I found this in a NYT article from 1998, when he was cleaning up with Out of Sight: "Yes," he said one afternoon recently at his production office in Hollywood. "I had a bad case of my 20's, of being overly serious. And now I feel better at my job than I was." I don't know if that's the exact quote I had in mind--doesn't seem all that bad. Still, I like the "overly serious" sex, lies & videotape better than Out of Sight or Traffic (haven't seen Erin Brockovich), even though I realize Out of Sight would win a three-way poll handily.
― clemenza, Monday, 14 March 2011 20:28 (thirteen years ago) link
it's funny, I don't remember a single thing about SL&V except for Andie McDowell talking to a video camera.
― garage rock is usually very land-based (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 14 March 2011 20:30 (thirteen years ago) link
she lied to the camera, i'm pretty sure
― some dude, Monday, 14 March 2011 20:33 (thirteen years ago) link
i think i've watched ocean's 11 like a million times and i always love it
― gr8080 sings the blues (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 14 March 2011 20:35 (thirteen years ago) link
Peter Gallagher's hilarious as the idiot husband. I also like Spader; most people'd find him insufferable. And Laura San Giacomo's yum-yum. (In general, I think it's a much funnier film than its reputation would have it.)
― clemenza, Monday, 14 March 2011 20:37 (thirteen years ago) link
sex, lies, and videotape is a pretty conventional indie film though -- even for its time! I wouldn't put it in the experimental camp.
Traffic is failed agitprop. I was one of those guys fooled for a few weeks into thinking the fun Erin Brockovich was the less 'serious' film.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 March 2011 20:38 (thirteen years ago) link
All the actors are first-rate in SLV. I could forgive casting agents thinking Andie McDowell had talent.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 March 2011 20:41 (thirteen years ago) link
Maybe it wasn't experimental formally, but it was still, from how I remember it, a much different film than most everything in theaters at the time. (What were the comparable indie films? I remember 1989 as Rain Man and Working Girl and all that.) It felt like an early-70s film to me. Not a good thing for everyone; for me, high praise.
― clemenza, Monday, 14 March 2011 20:44 (thirteen years ago) link
― garage rock is usually very land-based (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 14, 2011 4:30 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark
haha same - i remember james spader changing into jeans in a gas station bathroom and that's it
― ℳℴℯ ❤\(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Monday, 14 March 2011 20:44 (thirteen years ago) link
The characters drink a lot of iced tea.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 March 2011 20:45 (thirteen years ago) link
Maybe it wasn't experimental formally, but it was still, from how I remember it, a much different film than most everything in theaters at the time. (What were the comparable indie films? I remember 1989 as Rain Man and Working Girl and all that.)
Spike Lee, Nancy Savoca, Jarmusch, etc had all made splashes before SLV. I'm not diluting Soderbergh's triumph: Ameri-indie needed an avatar. And I do like the movie (I own it). But SLV is a first film in the good and not so good sense: it's clever, facile, beholden to ill-considered ideas about sex and women. He was a better filmmaker by the time he made Out of Sight; he learned to trust how an actress like Jennifer Lopez can sip bourbon thoughtfully and say everything about sex without dialogue.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 March 2011 20:54 (thirteen years ago) link
oh god jlo in that movie..............................oof. he could make movies that are nothing but jlo sipping beverages thoughtfully for the rest of his life and i would be happy.
― scott seward, Monday, 14 March 2011 21:02 (thirteen years ago) link
is jennifer lopez supposed to be a good actress? i saw this movie on a flight once where she was having a sperm donor baby
― plax (ico), Monday, 14 March 2011 21:13 (thirteen years ago) link
She was great in Anaconda.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, 14 March 2011 21:14 (thirteen years ago) link
jk she was awful. No she's not a good actress.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, 14 March 2011 21:15 (thirteen years ago) link
ill-considered ideas about sex and women
I knew there was something I connected with in that film...Personally, I consider SLV more experimental than Do The Right Thing (which I like). There are aspects of Do the Right Thing that make it very much an audience film; for better or worse, SLV is not that. Clever and facile...well, I don't want to get into an Up in the Air thing all over again; I don't think there's anything especially facile about SLV. (Clever in the pejorative sense, probably, to the extent that it's entire storyline is the kind of thing that only exists in the movies...which is okay, because it's a movie.)
― clemenza, Monday, 14 March 2011 21:15 (thirteen years ago) link
I have a feeling I would like SLV much now.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, 14 March 2011 21:17 (thirteen years ago) link
wouldn't, rather
Do the Right Thing isn't particularly experimental, it's just really really good
― garage rock is usually very land-based (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 14 March 2011 21:51 (thirteen years ago) link
Is SLV really that experimental?
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, 14 March 2011 21:55 (thirteen years ago) link
No.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 01:49 (thirteen years ago) link
Whether J-Lo is a good actress is beside the point, really. Soderbergh used her well, and she delivered.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 01:50 (thirteen years ago) link
same for Andie McDowell.
clemenza, you've got a different idea about 'seventies film' than I do. American seventies films were a lot more sensual and crowdpleasing than SLV, which is closer to the spirit of a Rohmer thing.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 01:55 (thirteen years ago) link
same for Sasha Grey.
― A Very Small Bag of Phrases (Eazy), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 01:57 (thirteen years ago) link
same for Julia Roberts.
Out of Sight is a really well cast movie period.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 01:57 (thirteen years ago) link
clemenza, you've got a different idea about 'seventies film' than I do.
We probably do, yes.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:09 (thirteen years ago) link
When I say SLV is experimental, I don't mean it's Michael Snow or Stan Brakhage or anything like that; I meant in relation to, I don't know, The Accidental Tourist and other acclaimed American films of the day. It does some somewhat unusual stuff with the videotaping scenes. That's all.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:14 (thirteen years ago) link
ha, not being very crowdpleasing was v much a new hollywood thing, look at the box office for many of the most revered ones
― buzza, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:17 (thirteen years ago) link
Compared to the Accidental Tourist, the Muppets Take Manhattan was experimental.
― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:19 (thirteen years ago) link
Great line, but I'll stand by my point that SLV is not a conventional film.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:23 (thirteen years ago) link
I'd rather use the term provocative than experimental.
Watched it again recently and it holds up well. Spader 4 lyfe.
― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:24 (thirteen years ago) link
― ℳℴℯ ❤\(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Monday, March 14, 2011 8:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
what about laura san giacomo's boobs?
― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:31 (thirteen years ago) link
I wish...if you've seen some director's cut I'm not aware of, please let me know.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:35 (thirteen years ago) link
IIRC she doesn't take him out, but does wear a lot of impressive tank tops
― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 03:37 (thirteen years ago) link
we do get to see her booTs however
http://www.celebarazzi.com/content/Thumbnails/L/Laura_San-Giacomo/Laura_San_Giacomo_Sex_Lies_02.jpg
I love the contrast between Spader's acting and his mullet.
― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 March 2011 12:57 (thirteen years ago) link
Soderbergh talks more about retiring and all.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 16 June 2011 02:30 (thirteen years ago) link
And the trailer for Haywire (the spy movie with Gina Carano) is out: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/haywire/
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Saturday, 23 July 2011 03:12 (thirteen years ago) link
huh, weird. it looks like it was made very cheaply. and it almost looks like a pastiche of a straight-to-video action film.
soderbergh is very smart. he reminds me of hal hartley in how in interviews he comes across as a bit self-regarding and pompous but also as very unsentimental and hard-nosed. and extremely smart and articulate. i actually think they have a lot in common -- both seem to view movies mostly in terms of the possibilities for visual invention. and both see filmmaking as largely a question of problem-solving. that's part of the "hard nosed" bit.
that said i seldom find in soderbergh's films the sort of moment-to-moment inventiveness that i find in the best hartley films (mostly from the early 1990s). too often his visual intelligence seems put in the service of these kind of half-baked "schemes" that are somewhat interesting to contemplate but don't provide a great deal of visceral pleasure.
his statement that he feels bored with mainstream narrative filmmaking should probably be taken at face value--he's bored. but it's hard not to find it a bit hubristic. i mean, lots of great filmmakers never seemed to get bored with narrative filmmaking. it can't be because they were necessarily less intelligent than soderbergh. what he's really admitting here is not the limit of narrative filmmaking but his own limits as a filmmaker. he'd probably own up to that too, but because he doesn't frame it that way he comes across as pretentious.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 23 July 2011 03:35 (thirteen years ago) link
i was going to say, i can see "pastiche of a straight-to-video action film" being another one of soderbergh's "concepts," much like "erin brokhovich" was very self-consciously him "doing" an inspiring movie-of-the-week thing.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 23 July 2011 03:36 (thirteen years ago) link
to clarify, maybe: both hartley and soderbergh openly discuss thinking about films in terms of their graphic potential, in terms of the image.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 23 July 2011 03:37 (thirteen years ago) link
his statement that he feels bored with mainstream narrative filmmaking should probably be taken at face value--he's bored. but it's hard not to find it a bit hubristic. i mean, lots of great filmmakers never seemed to get bored with narrative filmmaking.
i know, right? this is my least favorite thing for a filmmaker to say, i think. it infuriates me. i get bored with YOU, steven soderbergh!
― horseshoe, Saturday, 23 July 2011 04:23 (thirteen years ago) link
in communist russia... etc.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 23 July 2011 04:27 (thirteen years ago) link
and Soderberg has proven an expert in narrative filmmaking (sex, lies, and videotape, Erin Brockovich).
― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 23 July 2011 11:28 (thirteen years ago) link
i agree, he's made some excellent films -- it's just an odd thing to say that he feels that he's exhausted the format. i believe he's sincere, and probably humble about it too, but it comes across as hubristic just the same.
― by another name (amateurist), Saturday, 23 July 2011 11:32 (thirteen years ago) link
i think you're allowed to be bored by something that other people didn't get bored by
― graveshitwave (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 23 July 2011 11:47 (thirteen years ago) link
no
― horseshoe, Saturday, 23 July 2011 14:01 (thirteen years ago) link
not allowed