From Village Voice, April 1, 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Generic but catchy inro. Meet at blah-blah hotel for lunch. Initial 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.