Steven Soderbergh

by Anthony Kaufman

  The whole movie was like that. The analogy in sports would be when you’re in the zone. I just felt in the zone all the time. I just felt [snapping his fingers] every decision was the right decision. Things just would fall into place, even when mistakes occurred.

  PT: Did Schizopolis come together in a substantial way in the editing stage?

  SS: There’s a lot of stuff we cut out of it, but I’d say the biggest changes were during shooting, just things that would occur to me. We started cutting while we were still shooting, so I was able to see if I needed things. The great thing about it being a movie made by just a handful of people with your own equipment was we literally could sit in the editing room and say, for instance, “We need a shot of an airplane landing” and go to the office, get the equipment, and go shoot an airplane. So the amount of time between idea and execution was very small. It was great.

  PT: Who were the other five people?

  SS: John Hardy, my producer. David Jensen, who’s a grip and also an actor; he plays Elmo Oxygen; he’s worked on all my movies. Paul Ledford, who’s my production sound mixer, also worked on all my movies. Mike Malone, who played Schwitters, was an on-set dresser in The Underneath; he was there for a large part of the shoot. And then there was usually a sort of rotating fifth person.

  PT: Several of the main themes in Schizopolis were also present in sex, lies, and videotape, namely the problem of communication between couples and the difficulty of marriage. Are these both personal films?

  SS: Oh, sure. Schizopolis more so, despite its abstract, surreal quality; it’s a closer representation of my experience of the difficulties in maintaining communications in a relationship than sex, lies was. It’s all tied in together [with] what I see as the gradual simplification and almost destruction of our language. We’ve gotten lazy with it, and it’s used to obscure instead of illuminate. So the struggle to keep life meaningful is getting more and more difficult.

  PT: Tell me about the scenes in the bathroom, when you’re making faces in the mirror and masturbating in the stall. What was your intent?

  SS: Well, you know, all that is intended to be amusing—the guy’s chronic masturbation and all that—but what it means to me is not so funny. And that is, the culture, in the States especially, is so noisy and so overwhelming, and the forces that divide you from other people and from your community are so strong. The “Me” period that everybody went through yielded so little. I think the end result of all these things is a guy sitting there by himself looking in the mirror like that. This is where it’s all leading if we’re not careful—that specific type of emptiness. I’d rather people laugh at it. But a couple of people have picked up on that, who said, “That stuff was really funny, but at the same time it was really sad.” That was a one-taker, you know. I just sort of did it.

  PT: I’ve been hearing a lot of positive word of mouth about your acting in Schizopolis. Is this something you would like to do again?

  SS: Well, it wasn’t acting. Those are just variations on my personality. It wasn’t really a performance, as far as I was concerned. When there are four or five of you, and I’m lighting it and setting the shot, I go from behind the camera, then I walk and sit in the chair in front of the camera, and we roll. The whole thing was so fluid that you never really thought about it. Which is great! I don’t know if I’d be that comfortable under the conditions that movies are normally made under. I don’t really have any desire to find out.

  PT: Could you walk through the stages of financing Schizopolis?

  SS: What happened was I called Universal during The Underneath and said, “I’m going to make this movie; I don’t have a script. It’s a comedy and it’s in color, but that’s all I know. I want you to buy North American video for seventy-five grand right now.” And they did. Then after we finished shooting, I said, “Look, I want to do another film like this, and I also need more money to finish Schizopolis. So for the second film, I’ll sell you North American video and theatrical for $400,000 and you get the two films for $475,000”—always with the agreement that I could buy those rights back in order to get a distribution deal, which is what we ended up doing. When Fox Lorber came in, I used the money that Fox Lorber was paying to buy back the video rights for Schizopolis. So at the end of the day, Schizopolis will end up costing about $250–$275,000, and with the remaining money, we’ll make the sequel.

  PT: So Universal is handling nothing, and they’ve been paid back?

  SS: They’ve been paid back for Schizopolis. They did it as a favor for me.

  PT: Did they take first look for theatrical?

  SS: I think they knew. I told them, “You’re not going to want this movie. This is just to keep me going.” You know, I’ve had a good experience there. I made two movies there that didn’t make them any money, and they’ve left me completely alone and still would like me to make a film there.

  PT: Are they asking to see the sequel’s script?

  SS: No. For them, this amount of money is infinitesimal. They pay that amount for writers to do a couple months of work on a script.

  PT: What else were you doing during the ten months of off-and-on production?

  SS: Writing scripts for other people, and then, late in Schizopolis, we started making Gray’s Anatomy. So it was a pretty busy time.

  PT: What other scripts?

  SS: One of them was Nightwatch, a Miramax film. I did some work on Mimic, which is shooting [in Toronto] now, although I don’t think much of my work survived. I just turned in a draft of a script I’m writing for Henry Selleck [James and the Giant Peach], so I’ve been writing for hire back to back during the production of both films.

  PT: Do you see this as a way of continuing the new low-budget, stripped-down direction you’re taking?

  SS: Yeah, because I haven’t taken a salary on a movie since I finished The Underneath in November of ’94, so it’s my only source of income. But I don’t enjoy it, because I don’t like to write. It’s been hard, but it’s my only option. I don’t want to go direct for money, because it’s too hard and it’s a year-and-a-half. And commercials don’t interest me.

  PT: In 10 Feet in 10 Days, Marina Zenovich’s documentary-in-progress about Slamdance, you state: “Independent films are creeping towards the mainstream, and I feel there needs to be another wave of really outrageously independent films. . . . People are not feeling as independent as they used to . . . because [they] are thinking they can make money. That’s what people who make studio movies think. It’s gotten to the point where people, before they’re making their films, are wondering, ‘Is this the kind of film that’s going to get into Sundance?’ As soon as that happens, it’s really over. That’s not what you’re supposed to have in your head.” Do you believe independent film is seriously off-course?

  SS: Maybe parts of it are, but there’s always going to be someone who’s not. I don’t worry about interesting films getting made; I worry about how they’re going to get seen. Because as the stakes get higher and it gets more and more expensive to release a movie, the distributors are going to be less willing to take a risk. That’s what I found. It was a frustrating summer, toting Gray’s Anatomy and Schizopolis around and having everybody say, “I don’t think we can make this work.” We had one company say, “We ran the numbers and we decided that we actually could turn a profit with this film, but not enough of a profit to make it worth our time.” And I thought, “Gee, if you can say that about all twelve films you release this year, that’s a good year.” It was interesting both on Schizopolis and Gray’s to reimmerse myself in an area I hadn’t been in since sex, lies, which is the “We’ve made a film, now what do we do with it?” arena. It’s changed. Yeah, getting the movie made is only half of it.

  Suddenly Soderbergh: The Onetime Wunderkind Beats the Backlash

  Paula S. Bernstein / 1997

  From Village Voice, April 1, 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Generic but catchy inro. Meet at blah-blah hotel for lunch. I
nitial superficial response to subject’s appearance. Unnecessary description of food subject has ordered. Inappropriate but shocking revelation about subject’s childhood. Requisite witty quotes to promote subject’s new films.

  You know the drill and so does Steven Soderbergh. Since sex, lies, and videotape earned him international recognition in 1989 (the $1.2 million feature ended up grossing almost $100 million worldwide), the onetime wunderkind has been interviewed so many times that he could knock off a fill-in-the-blank celebrity profile about himself in minutes flat.

  But, no doubt, it’s more fun for the thirty-four-year-old auteur to read journalists’ off-the-cuff pop-psych diagnoses of his character and his once promising career. (Last month, the L.A. Times Magazine published an incisive expose entitled “The Funk of Steven Soderbergh” and, as the director points, out, “they did not mean funk as in George Clinton.”)

  Does he fear success? Is he purposely trying to piss off Hollywood? Doe he subconsciously want to be punished? It’s easy to hypothesize about why Soderbergh’s cinematic escapades post-sex, lies have flopped. But it’s unfair and perhaps incorrect to dub Soderbergh a “failure” as many peers and critics have over the past eight years. How many failed directors complete six films in eight years? What other relative newcomer to Tinseltown has been able to make a pensive film about the life of Franz Kafka (Kafka) or a dark drama about a young kid fending for himself during the Depression (King of the Hill), both on Hollywood studio tabs?

  “My definition of success,” says the director, who is handsome in a goofy, balding, lovable-geek sort of way, “is being able to do the work that you want to do. . . . I’ve never done anything because of how it would look. I’ve never not done anything because of how it would look. It’s all about what I feel I need to do right now.” About his first success, he says: “For whatever reason, people were interested in seeing that film at that time. It’s like a Nehru jacket to me. It feels so of that particular time. It’s almost a period piece. We didn’t even think it would get released. So when Miramax came in [at the U.S. Film Festival, now Sundance] with an offer of $1 million, I felt bad for them. I thought, ‘They’re insane, they’re throwing their money away. But we’ll take it.’”

  Longtime colleague Nancy Tenenbaum, who executive produced sex, lies, and videotape and recently worked with Soderbergh on Greg Mottola’s Daytrippers, is tired of hearing industry peers criticize the filmmaker’s unconventional career choices. “What a hard time these past years have been, to have everyone saying, ‘His career is over’ after sex, lies. ‘It’s over’ after Kafka. Even people in his own camp would think, ‘What’s wrong with him? Why is he making The Underneath?’ But he’s evolving. He’s constantly learning. He’s constantly pushing himself to cover areas he hasn’t done.”

  But after being singed by Hollywood (he is currently in litigation with Paramount Pictures and Scott Rudin over a planned adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces, and had a falling out with former mentor Robert Redford over King of the Hill), Soderbergh skulked into a creative rut on the set of his fourth film, The Underneath, a contemporary noir. Feeling the need for a refresher course in the joys of indie filmmaking, he trekked down to his hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to shoot the experimental Schizopolis for $250,000.

  Inspired by the Dadaist and Surrealist artists as well as by the eclectic triumvirate of Richard Lester, Luis Buñuel, and Monty Python, Schizopolis, which will open next month in New York, is a cynical yet reluctantly optimistic comedy.

  “Generic greeting!” calls out Soderbergh’s character Fletcher Munson as he arrives home to his doting wife and daughter in an early scene. “Generic greeting returned,” his wife responds, blandly cheerful. A sly commentary on the cookie-cutter scripts being made into movies (“Certainly Twister would have worked with that kind of language,” he says), the idea “grew out of what happens when a marriage has decayed to the point where language is rendered meaningless.”

  Though he can spew intellectual bullshit as well as the next self-educated indie director, Soderbergh also delights in cutting through the crap. Expounding on Schizopolis as a “provocation of sorts and a piece of agit-prop,” a moment later he notes with pride that it could also be seen as an homage to “lowbrow variety-sketch movies like The Groove Tube and Kentucky Fried Movie. I love those movies.”

  But people who are close to Soderbergh see a far more personal subtext in Schizopolis. In fact, by casting his ex-wife (actress Betsy Brantley) and their young daughter as his family in the film, Soderbergh seem intent on drawing audiences to a potentially sore spot.

  When asked what it was like directing and acting opposite his ex-wife, an unruffled Soderbergh deadpans, “I highly recommend it.” Prodded to get into more detail about the unusual circumstances, he explains, “I think everybody must have thought I was insane while we were making the movie. But, then you think, ‘It’s just life. Why shy away from it?’ In terms of my work, I’m always looking for the stupid thing to do, the thing that makes you think, ‘Why would anybody put themselves through that?’ It was very therapeutic. It really was like standing on the bow of a ship in a bad storm. It required an enormous amount of equilibrium.”

  After weathering Schizopolis Soderbergh extended his stay in Baton Rouge long enough to film Spalding Gray’s monologue Gray’s Anatomy, which opened last week at Film Forum. “So many of the ideas that are in Gray’s Anatomy I would never have thought of or considered seriously had I not made Schizopolis. It is a willingness to drop everything and go after the better idea when it presents itself. That comes from security.”

  Ironically, filming the two low-budget movies back-to-back inspired the newly energized filmmaker to return to Hollywood. “I feel completely reinvigorated about making movies again which I was in danger of losing,” he explains. Soderbergh co-wrote the screenplay of the soon-to-be-released Ewan McGregor thriller Nightwatch and is currently producing Pleasantville, by first-time filmmaker Gary Ross. He’s also editing a book of interviews with Richard Lester, one of his idols.

  Recently, Soderbergh signed on to direct a screen adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Out of Sight for Universal Pictures, the same studio that barely broke even on King of the Hill and The Underneath.

  But though George Clooney will star in Out of Sight Soderbergh is by no means selling out. The director insists that he just wants to make movies that people will see. In fact, because he realizes that Schizopolis may be “too dense and too complicated” Soderbergh tacked on a viewer-friendly prologue to ease the audience into the unconventional film: “In the event that you find certain sequences or ideas confusing,” announces a soothing, monotoned Soderbergh trapped by a spotlight at microphone, “please bear in mind that this is your fault, not ours. You will need to see the picture again and again until you understand everything.” Final clever remarks. Convenient and glib conclusion. Subject leaves the room.

  Out of Sight

  Ed Kelleher / 1998

  From Film Journal International, June 1998. Reprinted by permission.

  Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh arrived on the international cinema scene at the tender age of twenty-six in 1989, when his debut feature sex, lies, and videotape captured the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Soderbergh followed that witty tale of obsession and betrayal with Kafka (1991), a fantasy exploring the dark world of the renowned Czech writer. King of the Hill (1993), based on a memoir by A. E. Hotchner, was an unsettling study of a twelve-year-old boy abandoned in a St. Louis hotel during the Great Depression. Next up for Soderbergh was The Underneath (1993), a stylish revamping of the 1949 film noir, Criss Cross, followed by a pair of low-budget efforts, Gray’s Anatomy (1996), featuring performance artist Spalding Gray, and, in the same year, the little-seen but intriguing Schizopolis.

  Now, Soderbergh takes a decisive step into the arena of mainstream movies via Out of Sight, a rowdy, violent crime-caper movie starring George Clooney as a career bank robber who breaks out of prison, and Jennifer Lopez as a federal marshal
who falls in love with him. Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Albert Brooks (Mother), Don Cheadle (Boogie Nights), and Dennis Farina (Get Shorty) co-star in the film, which boasts a screenplay by Scott Frank (Get Shorty), adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel. Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, and Stacey Sher, partners in Jersey Films, produced the picture, with Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) and John Hardy (sex, lies, and videotape, The Underneath) aboard as executive producers. Universal will release the film nationally on June 26. Film Journal International spoke with Soderbergh via telephone in early May.

  Ed Kelleher: The last time we talked was in 1989. You were calling from Gunnison, Colorado, to talk about sex, lies.

  Steven Soderbergh: You were one of the people I called from the road.

  EK: I remember thinking: This guy just won Cannes, he is under pressure, but he’ll be able to handle it. Did you feel that way at the time?

  SS: It certainly didn’t seem like the hardest thing in the world to sort out. There are worse problems to have.

  EK: Still, there was a lot of focus on you.

  SS: Only in retrospect do I imagine that there was, because I see other people go through it now. At the time, it didn’t really seem that intense.

  EK: You’ve made a wide range of film since then, pictures that show your versatility. Was part of that to move away from sex, lies?

  SS: No, not specifically. It only reflected my eclecticism and my desire to try different things. I didn’t feel formed yet. I still felt like I was very early on in my development. I wanted to experiment and try different things. That’s the only thing I had in mind.