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CALENDAR
8th February: Side Effects released (US)
15th March: Side Effects released (UK)
THE FANLISTING
There are 445 fans listed in the Steven Soderbergh fanlisting. If you're a Soderbergh fan, add your name to the list!
UPCOMING PROJECTS
LET THEM ALL TALK
Information | Photos | Official website
Released: 2020
KILL SWITCH
Information | Photos | Official website
Released: 2020
ADVERTS
NEW & UPCOMING DVDS
Now available from Amazon.com:
 Haywire
Contagion
Now available from Amazon.co.uk:
Contagion
DVDs that include an audio commentary track from Steven:
Clean, Shaven - Criterion Collection
Point Blank
The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)
The Third Man - Criterion Collection
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
ADVERTS
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Even Stevens
Soderbergh: The man with the Plan
(Film Review magazine, February 2005) The first Ocean's film,
Steven Soderbergh gleefully pronounced, had "no social value whatsoever". Coming
off the back of two high-budget social issue movies, Erin Brockovich and
Traffic, remaking the 1960 Rat Pack heist caper afforded Soderbergh the chance
to put his brain in neutral and watch the dollars roll in - 180 million of them
in the US alone to be precise. At the time, the director who - won the Palme
D'Or for his 1989 debut sex, lies and videotape, only to sink back into
obscurity, was on the crest of a wave - having also won a Best Director Oscar
for Traffic. But after the financial failure of his last two films - Full
Frontal and Solaris - the pressure is back on for the first sequel of his
career, Ocean's Twelve.
We meet at the Venice Film Festival, where his short Equilibrium (part of a
trilogy of films with Wong Kar-Wai and Michelangelo Antonioni entitled Eros) is
playing. Now 41, he may have seen his hair thin, but it's not over concern for
the commercial expectations surrounding Ocean's Twelve. "That's an abstract to
me," he says. "It's definitely weird to make a movie [where] you know that if it
doesn't make as much money as the first one, it'll be considered a failure.
That's weird. But there's nothing I can do about it - I can only make something
I think is good and see what happens.'
Reuniting the principal cast members from the original - including Brad Pitt,
Julia Roberts, Matt Damon and Andy Garcia - the film follows suave crook Danny
Ocean as he leads his band of merry crooks to Europe, pulling off heists in
Rome, Amsterdam and Paris. All the while, they are being pursued by Garcia's
unscrupulous casino owner Terry Benedict, whom they swindled in the first film.
Based on a script by George Nolfi (adapted from a screenplay he'd written for
John Woo to direct), Soderbergh notes he wanted to make "a bigger movie" than
its predecessor with roughly the same ($85 million) budget, thus dispelling the
notion that 'bigger and better' sequels must cost more. "It's really different
from the first film," he says. It's going to be interesting to see how people
respond. I think it's as entertaining but it's got a very different set of
priorities. It's more emotional, its more character-driven and it's more
complicated on a narrative level. I hope people can ride with it."
As productions go, it's been one of Soderbergh's more difficult. Compared to the
previous outing for the Ocean's team, largely filmed in Las Vegas, the sequel's
cast and crew had to contend with European paparazzi, and with fabricated
stories filling column inches on a daily basis. Most involved new cast member
Catherine Zeta Jones, who plays the former girlfriend of Pitt's crook Rusty Ryan
- from reported feuds between her and Roberts over top billing and wardrobe
choices, to gossip that her love scenes with Pitt lacked sizzle. "That was
interesting," says Soderbergh. "I swear to God, I've never had the experience
before of reading stuff about instances where I was present that were totally
fabricated. That was strange."
Whatever the fate of Ocean's Twelve, Soderbergh maintains he won't alter his
desire to mix commercial films with more esoteric fare. In the future, he is
hoping to make a biopic of Che Guevara with Benicio Del Toro and the story of a
food industry whistleblower, The Inforniant. His production company Section
Eight, co-owned with Clooney, is also in full swing; this month sees the release
of Criminal, a remake of Argentinean con movie Nine Queens. Soderbergh co-wrote
it with its director, his friend and former assistant director Greg Jacobs.
He's also re-cutting Kafka, the 1991 movie met with critical apathy after the
huge expectations that dogged him in the wake of sex, lies and videotape.
"While we were doing Ocean's, I went back in to re-organize it. It's a
completely different film. There's new material - stuff that I shot that never
made the movie is now in there. I'm doing it for my own interest - to see if I
can make something out of it that I'm happier with. I think the goal,
ultimately, is to put out a double DVD with the original and the new version."
Aware more than most of the fickle nature of Hollywood, Soderbergh is exploiting
his current kudos to the max. "Success just feels like lightning struck," he
says. "You could stand on the roof with a rod for the next two years and
lightning wouldn't strike twice. You just can't conjure it." Ocean's Twelve
might yet prove him wrong.
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