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May 15, 2009

Soderbergh On TGE & More

Steven Soderbergh does not want to be on the cover of People Magazine.

Actually, on the occasion of my second DP/30 video interview with Steven that was canceled less than 24 hours before it was scheduled, I asked him what the problem was. The first problem seems to be that he doesn't get asked about the shoot far enough ahead of time to cancel sooner. But more importantly, he doesn't want to be a famous face. He explained that the last few times he did press for movies in which his face was photographed and shown all over the place, he went months without anonymity... which didn't serve him well.

As you read about how he shot The Girlfriend Experience on the streets of NY, you completely get that. As a guy in a ballcap, glasses, and an amazing camera that he doesn't need to light for much, he can run and gun all over town. As a celebrity director on the streets of the city, he would be endlessly pestered. Makes sense.

As for that camera, the Red, you can feel his excitement as he talks about it and its future iterations. Soderbergh's alter ego, Peter Andrews, has become one of the world's leading edge cinematographers. "It's almost as if they designed the camera for me," he says of the Red. And he expects the freedom and high quality imagery that this camera gives to only improve and improve and improve. Forget about film stock... they aren't even shooting tape anymore. It's digital cards all the way... stacked up as the work progresses.

Another thing Soderbergh says he has chosen not to do for years now... read reviews. He speaks of the Erin Brockovich/Traffic year and that it could "only go down from there." He acknowledges that he still has a sense of how things are running and what some of the key reviewers are saying, given that he is quite hands on in dealing with distribution. For instance, he said that had Todd McCarthy not declared jihad on Che' at Cannes last year, the sale would have been done during the festival and probably with more money involved.

That said, he appreciates the effort IFC made in the release... though he is still frustrated by having to speed up the roll-out, after a very, very successful road show playing the entire film in one 4.5 hour block with intermission, not because IFC or he wanted to, but because there was a contractual obligation to do so in one of the funding contracts. In fact, the greatest success for the picture, which will make good money for IFC, was the roadshow version... the whole thing. That was, as he puts it, "the clutter breaker." But the requirement that they jump to 25 markets in January, he feels (and I agree, though before this chat I wasn't sure how exactly how and why this fall off had happened) killed their momentum.

It seems that at 46, Steven Soderbergh knows exactly where he wants to be… what he MUST do… what can be less pressured in terms of box office… and how to dance the dance to do it all, as he wants to do it.

Soderbergh was particularly excited about bringing the The Informant to Toronto in September, focusing on Matt Damon’s performance, which he clearly sees as a gem. He’s working on Moneyball now, which, he repeated, ”HAS to work.” (He also points out that the form for the Brad Pitt-starring film will be "unexpected," but he expects, entertaining.) After that, it’s back to his musical, Cleo, which he says he has always wanted to do, but which will be more about seemingly impossible massive, complex shots and less about some of the stuff that other directors have been interested in lately. (Soderbergh is one of the few directors who throws out budget number like potato chips... which I won't quote here... because it doesn't help anyone or anything.)

Thing is, you don’t get the impression that it’s “one for me, one for them,” but rather that it’s all for him and if he gets derailed a bit, he knows he will get that train moving again someday. He says that only 2 of the Section 8 projects at Warner Bros/WIP have not been made… well 1, really, since the material for the other one was ultimately made by someone else.

If, he says, he has to do 5 Magnolia-sized movies in a row because that’s the way the chips fall, he’s fine with that. On the other hand, he is always willing to consider working for hire as a director, as he did on Erin Brockovich, a movie he remembered calling “the worst idea for a movie (he’d) ever heard” before it came back to him at a later time and he decided to do it.

And sidebar… he’s working on a new book, somewhat in the style of his Faber & Faber masterpiece (with Richard Lester), Getting Away With It… different director being interviewed… different tone. Can’t wait.

I am, unabashedly, a believer in Soderbergh. He’s made a few bad movies over the years. He has made more misunderstood, undervalued movies. And of course, his hits. He is, to my eye, what a director should be… ambitious, anxious, profoundly gifted, passionate, wily, and uninterested in having his train of thought interrupted by discussing his train of thought too much… not never… just not too much. He is, amazingly enough, what Woody Allen wanted to be… he hunkers down and does the work to peaks and valleys of success… and he can hit to all fields, as well as sending them out of the park.

I went into this conversation without a tape recorder, anxious to reconnect after not talking movies with the man since Solaris, but still a little frustrated by being tantalized by a green light on video again only to have it go red hours before. In Toronto, we’ll talk again. This time, we’ll run tape (or rather, a digital card), but we’ll not only not show his face… we will feel good about not showing his face.

Posted by dpoland at May 15, 2009 03:43 PM

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