“Cinema is under assault,” Steven Soderbergh told an audience in San Francisco over the weekend. He said that the Hollywood studios are to blame and that moviegoers are their accomplices. “Fewer and fewer executives in the industry love movies,” Soderbergh continued, “There’s a total lack of leadership in my opinion, that’s what’s killing cinema.” The director’s remarks came at the San Francisco International Film Festival’s annual State of Cinema Address. It was a sort of Jerry Maguire memo, “Cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s as unique as a fingerprint. If it’s done well, you know exactly who made it,” Steven Soderbergh defined on Saturday, “Is there a difference between cinema and movies? If I ran team America, I’d say fuck ya. Cinema is something that is made, movies are seen.”
Soderbergh said that he needed $5 million to make his upcoming Liberace movie, Behind the Candelabra, which stars Michael Douglas as the famous piano player and Matt Damon as the musician’s lover. Yet he said that the studios needed the movie to gross $70 million to make it work financially. “No one has figured out how to lower the costs of marketing movies…no one,” Soderbergh said. “The thing that mystifies me is in terms of spending, is there anyone in the galaxy that doesn’t know Iron Man 2 is opening that weekend!?” He continued, ”Studios only gamble on openings instead of supporting filmmakers over the long haul. In my opinion, it’s about horses - not races.”
“Executives don’t get punished for making bombs the way filmmakers do,” Soderbergh charged, “So there’s no turnover with people who don’t know their own business.” “I’m spending so much time talking business and sexy math because this is what’s driving everything right now,” Soderbergh said. Yet he also sounded a few optimistic notes. So what would he do differently? “If I were running a studio, I’d get a Shane Carruth, a Barry Jenkins and an Amy Seimetz and ask ‘What do you wanna make?’” Soderbergh said, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect someone running a multi-billion dollar business to be able to identify talent. I’m wrong a lot, it doesn’t even raise my blood pressure anymore, maybe the audiences are happy, the studios are happy – maybe I’m wrong. Maybe everything is just fine,” Soderbergh said at one point near the end of his speech. The room erupted with some chuckles because clearly those in the audience agreed with him that everything isn’t just fine. —The World According to Steven: Insights from Soderbergh
With thanks to Jacob Rosenberg
I’m always on board with Soderbergh and this movie just looks so damn fancy. Looking forward to it.
VIDEO ESSAY: Peter Andrews: The Soderbergh Vision by Nelson Carvajal and Matt Zoller Seitz.
Thinking about ‘Side Effects’
It’s nearly impossible to love movies but not ruin them for yourself. Trailers and sneak peeks entice movie lovers but often spoil fun plot points or even misdirect (sometimes intentionally) viewers. Steven Soderbegh’s newest (his 9th in the last 6 years, with an HBO movie on soon to arrive) most likely isn’t the movie you think it is. It’s not even the movie you probably think it is after the first half of its run time.
About midway through, the movie pivots and reveals itself to be a taught thriller. One that made me want to go back and see just how we got where we ended up. That the film is able to change that drastically without having to alter tone or tear down what had already been established is testament to the direction of Soderbegh and the writing of Scott Z. Burns (this being their 3rd collaboration in 4 years).
The best thing you could do is watch Side Effects without knowing anything about it. But if you’re reading this, you’ve already gone too far. So go see it and then think about seeing it again. Think about what it is on its own merits and not based on what the trailer is telling you it is. Or what your own eyes are telling you.
I think the only note I gave him, when I first pitched him the part on the phone, was that his character believed in UFOs…It wasn’t a way of diminishing the character. It was actually the opposite. My mom was a parapsychologist, so I grew up around that stuff.
You’re likely to have already been linked to this interview with Steven Soderbergh over on Vulture, but I don’t think I’ve explicitly stated how much I enjoyed it.
Well, I think a part of you has to be scared, it keeps you alert; otherwise you become complacent. So absolutely, I’m purposefully going after things and doing things that I’m not sure if it’s going to come off or not. Certainly Full Frontal was one of those. That was pure experimentation, that’s the kind of film that you make going in where you know that a lot of people are not going to like it because it’s an exploration of the contract that exists between the film-maker and the audience and what happens when you violate that contract.
Happy 50th Birthday Steven Soderbergh!
(via fuckyeahdirectors)
“People ask me, ‘Do you like this movie?’ And as a disinterested, objective filmgoer who had nothing to do with it, I’d say it’s a good movie. I’d recommend it to my friends. But as a screenwriter, I think it’s crippled.” —Screenwriter Lem Dobbs, commentary track for The Limey
Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs discuss their film The Limey. While discussing the film, Dobbs bluntly criticizes Soderbergh for perceived “flaws” in the film and Soderbergh is put on the defensive for much of the commentary.
Note: The chronology of this commentary track was intentionally jumbled by the studio to resemble the non-chronological ordering of the films narrative. It was intended to be this way. Bits of dialogue from Soderbergh and Dobbs conversation is replayed multiple times throughout the track as well. Again, this was how the track was meant to be.The New Cult Canon: The Limey filmmaker commentary track
A 53,000 word masterpiece of an interview with the screenwriter Lem Dobbs (Dark City, The Limey)
Screenwriter Lem Dobbs & Steven Soderbergh, commentary track for The Limey: is.gd/Sb25j8 #filmmaking #screenwriting
— LaFamiliaFilm (@LaFamiliaFilm) December 2, 2012
This is the commentary track, so it’s best watched with the film but you could listen to a ton of it without and it’s still awesome. One of the most honest conversations about the process of filmmaking between writer and director. Thoroughly fascinating for people interested in the inner workings.
Haywire, hotel fight.
He also nails Soderbergh, probably the most interesting filmmaker working right now: ”These days Soderbergh makes movies to solve problems, not tell stories — he wants to see Gina Carano run. The script is just an excuse.”
Something probably requiring further self-examination, specifically regarding sexual orientation:
the amount of which I’m looking forward to this movie about male strippers.
First trailer and poster for Magic Mike
Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh’s look at the world of male strippers, has released a first trailer, with Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughey disrobing for the entertainment of a crowd of baying women.
I’m always down for whatever Soderbergh wants to make and Tatum is becoming a less abhorrent actor to watch since his successfully comedic turn in ‘21 Jump Street.’ So I’m down.
I’m looking forward to ‘Haywire’ and most anything Soderbergh wants to try.
Haywire (Dir. Steven Soderbergh)
Mallory Kane is a highly trained operative who works for a government security contractor in the dirtiest, most dangerous corners of the world. After successfully freeing a Chinese journalist held hostage, she is double crossed and left for dead by someone close to her in her own agency. Suddenly the target of skilled assassins who know her every move, Mallory must find the truth in order to stay alive.
Because she’s a shitty character. We know who she is because, by virtue of being the first female superhero (or at least the first to catch) she is given icon status. That coupled with the rather popular Linda Carter TV series means she’s part of the national consciousness but realistically she brings very little to the table. She has nothing of interest that she owns. All of her powers are the same set of stock powers each superhero gets with no real hook. So how did she catch on in the first place?
Because her hook was that she was a woman. That’s it. That’s all of it. She came from an island of all women because apparently no woman from a man’s world could ever rise to this level of hero-dom, I guess and she was interesting because she was the only woman around. That worked in the 40’s, but today a superhero who is a woman for the sake of having a woman be a superhero isn’t enough. She needs to be interesting in her own right and Wonder Woman simply isn’t.
On the other hand, this isn’t justification to not have a movie, because the truth is Superman is just as shitty of a character and he’s had all kinds of movie success. Again, he’s granted special “icon” status which means that he’s not to be touched culturally, even though whatever he brought to the table in 1938 had worn thin by the 60’s (cue the Marvel takeover and the implementation of round characters in comic books). So there are other things at work here as well. In the article, Peterman dismisses the idea that its hard to sell a female-led action movie, but until casting directors figure out what me and Steven Soderbergh figured out about picking a woman right for a given role - rather than taking the least-terrible actor who is pretty - people will have trouble with women in action roles. Of course, the other problem is that filmmakers want women to do all the same things men do in action movies, which is a whole other set of problems. You have to acknowledge that men and women are indeed different in specific ways and adjust for that in the writing of the character rather than slap together a set of generic actions that a stock character does in a re-hashed situation.
But now I’m pretending Hollywood’s goal is to make good movie. I’ll stop being so silly.
