)
Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/10924839/standardformat/)
Okay I just got done...
Initial Thoughts:
-It's like The Wire of guerilla warfare!!
-The Red One camera has finally recreated film in a digital format.
-This has overthrown (pun intended) Wall-E as my #1 film of the year (thus far.)
-Benicio needs to win the Oscar for this. No questions asked, just give it to him now, please.
-It's being released separately in all cities except NY and LA but you have to see the films back to back because it really adds so much to the experience of feeling immersed in the character and the world surrounding him.
-Pretty badass that Part 1 is 2:35:1 and part 2 is 1:85:1 and it's not just a show-off move on Soderbergh's part because it really adds something to each film.
thx for so much more than the pointless it's too long.
it looks amazing.
it's still too long.
and i'm completely over giving anyone an oscar or nomination for playing a real person. OVER it.
osh Brolin (W.); Sean Penn (Milk); Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon); Benicio Del Toro (Che). blah blah blah
Quote from: modage on December 04, 2008, 10:19:21 AM
and i'm completely over giving anyone an oscar or nomination for playing a real person. OVER it.
osh Brolin (W.); Sean Penn (Milk); Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon); Benicio Del Toro (Che). blah blah blah
Typically, I would agree with you and for a second when you first see Che's ashtma come into play I must admit that I rolled my eyes a little bit but this performance is so subtle whereas Brolin and Langella are really over the top in a "look at me, don't I sound and act just like the real guy," kinda way. I hate it when people say the actor embodied the soul of the person they were playing...well,I'll just leave it there because I'm going to end up saying it.
Oh, and it's not too long. Could you have told both of these stories in 2.5 or 3 hours? Yes, but the movie isn't at all about the story, it's about being out there in the jungle and what that feels like and what that does to you and I feel that the movie hammers that home even better because of the runtime. It also makes it feel like an event which is something I really enjoy. I like planning an entire day around seeing a movie, just like a did for Hamlet and Gettysburg. It's certainly not for everyone but I get my cinematic jollies by planning meals and snacks around a single movie.
Benicio Del Toro leads the charge for 'Che'
Benicio Del Toro has made a career of playing men on society's outskirts. Now as the revolutionary 'Che,' he shows his power.
By Mark Olsen; Los Angeles Times
In films as varied as "The Usual Suspects," "Basquiat," "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas," "Traffic" and "Things We Lost in The Fire," Benicio Del Toro seems drawn to play the eccentric outsider.
Now in director Steven Soderbergh's "Che" -- which opens for a one-week run on Friday in Los Angeles and New York -- Del Toro plays 1950s and '60s revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Following Guevara from Mexico to Cuba to New York to Bolivia, the film -- which will screen as a single 4-hour unit during its short run, and be broken into two separate films for the wider release in January -- has a broad sweep, but also an eye for the specific, becoming perhaps the ultimate expression of Del Toro's physical, enigmatic screen presence.
The project began with the 41-year-old Del Toro, who took an interest in Guevara's book "The Bolivian Diary" and pursued the idea with producer Laura Bickford. This was just before his turn in the 2000 film "Traffic" (Bickford produced and Soderbergh directed), which earned Del Toro an Academy Award for supporting actor.
"It certainly seemed that way to me immediately," said Soderbergh of the way in which Del Toro suited the part. "I had the same sensation I had when I was working with Julia Roberts on 'Erin Brockovich,' the right person in the right role at the right time."
Despite the film's controversial reception following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival -- Variety called it "defiantly nondramatic" and "a commercial impossibility" -- Del Toro, who also has a producing credit on the film, was awarded the best actor prize. Sean Penn, who led the festival jury, later called Del Toro's work "one of the first tour de force performances in film history that doesn't rely on the close-up."
Keeping it true
Del Toro's tall, broad frame is frequently shot by Soderbergh in a full-body shot, so that the actor works with his shoulders and hips as much as his eyes, while allowing other actors equal visual weight within the frame.
"When Che wrote he was very honest; that's one of the first things that really moved me," said Del Toro. "My first attraction toward Che was a book of letters he wrote to his family. There was an honesty in that, where he could be very self-critical, but also with a witty nod.
"The approach of the movie is to be true, factually true from what we gathered, but also true to him."
Del Toro believes the film will have a life beyond whatever it may (or may not) make at the box office during its initial theatrical releases. It recently played to cheers in Havana and protests in Miami.
"One day, the movie will pop up and they'll shake hands with it," he says. "I remember the first time I heard [ Miles Davis' landmark 1970 album] 'Bitches Brew,' I was like, 'I can't listen to that'. And then one time I was driving and one of the songs came on and everything changed. This movie, at some point it will change someone's mind, what they thought it was."
Transforming man
Before shooting the final sections of the film that portray Guevara's time in Bolivia at the end of his life, Del Toro dropped some 35 pounds. For Guevara's arrival in Bolivia in disguise, he shaved the top of his head rather than wear a bald cap. For his role in "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" (1998) as the fictional sidekick Dr. Gonzo (based on writer Hunter S. Thompson's friend and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta), Del Toro put on 40 pounds.
It seems only fitting that following the release of "Che" he will next be seen in a new version of " The Wolf Man," perhaps the ultimate story of personal transformation.
"I wish I could stay home," he said of what draws him again and again to roles that require severe physical transformation and deep emotional commitment.
"I wish I could be asleep right now. But why do I do it? That's the way the cookie crumbles for me, I'm that kind of actor. Do I invite it? Maybe. At the same time it invites me.
"It's just who I am."
Steven Soderbergh Talks (A Lot!) about Che
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon
At this point in Steven Soderbergh's career, it's a fruitless effort trying to guess what he might do next, so when it was announced a few years ago that he would be making some sort of biopic based on the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, considered the creator of guerilla warfare, few of his fans were surprised. It also wasn't too surprising that Benicio Del Toro, the Oscar-winning star of Soderbergh's breakthrough hit Traffic, would be starring in the role of the Argentine doctor who relocated to Cuba and became the military lynchpin of Fidel Castro's coup to take over the Cuban government.
What does surprise many is that the resulting Che is a four and a half hour epic that covers two very specific moments in the life of the military leader, rather than being the traditional biopic we've seen in the past. Part One covers "Che" and his friend Fidel planning their overthrow of the government and the actual military operations that resulted, intercut with Guevara's trip to New York where he would address the United Nations following the Bay of Pigs invasion and trade embargo with Cuba. Part Two covers Guevara's last military mission in Bolivia where an attempt to throw a similar coup, which ended in disaster.
Both parts of this epic are released this coming week for a limited engagement in New York at the Ziegfeld Theater and in Los Angeles at the Landmark 12, where you can see both parts back-to-back with a 15-minute intermission. If you go see this "Roadshow Edition," you'll also get a very special printed program guide. You can see it at those venues for the next week, and then have another chance to see it in January when it gets its official release.
Soderbergh is an endlessly fascinating filmmaker to talk to, and ComingSoon.net attended not one but two press conferences where Soderbergh talked about this groundbreaking film. The first was at the New York Film Festival where the entire film was screened at the Ziegfeld Theater before a Q 'n' A session with Soderbergh. The second was also in New York at a more formal press conference with Benicio Del Toro and Demián Bechir, who plays Fidel Castro in the movie, but we decided to grab some of the more interesting things Soderbergh said there and mix all of them up to make one new thing, which follows. (You can still take a 15-minute intermission at the midway point if you so choose.)
Q: Can you talk about the original inspiration that sent you on this journey?
Steven Soderbergh: The inspiration really was from Benicio and Laura Bickford, because we were on "Traffic," that's when we started talking about it, and I came along. You have a different angle on a project when you haven't initiated it and sometimes that's good. You can be more dispassionate about it and there were definitely cases where we had to make large difficult creative decisions, and we were able to make them, or at least I felt comfortable making them, because in some way, I was the Swede coming into a culture that wasn't mine. I didn't have the emotional baggage that somebody else might have, and I can say something, "We're going to cut everything that happened from the Granma to just before L'Vero because narratively, we need to do that." There's a lot of great sh*t that happens in the first six months of the Cuban Revolution, it just had to go, and that's easier for me, because I can stand back and say "That's what needs to be amputated."
Q: Through the process of getting the screenplay together and the filming, what is it that you yourself learned about Che?
Soderbergh: Well, because the process of developing and making this film was so extended--that was eight years--what I found was sometimes you say "yes," and you're not sure why you said "yes," and that reasoning changes over the course of making the film. It really wasn't until the films were finished, around the time of Cannes, that I realized what they were really about to me or what really drew them to me was this issue of "Engagement vs. Disengagement" – that every day in our lives, on a personal level, on a community level, on a global level, we are making a decision about how engaged we want to be or how disengaged we want to be. Do we want to participate or do we want to observe? I realized that what was compelling about Che to me was once he made the decision to engage that he engaged fully; that he was able to sustain whatever it is you need to sustain every day, especially when your life is at stake. You have to remember he's also an atheist, so a lot of times when you have figures that can sustain this level of engagement, they attribute it to a higher power, or there's some other element they can call upon. He didn't have that; or at least he expressed it in terms of what people were doing to each other here. So that's where I ended up landing but as I said, it sort of changes throughout, but ultimately, it was about engagement.
Q: When was your first connection with Che Guevara?
Soderbergh: I think like most people in this country I first heard Che's name in history class at school when you would get that sort of quick sketch of the history of Cuba. One of the great things about having this job is that more often than not I get paid to educate myself. A lot of the details of the Cuban Revolution obviously were not known to me. I thought that it was basically all Fidel; I had no idea about these other groups that were basically trying to do the same thing. And my idea of Che was from those images of him near the very end of the Cuban Revolution with the beret and the cast on his arm. I had no idea of this transformation from the medic to becoming a leader.
Q: How much did you have to go on as far as historical records are concerned to aid you in your research for the film?
Soderbergh: As many of you know who've read up on Che, you go to the bookstore and there's an entire wall of Che material. There's a lot to go through and we tried to go through all of it. We spoke to anyone who was still around – and willing to talk – who fought with him and knew him. J.G. Ballard once said, "Research is the refuge of the unimaginative," and there were times where I thought he was absolutely right. We were overwhelmed with information, and as John Lee Anderson who was one of our consultants said at the press conference in Cannes, "Look, there are a million Ches. He means something different to everyone." And at a certain point we, the core creative team, had to decide what to use and not to use, and frankly a lot of it was by exclusion. I went in with more of an idea of what I didn't want to do, as opposed to what I wanted to do. At least that's a start, and you can begin to shape it. I was trying to avoid scenes that I thought were too typical. Like I didn't want to have that scene where someone asks, "Hey, why do they call you Che?" or have him in battle and his hat blows off, and he runs over and picks up a beret – I didn't want to do that. But you found these crazy little stories from people. One of our favorites we found very late, and it's from the memoirs written by the Acevedo brother who we see at the end of the [first] film driving the car to Havana and Che stops him and tells him to turn around. We found that very late in the process, and I thought it was such a perfect Che scene; a perfect expression of who he was.
Q: How hard was it finding financing for the production, and could you elaborate a little bit on the shoot itself?
Soderbergh: Well, all I can say is I'm glad we're not looking for money right now! (laughter) It was complicated, but we knew it would be. I mean look at it. It took a couple people sticking it out for a long time and ultimately believing in the commercial viability of the brand of Che. I mean that's the weird paradox about this guy – here he is the icon of Marxist/Leninist economic ideology, and you stick his face on anything and it sells. It's a very weird situation. I believed that if we were just able to get the thing made, it would find enough of an audience to get its money back. The amount of money we had dictated a pretty strict shooting schedule. We had 39 days for each part, and to put that in the context of something else that I've made, that's fewer days than it took to shoot the first "Ocean's" film. We had a 10-day gap in between the shoots, and we shot the second part first, and we shot it backwards, so it was very confusing. The principal sources of funding came from Wild Bunch, which is a French sales and production company, and Telecinco, which is a very large Spanish television and film production company.
Q: Could you talk about the locations and where you shot the film?
Soderbergh: Unfortunately, as an American I'm not allowed to shoot in Cuba, but we made many trips there that were licensed through the State Department, so at least we got a look at where the events actually took place. Bolivia we were able to shoot in. Part One was [shot in] Mexico, Puerto Rico, and New York, and Part Two was [shot in] Bolivia and Spain. It turned out we had somebody working on the film who grew up in La Higuera, and when they came to the set – because we built that La Higuera set on the top of this mountain in the middle of nowhere – and when he came to the set he was stunned and said, "This is exactly where I remember growing up." So our production designer Antxón Gómez did a fantastic job.
Q: Can you talk about the decision to cut the film into two parts?
Soderbergh: At first we were doing Bolivia, and then it started to expand and really, because we started thinking, "Okay, you don't really understand Bolivia unless you've seen Cuba and then he kind of went to New York, and that was cool, then we should see him meeting Fidel in Mexico City." It became like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," it kept getting bigger and bigger, and it still at that point was one large script but it was becoming unreadable. It felt like a trailer for an even longer film. I took a cue from nature. When a cell gets too big, it divides to survive, and it felt that's what needed to be done and once we did that, all of the solutions arrived for the various problems we were having narratively and things became a lot simpler. It became more complicated in that the deals we already had in place needed to be renegotiated. Fortunately for us, all the people that came onto this project early were enthusiastic enough about it to redo the deal for the two films. But in the back of our minds, I think we always saw it as one big thing that if you can pull it off and people could see it with an intermission, that would be the "Altered States" version of total immersion for four and a half hours. That's the best way to get a sense of what they did, just the physical stamina required to pull this off. As it turns out, it's just in the States where it's going to be seen like that. Everywhere else in the world, they're cutting it in half.
Q: What about having different aspect ratios for the different parts?
Soderbergh: Well, I needed a visual corollary to the difference in the voices between the two texts we were working from. The reminiscences to the Cuban Revolution was written after the Revolution ended and there's a sort of macro-hindsight at play here that results from writing about a victory that I wanted a visual version of and that means a wider frame, a more classical approach to framing, a more traditional approach to the music. The Bolivian Diaries were contemporaneous. There's no perspective, he's isolated, he doesn't know what's going on, and so visually, I'm looking at a style that makes you feel that the outcome is unclear, the outcome of the scene isn't even clear, the color palette is less inviting, the terrain is less inviting, the cutting is a little more arrhythmic, just everything to give you the sense of dread, just as you're heading into the mountains. Normally, you wouldn't want to do that because you'd feel like you're tipping the outcome but you have the opposite problem here than you usually have in that Che has no arc, he's a straight line, so the tension is in whether he will bend so the earlier to me you set up this sense of dread, the stronger he appears throughout, and that was my idea. But yeah, it is a drag for the projectionist. During the intermission, they have to scramble to change everything, scary.
(Insert 15-Minute Intermission Here)
Q: Why did you decide to exclude Che's exploits in Africa?
Soderbergh:: Well if this film makes $100 million, I'll make the third one. We talked about it. The story of Che in the Congo is absolutely fascinating. We actually sort of sketched an idea for a very small film that took place in the Congo, and then Prague where he went after fighting in the Congo to lick his wounds and write a very self-critical book of what happened in the Congo. The glib answer is we didn't have enough money to do that. And also, it's a fascinating chapter but it didn't really fall into the bookend idea that we ended up with. When the film was first being developed, it was only about Bolivia. And it was a little more than halfway through the process of working on that that we decided Bolivia doesn't really make a lot of sense unless you've seen Cuba, because you keep wondering, "Why doesn't he just quit when it's going so badly?" You have to see what happened in Cuba to see why he thought they were really gonna pull this off. It grew from one manageable film into one GIANT film, and overseas it's going to be split in half. So, we just couldn't fit that in. We read all that material, and in fact there was a quote from one of the African rebels that fought with Che, Victor Dreke, which was fantastic, he said, "Che would rather face a bullet than reality," and it's a perfect description of him I think.
Q: One of the differences between the Cannes cut and the current incarnation is that the voiceover is in English, instead of Spanish. Why did you decide to change it?
Soderbergh: Here's how I justified it: it seemed organic to me because we used the actor who was his interpreter following him around in New York, and so it seemed appropriate to use that idea to continue hearing this guy translate Che. More importantly, there are sequences in which he is speaking in which I do not want an English-speaking audience to be reading – I want them to be able to watch the images and hear the words without having to read. Especially for instance the Battle of L'vero where he does the Tolstoy quote. I've seen the film with English subtitles and you cannot watch both things at the same time. You just can't.
Q: There's been a lot of talk about how this four and a half hour film is being released but what would be your preference? As one massive 4-hour epic?
Soderbergh:: Five one-hour films? (laughter) Here's our plan currently: that whenever the movie enters a specific market – New York, L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas – that for one week, on one screen, you can see it like you just saw it [at 4 hours+]. There will be a specially-printed program with the credits from both the films, and we're referring to that as "The roadshow version," the way they used to do in the '50s and '60s. I think that's the ideal way to see it... It's a lot to ask of someone to throw away an entire day, but I guess my only argument is that cinematically we're making a demand on the audience that's very similar to the demands that Che made on the people around him. (laughter) It's a big commitment, and it requires a certain kind of personality to want to experience it like that. But it was certainly designed that way, so you get the sort of "call-and-response" between the two parts.
Q: Will you be taking the film to Argentina?
Soderbergh: As far as going to Argentina, we're trying to figure that out now... the South American tour. The release dates for the film are sort of staggered – the film has opened in Spain so far and that's it – so we're trying to figure that out now.
Q: If Che were alive today, how do you think he would view contemporary Cuba, and since he's not, how do you view it?
Soderbergh: (laughter) That's the question that everyone wants to know the answer to, and of course it's one we can't answer. As far as what's going on in Cuba now, I don't think we've been very smart in how we've played this. I think there could have been other moves made on our part in order to make a dialogue more inevitable. I'm still stunned that this embargo is still going on – it's just shocking to me, and doesn't seem to make much sense. It's my personal belief that if you want the embargo to end, and you want to see some change there, you should flood the place with tourists. There's nothing like exposure to new ideas that get people thinking about new ideas. So in fact our policy is the opposite to what I would be doing, but of course I'm not running the country.
Q: Can you comment on the film's political nature?
Soderbergh: Well I guess I believe that any movie that accurately presents anyone's life, or any situation – any movie that's not a fantasy, and isn't just a pure entertainment – is to me by definition a political film, whether it's a cop movie or "Erin Brockovich." Any movie that attempts to look at things in a straightforward fashion and not polish it up I think you could argue is a 'political film.' These are political films in a sense that there's an ideology being expressed and acted upon, but that's not what drew me to them ultimately. I'm obviously not a communist. As I said to someone a couple of weeks ago, "There isn't even a place for me in the society that Che was trying to build." He says in "Man and Socialism in Cuba": "There's no great artist who's also a true revolutionary." He didn't have a lot of use for the kind of stuff that I do, and I think personally he probably would have hated me. But again, I can still look at him and find him one of the most compelling political figures of the last half-century, and I do think the ideas are fascinating to debate and to look at in the context of what we live in now. One of the interesting things to me about the Cuban Revolution is that is the last time you're ever going to see a revolution like that fought. That's what I call "the last analog revolution." Today, that would have been over in two weeks. Technology just makes it impossible to fight a revolution the way they did as we see seven or eight years later. It was interesting to make a period film about a type of war that can't be fought anymore.
Q: What was the most valuable thing that you learned about Che Guevara while making this film?
Soderbergh: I think the thing that I learned about him that was interesting to me was what a hardass he was. Talking to the people that fought alongside him, one of the doctors that he fought with also had a great quote. He said, "You had to love him for free," and he just described how uncompromising he was. Most people wanted to be in Camillo's column because he was fun. Che was just a very, very strict disciplinarian, and there was no moment where he dropped the ideology, even in a personal, one-on-one situation. A lot of people found him cold and distant. So Benicio and I talked about that a lot – that he really only reserved the warmer side of his personality for when he was in the "doctor mode." When he was in the "leader/Commandante" mode he was really, really harsh and I can understand why; the stakes were pretty high.
Q: Was there anything residual from making this movie that has stayed with you or changed any of your attitudes about filmmaking?
Soderbergh: For me, there's no way to come out the other end of this without constantly being aware of your physical surroundings and what they mean. Being in this room, being in this hotel, taking the cab up from Chelsea, paying with a credit card, wearing a Paul Smith shirt, you're constantly thinking about what all of that stuff represents. Who made it? How much did it cost? Where did it get made? How did it get here? And that's good and bad. It's good because you should think about these things, it's bad because you can't stop thinking about them once you start. I've been working on trying to figure out what to do with that, because I think something should be done with it and when I have tangential interests that sustain over a long period of time, they end up as something. I don't know what this will end up being. A lot of it's in the movie, and yet, I came out of this feeling less that movies have the ability to really change how people think. So when people say, "So what are people supposed to think when they get out of this film?" Because it's certainly not made to be a recruitment film. And I say, "Look, all I would hope is that somebody comes out of the movie going, 'Is there anything I feel that strongly about? Is there anything in my life I feel that passionately about that I would engage at that level?'" That's really it. So there's a lot of residue. When we were talking about motivation, I felt so lucky to be able to talk to people who were actually with him is pretty intense. To be that close to history that's that significant is really something.
To not take one of the hundreds of opportunities we had to just let this thing fall apart. There were so many times where literally by not picking up the phone or answering an Email, I could have let the movie crater, and to just make the choice, "No, pick up the phone, write the check, do whatever you gotta do, keep this thing going..." That's why getting to the end of it was all we needed out of this, frankly, because there were just so many times where you thought it wasn't going to happen or you had friends say it's not going to happen. "Why are you investing yourself in that? It's not going to happen. You're not going to get the money." But there's this vague feeling when you get out of it of was it enough in a larger sense? Was it enough?
You can't come out of this, having spent eight years on it and watch what's going on and not start thinking about that. What does a dollar represent? Does it represent anything and if it doesn't, where are we going? There's a residue that stays with you, it has to, if you're paying attention.
Che opens exclusively in New York and L.A. for a single week's Oscar consideration run, then reopens on January 9 and expands through January.
Does anyone else really want to see this right now, but have the problem of finding 4 unused hours in the day for the times the theater is playing the movie? I think it has a one week engagement, and I don't think I'll be able to make a 3:30 or 7:30 showing all week.
It's a bummer.
Full 'Che' for two more frames
Full version of Steven Soderbergh's film adds weekends
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Moviegoers are getting another chance to cha-cha-cha to the full four-hour-plus version of Steven Soderbergh's "Che."
To qualify for Oscar voting, the Ernesto "Che" Guevara biopic unspooled a week ago for what was planned as one-week-only runs in single venues in New York and Los Angeles. The Benicio Del Toro starrer was set to withdraw from the marketplace before reappearing Jan. 9 in limited release as two separate films, the Cuba-focused "The Argentine" and Bolivia-based "The Guerrilla."
But IFC Films on Thursday said that last weekend's sellouts have spurred execs to add two more weekends of exclusive runs for the full "Che" version of the political epic, starting Dec. 24 in New York and Dec. 26 in Los Angeles.
"We thought 'Che' would have a great deal of interest, but to sell out in Los Angeles and New York City was even beyond our expectations," IFC distribution vp Mark Boxer said.
Meanwhile, theaters that have booked the two-part "Che" installments as separate films have agreed to carry both "Argentine" and "Guerrilla," with exhibitors likely to program the pics in ways that make viewing both on the same day as convenient as possible, Boxer said.
The films -- each just more than two hours long -- will bow Jan. 9 in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco before expanding to five additional markets the following frame. By Jan. 23, the pics are expected to play in more than 50 theaters in the top 25 domestic markets.
'Che' Director Steven Soderbergh On Creating His Controversial Epic
Published by MTV
Chronologically speaking, there's a reason why uber-prolific filmmaker Steven Soderbergh started grappling with the idea of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara right after the time he finished "Erin Brokovich" in 2000.
For one, writing and research on the sprawling 4-hour-plus two-part "Che" took seven years to get just right. Secondly, when he agreed to inherit the movie from legendary director Terrence Malick, Soderbergh felt he was firing on all cylinders and at the top of his game, so he felt now was the time to take on such a an epic beast.
"Part of my reasoning for saying yes [to the 'Che' project] was that I had just come off making 'Erin Brokovich' with Julia Roberts nad had the sensation that: 'This was the right movie, the right actor, the right time.' Everything had lined up," he told MTV News remembering the era fondly.
"When [producer] Laura Bickford and [lead] Benicio del Toro floated this idea past me, part of me felt thought, 'He's the right guy. It's an interesting subject, you should say yes,' even though underneath that I had a feeling that it was going to be ugly and difficult."
And his predictions were correct. After spending a year on research and a year writing screenwriter Peter Buchanan handed over a version of the film that almost distorted history it was so super condensed. The director was learning along the way who this Argentinian-born contentious political icon was and once he had absorbed the entire screenplay he realized they needed a second movie to fill it all in, which caused several more years of writing.
"I really didn't know anything about him," Soderbergh admitted. "I think that's why the first iteration of the movie was about Bolivia only [the second film now known as "Guerilla"]. "I was gravitating towards the period of his life I knew the least about. That's where we started and then it just kept expanding."
The director realized, that before he shot the story of what would eventually be the rebels' downfall, he had to show the context of what brought him there: his victory alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba.
An unorthodox "biopic" to say the least, there is no traditional cradle-to-grave arcs to the story. In fact, the film is more a guerilla warefare procedural than it is a lionizing hagiography of one immense and divisive historical figure. But through the challenges Che and his rebels faced and the choices they make, we learn who Che Guevara was, warts and all.
"I'm a big believer into paying attention to what people do as opposed to what they say," the director said of his action speak louder than words approach to the tale.
Part One: "The Argentine" drops you off a few months after Fidel Castro landed in Cuba in the fall of 1956 to start the revolutionary campaign to overthrow the corrupt dictatorial government. Part Two: "Guerilla" chronicles the fated 11-month campaign that attempt to bring a similar revolution to the South American country of Bolivia. Both are shot in unsentimentalized modes that are near documentarian in manner.
In fact, Soderbergh resisted the urge to do a more typical biopic citing "Lawrence of Arabia" and its mostly warfare-laden story as an influence.
"['Arabia'] is only interested in the period of his life where he became a combatant. Similarly, I felt these two periods were Che at a moment in which all of his beliefs are being enacted at the same time. He was an ideologue and he also knew how to use a gun. I wanted to see him with all of those colors flying at the same time."
Amazingly enough, the two films shot in five different countries in a blisteringly short two and a half months (by comparison, "Apocalypse Now," the long version of which still shy of fours hours filmed for over 16 months). The ambitious work was a labor of love. "Nobody got paid so its all on the screen," Soderbergh chuckled.
To lead actor Benicio Del Toro taking on such an iconic and important role and to portray it in such a hyper concentrated amount of time was daunting. But much like the abbreviated and some say, subjective story the film tells, the actor worried about what was onscreen and let the rest, including the mental and political baggage go.
"So there's only so much an actor can play, there's only so much I can play," Del Toro told MTV. "You just play the moment, that's all you can do. I think that whatever the polarizing things are about it, they're hinted in the movie, but you could do never cover it all."
Received with protests when it screened in Miami, the filmmakers realize Guevara is a character beloved by some but reviled by others. Del Toro is all too aware, but the actor insists one has to understand the context of the radical times before one leaps to judgment.
"On CNN, they called the Obama election a 'silent revolution' of some sort, and it's interesting to see how the times have changed and are different now. The 1960s were volatile, it was a decade that made the '90s look like popcorn. The 60s were really intense: Vietnam, JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba [the first elected Prime Minister of the Congo in Africa in 1961] all these people killed, Malcolm X." We could make a list, but... But understanding who Che was in that time... he was a warrior, a product of the '60s, those were different times. The idea of having a black president in the United States was impossible."
"Che" release plan is a unique one. Starting December 12th, the two films played in New York and L.A. for one week as one four-hour-long film with an intermission. With that run concluded, "Che" will re-open on January 9th in New York and Los Angeles as two separate admissions titled "Che Part 1: The Argentine" and "Che Part 2: Guerilla."
The national rollout for 25 markets will begin January 16 and 22 and will expand further following those dates. For those that would rather absorb its panoramic girth all at home, IFC will make the films available OnDemand on January 21, making it available to 50 million homes nationwide on all major cable and satellite providers in both standard and high definition versions.
Personally, we say the experience is well worth it.
A local theater kicked My Name's Bruce out of the second week of its two week engagement to bring in Che. Very good news for me.
Only, I'm so sick right now that last night's viewing was like a tropic fever dream. I even FELL ASLEEP a COUPLE TIMES. Also, no shit, there was a Tourette's guy sitting right behind me. Why was there a Tourette's guy at the theater? It doesn't seem like an appropriate place. You try and lose yourself in a movie with the guy behind you hiccuping and burping during quiet dramatic scenes and waging full war against his disease in loud action scenes. Which is to say that at first I thought he was just an annoying movie watcher who said "Holy shit, holy shit" whenever guns were on screen and liked to cry victoriously, or whatever, and what I'm saying here is that he would save up all his yells for the loud moments, which sometimes meant that a short burst of noise would be followed by a longer, louder burst of Tourette's from directly behind me. For the first movie, and then I moved across the theater for the second one, only to find the whole theater was in the problem together.
Kind of a cursed viewing. I'm 80% sure Soderbergh did an amazing fucking job. He's endlessly talented when he allows himself free reign over the style of the film (when he isn't mimicking a style) and Che is him at full force.
I want to see it again really bad.
http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/steven_soderbergh
'Che' motors to extended run at IFC
Soderbergh biopic to be released in two parts
Source: Variety
Based on early box office returns, IFC Films will continue to play Steven Soderbergh's two-part biopic "Che" in its entirety, versus releasing the two films -- "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla" -- separately.
The original plan was to keep the films paired only for a one-week awards run in December in Los Angeles and New York. The returns were good enough, however, for IFC to change its mind.
On Jan. 16, "Che" will play in nine additional markets: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
"A lot of people told me I was crazy to push for a roadshow presentation of 'Che,' because American moviegoers aren't adventurous enough. Fortunately, the results in New York and Los Angeles prove otherwise," Soderbergh said.
IFC is distributing the Spanish-language film, toplining Benicio Del Toro, on behalf of sister subsid Magnolia. So far, "Che" is only planned for Landmark Theaters, another sister division.
"Che" scored the best weekly grosses of 2008 at Landmark's Nuart Theater in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York. Total gross to date is $244,857.
On Jan. 21, "Che" will be available on cable via IFC In Theaters' on-demand pay service.
i missed my (only?) opportunity to see this in NYC a week ago :(
but i did see Doubt, Milk, and Waltz with Bashir.
oh the goddamn regret.. THE GODDAMN REGRET.
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 08, 2009, 11:29:35 PM
'Che' motors to extended run at IFC
Soderbergh biopic to be released in two parts
Source: Variety
Based on early box office returns, IFC Films will continue to play Steven Soderbergh's two-part biopic "Che" in its entirety, versus releasing the two films -- "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla" -- separately.
The original plan was to keep the films paired only for a one-week awards run in December in Los Angeles and New York. The returns were good enough, however, for IFC to change its mind.
On Jan. 16, "Che" will play in nine additional markets: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
"A lot of people told me I was crazy to push for a roadshow presentation of 'Che,' because American moviegoers aren't adventurous enough. Fortunately, the results in New York and Los Angeles prove otherwise," Soderbergh said.
IFC is distributing the Spanish-language film, toplining Benicio Del Toro, on behalf of sister subsid Magnolia. So far, "Che" is only planned for Landmark Theaters, another sister division.
"Che" scored the best weekly grosses of 2008 at Landmark's Nuart Theater in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York. Total gross to date is $244,857.
On Jan. 21, "Che" will be available on cable via IFC In Theaters' on-demand pay service.
For all my Dallas friends....The Roadshow is opening at The Magnolia THIS Friday for one week only! After the one week engagement the film will be split up for the rest of its run. The times for the Roadshow are 1:30pm ($15) and 7:30pm ($18)...you also get a souvenir program included in that price, which I haven't seen yet to say whether or not it's worth a damn.
*UPDATE* We had a really great turnout this past week and The Roadshow has been extended for one more week.... And the souvenir program is surprisingly high quality.
directv has this on PPV (in HD to boot), but each part costs $7.99. i want to see it, but i have a hard time justifying dropping $16 to watch any movie on tv.
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boner. :yabbse-grin:
Fall? That's at least another 3 months. What a strange release schedule for this movie.
I guess everybody knows by now this is available exclusively through Blockbuster (2 separate DVD's). Es fantástico.
Tons of nudity and sex, surprisingly. Some excessive S&M, but not any more than really required.
Quote from: Pwaybloe on July 02, 2009, 01:12:11 PM
I guess everybody knows by now this is available exclusively through Blockbuster (2 separate DVD's). Es fantástico.
Tons of nudity and sex, surprisingly. Some excessive S&M, but not any more than really required.
I did NOT know that. Thank you.
My girlfriend will be out of town this weekend and that sounds perfect.*
*
it's really too bad there's not an emote that rubs his hands together maniacally for instances like this.
Quote from: The Perineum Falcon on July 02, 2009, 11:43:10 PM*it's really too bad there's not an emote that rubs his hands together maniacally for instances like this.
Best I can do:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffilemakertoday.com%2Ffilemakertoday.com_non_ssl%2Fcom%2Fimages%2Fsmilies%2Fdevil.gif&hash=29fc2b5eb0089a0d12263558f68df7a32733b2e0)
Quote from: The Perineum Falcon on July 02, 2009, 11:43:10 PM
*it's really too bad there's not an emote that rubs his hands together maniacally for instances like this.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.invisionpower.com%2Fuploads%2Fpost-10849-1152373297.gif&hash=ed7fb5396370b602800729c5cd4988e11fb44f94)
also,
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Steven Soderbergh: 'I can see the end of my career'
Source: The Guardian UK
His sprawling biopic of Che Guevara cost $58m but has earned less than $2m worldwide. The director of Traffic and Erin Brockovich tells Henry Barnes why he might just disappear
Steven Soderbergh doesn't sound fine. A bad telephone line between London and Los Angeles isn't helping, but it's not wholly to blame for that air of tired resignation. That crept into his voice as soon as he started talking about Che, his two-part, four-and-a-half-hour-long biopic of Ernesto Guevara.
"Everybody got scarred by [Che] a little bit," Soderbergh says. "I don't know how to describe it. It took a long time to shake off. It was just such an intense four or five months that it really ... "
There is a long pause. He speaks slowly and evenly.
"You know, for a year after we finished shooting I would still wake up in the morning thinking, 'Thank God I'm not shooting that film.'"
Does he wish he hadn't done it?
"Yeah."
Really?
"Yeah. Literally I'd wake up and think, 'At least I'm not doing that today.'"
Soderbergh knew Che (recently released on DVD in the UK) would be difficult from the start. The project was brought to him by its eventual star, Benicio del Toro, and producer Laura Bickford, during the shooting of Traffic – the drug war docudrama that won Soderbergh the best director Oscar in 2001. Che was essentially Del Toro's baby and Soderbergh, who was interested in the man but nowhere near as smitten as the actor, approached the movie cautiously, heading into the production with what he describes now as a "pretty significant sense of dread".
Lack of funding fuelled his fear. And the money wasn't there partly because of Soderbergh himself. In the characteristically noble pursuit of authenticity he decided to film Che in Spanish, a decision that effectively blitzed any hope of finding significant investment within the US.
"It's a film that, to some extent, needs the support of people who write about films," he argues. "If you'd had all these guys running around talking in accented English you'd [have got] your head taken off."
Eventually European investors were tapped for $58m (£35m) – a paltry figure considering the project's ambition. As a result Soderbergh was forced to shoot extremely quickly to stay on budget. The two parts were filmed over 76 days, four days fewer than for his glitzy Vegas action comedy Ocean's Eleven, an $85m capitalist fat-cat of a movie in comparison with Che.
"It's hard to watch it and not to wish we'd had more time," he says of Che. "But I can't tell you that if we'd had more time it would be better – it would just be different. There was an energy and intensity that came out of working that quickly."
Indeed, Che is easily Soderbergh's best film since Traffic. But it was a terrible failure at the box office, grossing under $2m worldwide. Soderbergh blames piracy ("We got crushed in South America. We came out in Spain in September of last year and it was everywhere within a matter of days. It killed it.") but it probably didn't help that his film is a foreign-language marathon with an admittedly distant and impersonal lead.
Che seems, in retrospect, like a glorious, sad aberration: a niche-audience epic it would be impossible to commission in these straitened times. Today, the willingness of the studios to take such a punt has all but evaporated – a fact that Soderbergh is more alive to than most.
"I'm looking at the landscape and I'm thinking, 'Hmmm, I don't know. A few more years maybe,'" says Soderbergh. "And then the stuff that I'm interested in is only going to be of interest to me."
It would all sound depressing if Soderbergh didn't pepper his speech with fits of incredulous laughter. Perhaps the last few years – capped by his recent run-in with Sony over his revised script for Moneyball, a baseball movie starring Brad Pitt, that saw him elbowed off the project – have left him punch-drunk.
"In terms of my career, I can see the end of it," he says. "I've had that sensation for a few years now. And so I've got a list of stuff that I want to do – that I hope I can do – and once that's all finished I may just disappear."
The list isn't that long. Lo-fi relationship drama The Girlfriend Experience is up next, followed by the breezy Matt Damon comedy, The Informant! After that there's another biopic – Michael Douglas as Liberace; a rock musical of Cleopatra with Douglas's wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and his long-gestating adaptation of John Barth's picaresque, The Sot-Weed Factor. "Three or four years worth of stuff," says Soderbergh.
It's said with resignation, not desperation. With the voice of someone who has gradually realised what Guevara might not have – that some systems are just too big to beat.
• Che Parts 1 & 2 are available on DVD and Blu-ray now
:shock:
I guess it's unfair of me to think of Soderbergh as a guy with limitless energy and enthusiasm, which is a conception of him based on his being one of the most prolific and consistently ballsy and intelligent filmmakers of the past decade.
I still don't see him just disappearing, though. He may (and probably should, for his own sake) take a break. But new ideas would be bound to catch his interest, and a lot of loyalty toward him from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood would likely make it so that he'll have several more opportunities to make some really great films down the line. I just hope that he'll want to.
I just bought the criterion of this, watched the movies and then the docu about the making of the film... i gotta say the 'making of' is one of the most depressing things i've seen in a long time. basically at the end soderberg describes how he felt after making this (not clear if he still feels this way, implies yes and no at times) there is no meaning left in film. how the industry and films have become disposable. how there has to be a unifying belief that a film is good, and polarized opinions are of the past; people just check rotten tomatoes for opinions based on an average, rather than follow individual critics they like. that debate and awe inspiring conversation from eras like the 70s is dead.
I know i've got nothing to really show for myself in this regard, and i don't really have any work to make my opinion seem valid but for what it's worth i agreed with pretty much everything he said. i'm sure this reads like an emo post but I have often felt the magic in cinema is gone for the majority of films made these days. i guess he was a little destroyed after this film, but it's extra sad seeing it come from a guy that's done so much for the medium. sometimes i wonder if '99 was the last swan song of such cinema. i know it's bleak, and possibly short sighted, but contemporary moving image storytelling seems to be such a shit show.
anyone else see this and have opinions?
socketlevel...i also recently watched the criterion releases and the making of doc. my wife and i kind of looked at each other after watching the doc and said "did he say what i think he just said" in reference to soderbergh's comments. he just sounds completely defeated and it left me empty. i've been an admirer of his for 15 years or so and to hear him say that he thinks movies today are essentially devoid of purpose and that filmmakers can no longer be have the impact the great one's like soderbergh desire...well, it was just depressing. i wanted to write him a letter and let him know that we're still out here even though it may not seem like it times. but for someone that just took the beating he did with Che (even though i thought was incredible by the way) it will likely be difficult for him to see the point in continuing to put himself out there. hopefully he can get past this.
the most hope i've taken from all this is the possibility of meeting a woman, marry her and watch not only a slow moving film like che but also the making of documentary! you got a diamond in the ruff my man. where you meet her cuz i'mma start hanging out there :)
but seriously, glad to see this affected someone else. for two days i was thinking about it in main mental rotation. here is a guy that can pretty much do anything he wants (or damn close) who's jaded... i hope he gets the gusto back too.
oh and i kinda loved it too, both films coulda been a tad shorter, but that's just nit picking.
Did he say he should have let Malick do it?
Quote from: Stefen on July 21, 2010, 04:31:59 AM
Did he say he should have let Malick do it?
no but there was a few mentions of Malick's involvement early on the pre-production process.
ya they mentioned that malick might have picked up the project if soderberg decided to balk at the mid pre-production point. this is when the film was basically just part 2, part 1 came about cuz soderberg felt you had to see the revolution model being successful to understand why che went to Bolivia.
Quote from: socketlevel on July 20, 2010, 10:59:35 PM
the most hope i've taken from all this is the possibility of meeting a woman, marry her and watch not only a slow moving film like che but also the making of documentary! you got a diamond in the ruff my man. where you meet her cuz i'mma start hanging out there :)
Sunrise don't tell him!
unless you want to live like this for the rest of your life:
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haha.... it's true... :shock: