Happy Sad Confused - Steven Soderbergh

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Find a more fascinating director in the history of the medium than Steven Soderbergh. Go ahead, we'll wait. He's done it all, worked in every conceivable genre, won all the awards, and never stopped experimenting and pushing the medium. On this episode of "Happy Sad Confused", Soderbergh joins Josh to talk about his latest film, "Let Them All Talk", the "Sex, Lies, & Videotape" sequel he's just written, the relevance of "Contagion" today, and his forecast for the future of film! Links to Josh's stuff mentioned in the podcast! Stir Crazy with Chris Pine! Josh's MTV interview with Gal Gadot! The Wakeup podcast featuring Josh! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get after him or have you shot You mean blow up the building From this moment on None of you are safe New episodes every Wednesday Wherever you get your podcasts Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now.

Today on Happy, Said Confused, Stephen Soderberg on Let Them All Talk, a sex lies in videotape sequel and a very productive year in quarantine. Hey guys, I'm Josh Harowitz. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. I've said it before, I'll say it again. We're in the midst of a very cool little director run on Happy Sad Confused. confused, and the beat goes on today was Steven Soderberg, somebody I've wanted to have on the podcast for forever. I mean, since I started the podcast five years ago, if you would ask me, five or ten filmmakers I wanted on it, Steven Soderberg would have been on the list. So thrilled that it finally happened. I have

chatted with him back in the day, but never in podcast form. And he is, you know, one of the smartest, most interesting filmmakers out there and has been for decades since launching. with sex lies and videotape. So there was a lot to talk about with the great Steven Soderberg, and we cover a lot in this conversation. He is, as I said, having, you know, a lot of us have slowed down in 2020. A lot of us kind of had to kind of reassess and figure out how we were going to work and live, but Stephen Soderberg seemed to, if anything, rev up his creative juices this year. He finished three screenplays. He produced Bill and Ted. He directed a new film that is going to be out next year, and he finished editing and has released the new HBO Max film, Let Them All Talk.

So not surprising. I mean, if you look at Steven Soderberg's career, he is not one to be precious about material. He just barrels through and tries stuff and experiments, and it's always thrilling to see what he's up to. The new film, What Them All Talk, is a delightful film. It's gotten great reviews and well warranted. It stars Merrill Streep, Diane Weiss, in Candace Bergen, and it takes place all on a cruise ship. And it's a very much a conversational, you know, as Soderberg talks about in this conversation, he's attracted to two people talking in a room at the end of the day. And this is very much that.

Sometimes it's more than two people. And sometimes it's not a room. It's on the deck of a cruise ship. But the principle is sound. This is a kind of a lightly comedic at times, dramatic at times showcase for some great performances from three of our best actresses. And yeah, it's well worth your time. It's on HBO Max. Let Them All Talk is the film. I highly recommend it. But as I said, we cover a lot in this conversation. I'm fascinated by the fact that Soderberg has gone back to the beginning and

has written a sex-lise and videotape sequel. We talk about that. That's fascinating. We talk about his, you know, we go all the way back to Schizophrenis. If you know Soderberg's work, his career is so diverse, so bizarre, and nothing more bizarre than the film that he starred in called Schizophrenas. We talk about his performance in that. We talk about his fortation with directing a Bond film at one point. He actually was pursued or was pursuing directing a James Bond film. I find that fascinating. And of course, he's one of the smartest guys about the industry matters. So we, of course, talk about sort of the state of the industry and the future of film exhibition. and he's a lot to say on that.

Not to mention a little bit on contagion, too. Let's not forget that Steven Soderberg had the film that in retrospect was maybe the most prescient about the year that we had in 2020. So we talk a little bit about that and whether he's considered a contagion follow-up. So, as I said, we cover a lot in this conversation, and he was and is a delight. So thrilled that he was on the podcast. Other things to mention. Well, one disclaimer on the Soderberg conversation, we did conduct this.

chat right before it was announced that he was going to be one of the producers of the 2021 Oscars. So sadly, there's no reference to that in here, but I, for one, am thrilled that he's going to be on board for that, because, again, you want a smart guy that knows film, and that is Steven Soderberg. Other things to mention in the Josh Harrowitz EcoSphere as we head towards the end of 2020. Newster crazy episode out this week. Our last one of 2020 is with Chris Pine. He is delightful, and we had a good time. He is, of course, promoting Wonder Woman 1984, the usual assortment of silly games, ribbing about all the Chris's and where he stands in the rankings.

Chris Pine was game for my shenanigans, and I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did. That's on Comedy Central's YouTube and Facebook page. I'll put the link in the show notes for this episode. Other things to mention, I also have an interview with Gal Gadot. I'll put that in the show notes as well for MTV News. and I think posting this week is also my interview with Tessa Thompson about her movie, Sylvie's Love. So look out for that. A lot to come as we finish up the insane year that was 2020.

I'm happy to say all systems go on 2021. We've already shot stir-crazy episodes. We've already banked, happy-said-confused episodes. So there will be no break. There'll be a small break for stir-crazy, I should say, but there'll be no break for happy-sad-confused. We're back next week with one more. more fantastic director before we say goodbye to 2020. One other thing to mention, I popped in on another podcast this week.

You should check out the wake-up. I've mentioned this podcast before. It's a great kind of digest of all the media entertainment news headlines in five to ten minutes done by my buddy, Sean McNulty. He interviewed me for that. We talk a little bit about the state of the industry, about what to expect from the Oscar season, what to expect at Sundance coming up in late January, covered a lot of territory in that, and hopefully Sean edited my rambling comments to make me seem semi-coherent.

But give that a listen. The wake-up is the podcast. Subscribe to it everywhere you get. Happy, Sad Confused, and I hope you guys dig that as well. All right. Enough preamble. Let's get to the main event, Mr. Steven Soderberg. Remember to review, rate and subscribe to Happy, Sad Confused.

Spread the good word. Here is my chat with Stephen Soderberg. Mr. Steven Soderberg, welcome to the more dignified than ever Happy Sight Confused podcast. I mean, we have you here, so we must be doing something right. Thanks for being with us. Oh, my pleasure. By my count in 2020, the year when many of us kind of slowed to a crawl, you've written three screenplays, you produced Bill and Ted, you shot a movie, you're releasing a new movie. I love your output, but I also hate you for this, Stephen.

Talk to me a little bit about, did the cadence of your work change this? past year or it seems like if anything revved you up? Well, as soon as it became clear, we were going to have to hunker down. We were in New York, my wife and I, when the, when things got bad in March. So I just had to sit down and figure out how to keep myself occupied. And there were several projects that were in my proximity that needed attention and so I just started going through the list because otherwise I would have gone a little batty right and you know I think the last since the summer I think what's been hard for people is is the uncertainty I think there was this initial wave of like, oh, three months, I can kind of wrap my head around

that. And when you got to the end of those three months and nothing had really changed enough to feel we were going to be on the other side of it, and then it started getting worse again. I think that level of uncertainty on the part of, you know, a couple of hundred million people is a is a very intense and real psychological factor in in our everyday lives. Like you can feel it. You can literally feel it, even if you're not out. If you're communicating with your friends, you can feel it. It's tough.

Was it, I mean, by everything I've read, you've kind of shifted your focus in recent years away from writing and yet you've worked on three different screenplays this year. Was that, is there any rhyme or reason to that? They were screenplays that you had already kind of done some work on or... Yeah, they ran the gamut. One was something that I felt needed just a bit of a pass on a new, a new approach. One was an original, which was the sexualized sequel. And one was this adaptation of David Levine's novel, City of the Sun.

these were all things that I'd thought about and were like I said sort of on my to-do list but not flashing red and seemed like those first three months felt like a really good time to kind of curl up and take a run at those but you're right I don't I don't I I've really walked away from the idea of being a writer. I think I wrote as a way of getting in, but I'm not a writer in the way that I consider other people to be writers. So, and everything got better when I started working with other writers as far as my directorial career went. So this was just necessity. Right. I was I was totally alone and it was it was a good thing for me to do and again i would think in particular for something like the sex-wise continuation that's your baby that's something as you said you wrote as a you know to further your own career in the beginning you know those characters you know the story you want to tell why farm that out to somebody else that feels intrinsically of you exactly and i

felt like i had a fairly clear idea of what it was about and what it needed to be and And where two of the characters are now and what issues they're grappling with that are connected to the issues that they were dealing with in the first film. So it was, that one came out pretty quickly because like the first one I've been thinking about it for a while and then just sat down and started packing away. So we'll see what comes of any of those, but like I said, it was a really good thing for me to do, it got me, you know, embedded in pure storytelling in a way that's, that's always going to be beneficial.

Just being inside of something that way just helps you think about story in a fresh way. And I hadn't been that intimate with it in a while. So it was good for me. As we take this, we're at the, we're December. A tradition that I always look forward to is to see what you consumed. in terms of pop culture, TV, film, et cetera, at the end of the year, I like the, I'm looking forward to like the day

where you watched The Queen's Gambit and three times in a row watched Hubey Halloween just because that's you. You can go every which way. Yeah, there's some, there's a range this year. Certainly during the earlier part of the year, I had more time to watch things. But what I, you know.

What a fascinating process this has all been this year for people who make things and people who put them out. I think there's going to be a lot of, as disruptive as it's been and painful for people, there's no question in my mind. There's going to be some really interesting new ideas that evolve out of the activity that's going on now to just keep things kind of moving. So I think there's as bad as it is, if we're not able to extract something positive out of it, then that's doubly horrible. Did it, did it affect the production that you just completed, the one I believe you shot at Detroit

with this missing cast? Mostly, mostly in a financial sense. We were able to set up a system of protocols that didn't slow the production down at all. But the cost of it and the psychological stress of it is pretty palpable. But we managed to get through it. And that was a real accomplishment. The good news is, you know, this can be done safely. You just have to be really rigorous about the protocols and more importantly you you really have to convince anybody who's not in a bubble if you're not able to create a bubble during the production if people are going to home you really need them to buy in to being paranoid during during the shoot because the the virus isn't going to originate on the set it's got to be

brought to the set. So if you can get everybody to really stay on board for the length of the production, you can do this. You can do it safely. And I think in a weird sort of way, there was some, you know, I was in one of the zones where I was being tested three times a week. And you were, you, and I was, we were living in the hotel bubble. And I felt very safe. I felt, I felt like it was working, and it did work. So it can be done. Your new film is let them all talk on HBO Max, and you've made so many different types of films.

You've made films that have won Oscars. You've had films that have sadly been ignored by the public or critics and worse sometimes. I mean, you've had it all. I'm curious, does the reception at this point mean more or less the same? Have you steal yourself? I mean, this one, thankfully, is getting a really great reception. does it matter in all honesty?

Does it, is it about the process? Can it be about the process and the process alone? It's, for me, it's mostly about the process. The response matters in a couple of different ways. The most, you know, obvious being, it affects the commercial life of the peace. People go to see more things. that are positively reviewed than things that are slammed. So there's just that sort of economic reality that factors into the response.

And then there's the judging, which is very subjective on the part of the filmmaker, let's say in either direction, what should I extract from that response? Is it all their fault or is part of it my fault? And like I said, that can work in the direction of having something be very positively viewed and very heavily watched. It's conceivable to find yourself in a scenario in which something that you feel ambivalent about is not creating a sense of ambivalence in the, in the wider world, and what are you supposed to extract from that? Yeah, that disconnect must be so disorienting. It's bizarre.

Yeah, I would argue it's even, it would even be more disorienting, so than the opposite. But for me, it doesn't rearrange the pixels, what people say. Right. So it doesn't, in that regard, it doesn't really matter. And also, as you know, people's feelings about things change. You know, 20 years later, they may look at it differently for better or worse. So I think you have to, the key is to just not second guess a potential response to something. You need to be inside of it while you're making it creating something that you would stand in line to go see or, you know, buy a subscription to see.

You're the audience, anything else, you've lost where North is. One of those old axioms is to write what you know. And I know you didn't necessarily write this one. And in fact, there's a lot of improvisational material in there as well. But it could be argued like, great that Steven Soderberg's doing this. But why Steven Soderberg doing a film about three women of a certain age? How does that relate to your life, your interests? What is the connective tissue?

What do you, what about these lives, the story is intrinsically interesting and relevant to your life? Well, I really wanted to see these two generations talking to each other in a way that was designed to bring out real ideas and real feelings. feelings that are all around us right now. Although as it turns out, you know, we shot this film last in the fall of 2019 and the world has changed completely. Yeah, on a cruise ship, no west. Yeah, it's not a, normally this would be a contemporary,

considered a contemporary film. It's really not now. But still, these issues of cross general, relational interaction and curiosity were interesting to me because I feel like I don't see it that often, even though it's going on all around us. These generations are speaking to each other, but I think it's often reduced to stereotypes and jokes. And we were looking for something a little more sincere. So once we agreed this was a basic idea that we wanted to pursue, we started, you know,

trying to put a group together that we thought would create an interesting dynamic. And what's fun about working, the way that we were working was if you've got the right people and the right structure set up for it, it's really designed to pull out little surprises and accidents of speech and revelation. and I felt like we really had the right people to do that. And we were very rigorous about how this story was played out. You know, Deborah Eisenberg and I created this, you know, 54-page document, I think, that was very detailed about what each scene had to do

and the subjects being discussed in each scene. And sometimes there would be scripted pieces. where we felt this is too important to ask the actor to invent on the spot. So it's your storm chasing, but in a very sort of structured way. There is no, you know, they say when you're inebriated, do not operate heavy machinery. there was no actor at any point who was being asked to operate the heavy machinery of telling the story. Right. What we were looking for was their voice.

And so we didn't tell them, we told them what to say. We just didn't tell them how to say it. And that's a, that's a distinction, I think, that's critical. Because I think that when people here improvised, it just sounds not. professional. Yeah, it sounds lazy when in fact you're setting them up for success. You're giving them all the tools and then and then making it feel as real and organic as possible. Yeah, you're hoping to get the best of both, really. Yeah. And so that's what we were, that's what we were trying to grab hold of. Merrill's character is this writer who's arguably monetized, exploited a friendship.

I wonder, you know, as a writer, a filmmaker, a storyteller, is that something you've had to confront, not to that extreme, but like, you know, you use what you know, you use your friendships, your family, your experiences? Is that something that you have to sometimes wrestle with? Like, can I do a veiled version of this person? Does that jeopardize a trust, a friendship? Is it something you've confronted?

Well, I guess my default position there would be you can use anything, but the veiled version is always going to be better because you can enhance it, you can amplify it, you can take it somewhere that it didn't go in real life and make it more interesting. So sex lives was a perfect example of that. People would say, oh, is that autobiographical? I would say, well, it's personal,

but nothing in this movie actually happened. Like, I was just riffing on some general experiences like that. So the key is to make it feel like all of that absolutely happened. But I think it's always better if you can sort of use it and change it for the better. In the case of Alice, Meryl Streep's character, I don't think she felt at that point in her life the need to disguise it at all. I mean, it's pretty clear from the conversations in the movie. She just kind of went from Roberta's life right onto the page

and didn't really change a lot. That's a mistake, perhaps, one of them. Well, she doesn't view it as a mistake. She views it as her right as an artist. Right. And her obligation as an artist. I mean, she's a very polarizing character, Alice. She can be incredibly.

generous and warm towards some people and then just be a complete asshole in the next moment. So she's somebody, though, who has never struggled with this issue of whether somebody's private life that you know can be portrayed in a one-on-one, one-to-one basis in Alice's mind. absolutely you can do that. I think Alice would have called her character Roberta if she wasn't convinced that people then wouldn't think it was a novel and she wants to be a novelist. Right. So, you know, it was a pretty, as a setup, Deborah and I were happy with this kind of, you know, past transgression that they've been hanging on to for all these years. I can understand how somebody would feel burned by that.

Did it take you, was there a warning curve for you and learning how to direct actors? You know, different kinds of actors require different kinds of direction. Could you have directed Merrill 30 years ago? Does it require a different set of skills and experiences that you had to accumulate? Well, we'll never know the answer to that question. But luckily, when I was younger and growing up in Baton Rouge, starting to make films. I'd gotten connections to a lot of the students

who were part of the drama department at LSU. So I was hanging around actors and became friendly with them. And so always felt very comfortable around them and enjoyed being around them. And I was making these short films in which sometimes I would be employing them. So I think that's the, when I hear stories

about actor, director, misunderstandings, or clashes, I think it typically has its origins in not really taking on the other persons, the full extent of the other person's role. I'm very sympathetic and empathetic, whichever applies, to actors, because I think it's a very difficult thing to do well. I think it's a very vulnerable thing to do well.

And so I'm very appreciative of this and want to make sure that they're in an environment that has a net, but not too many obstacles for them to bump into. So I've always, that's always been my approach. And I want to hear ideas and I expect, I give them a lot of freedom and I give them a lot of responsibility. Right. Are you, in retrospect, sad that your star-making performance in Skittopoulos didn't lead to Hollywood stardom and further acting opportunities?

Well, there's really no good answer to that. Other than to say that won't be happening again, and, you know, that was just such a unique circumstance. I have no memory of giving that performance, literally, none. I have a memory of making the movie and being on the set and making the movie, but I have no memory of being in any specific moment of performance. It was a completely unconscious experience in that regard, which I don't think, honestly, I could reproduce. That was just a very specific time,

in my life and in my career where I felt that had to be done. I don't feel like that now. You've been tinkering with the edit of some of your films, including is Schizophrenis one of the ones you've been looking at? Is that odd to look at that performance in that film in particular? Yes. Yeah, only in the sense of, like I said, I have no memory of doing that. That's amazing.

That's remarkable. Which is, like I said, a good thing. It's because it's, if I hadn't been that, immersed in it, I think I would have become self-conscious and that would have ruined it. It's, whatever you want to say about it is a very unself-conscious performance. Yes. That it's, so anyway. I took this conversation as an opportunity to go back and watch Sex Eliz and videotape for the first time in a while.

And I don't know if it's that I just seen let them all talk or that I'm overthinking things, but there are actually some thematic similarities in these films. I mean, they're about friends keeping secrets and betrayals and what's left unsaid in a relationship. Is that something, does that something that even occurs to you? Has it occurred to you? Is it just one of those themes that will pop up because it's just part of the human condition and fascinates you? Anything to be made of that? Two people in a room.

I've always been fascinated by this. I will always be fascinated by it. I just think. Some of the most profound ideas and especially ideas for action have started with two people in a room. So I'm a big believer in its dramatic power and its dramatic potential, and I'm not afraid of it. It doesn't make me feel like, oh, it's going to feel like a play or it's not really a movie. I just think two people in a room is endlessly fascinating. Only more so as we try to create a more transparent social culture.

Two people in a room now takes on a lot of weight. So, yeah, you're absolutely right to draw a direct line from sex lies to this film. But I would argue to anything I've made. It is fascinating to look at sex wise. I'm sure this is the kind of stuff you're grappling as you're writing this new one. because the idea of revealing intimacy on camera, as you well know, is that was not normal back then. That was like that was really revealing some intercore of yourself and that Spader's character was able to cut extract out of people. And now it's the norm. Now it's literally all we do

is just reveal everything to a disgusting degree arguably. And that must be fascinating to kind of wrestle with that same theme, but in a much different world. Yeah. I mean, it seems so quaint now, but like Victorian. And you're right, how quickly, how quickly we abandoned on some, on some, you know, broad level, the idea of privacy or secrecy or of two people sharing something and only those two people sharing it, moving into what we see now where the most intimate things you can experience are considered, you know, absolutely normal to share it with people that you don't know. Well, that's what gets you the likes.

That's what gets you the follow. The more intimate you are than they're revealing you are. And look, I am a big believer in the fact that story. stories in certain contexts can be a very, very effective tool for healing or for evolution and enlightenment. So it's not that I would ever say to somebody, why are you telling that particular story that's that's so painful? I think it's, I think what we're grappling with now is in a story that's potentially powerful and important by the noise of everything else.

Right. You know, as we move forward, as Nate Silver would probably describe it, you know, separating signal from noise just becomes increasingly difficult, especially, I would think, for young people who, especially young people of a certain age,

who are trying to look for signals around them, whether it's their parents, their friends, the culture, about what matters. What should they be taking on in a serious way? And what should they be deflecting? They're the target for so much information. It's really overwhelming.

So I really don't envy young people having to filter filter through all of the stuff that's in front of them right now. It's got to be tough. One thing that I always find striking about your career, because I think a lot of filmmakers that kind of siloed themselves off and they kind of do their thing and don't maybe engage with other filmmakers, don't go on other filmmakers sets, et cetera. You seem to embrace this kind of directing community.

You've been thanked in over 30 films. You've, you know, you shot second unit on the Hunger Games. You were a camera operator on the Magic Mike sequel. I'm curious, like, do you find that's just a part of the collaborative art form that you would miss? Do you learn more as much from working on other people's sets and talking to David Fincher, whoever your friends are, as you do in making your own stuff? Well, a large part of what makes it fun is the social aspect of the work, the uniquely social aspect of this particular work, I would argue. I like it, and I like being around it, and creative problem solving is fun. And so I've always sought out collaborations or opportunities to work with other filmmakers.

And whenever I can, I try to jump on projects with other filmmakers that seem like interesting or fun or both. and where I feel like I can I can actually contribute. There's some things that I'll be approached about and I'll sort of look at the whole thing and just say, you don't need me. Right. You don't need me on this. Just go shoot it.

I'll be a friend of the court and, you know, look at edits or whatever, but there's no, I'm not value added here by formally engaging because you're upset. So I like to be able to contribute something and earn. I take credits very seriously. It may not be an important thing to take seriously, but I just think things should be accurate.

And so I don't want my name on something where I didn't do the work that I think that credit implies. In the current iteration of Stephen Soderberg, because you are nothing, if not an iterative filmmaker and artist, you're gravitate more towards kind of smaller genre stuff. Was there a time that, you know, you obviously did the Oceans films, which were big, contagion's a big film, you've done big films. Was there a time that a superhero film was of interest? I read somewhere that Fantastic Four was something that you explored briefly. Do you recall that at all? No, no, I wouldn't have said that just because I'm not, I just didn't read that stuff growing up.

Yeah. I think you really need to love it. And like I said, you need to be one of those people that want to go stand in line for it. I just wasn't that person. And I would be second guessing. I would be doing exactly what I was talking about before. Right. I wouldn't know where North is because it just wasn't, it wasn't part of my, um, you know,

bag of, of interests growing up. So I don't, I don't, I'm not a snob. I like all kinds of stuff. I, I, I just want to do a good job when I go to work. And I would honestly feel, um, unable to do a good job. If, if I, an oceans movie is as close as I can get to kind of, you know, a superhero movie or something that has slightly outsized activity in it, that's as far as I think I can go. You said before that you were approached at least twice for James Bond, though. Was that something that you seriously considered or you made a play for? Was that something that growing up you had an interest in?

Absolutely. Yeah. So did you do that? I love that world. And, you know, I think, I think, I, think it it that we were we were at odds about some things that were important so we had some great conversations and and it was it was fun to think about um but we just couldn't you know the last the last 10 yards were were we just couldn't do it just couldn't figure it out

without revealing your entire take i'm just curious what a stephen soderberg bond movie looks like what's the core, what's the mission statement, what's the... Well, yeah, we'll never know. I mean, aspects of it have shown up elsewhere. I mean, I think, you know, I would say there were things in the haywire that in terms of its approach to character and, you know, it's not a big movie, but there's a little bit of activity in it. that's that's a hint at the at the kind of attitude that I was looking for but you know look they're you you they're doing very well I hope everyone's working yeah I hope they're able to figure out what to do about the release of the new one yeah I mean um they got they got

they were they really got themselves caught in the worst possible place. It was supposed to come out right as the pandemic was lifting off. And now, you know, you don't want to sit on these things. It's going to be very curious. You're, you know, you're obviously doing stuff for HBO Max, whether there's a cascade effect where everybody else follows suit for at least the next year or not. Yeah, I think for a year. Yeah. And then it'll, it'll, it'll absolutely come back. It has to come back. There's too much, there's too much money. Um, there for it not to come back the trick is going to be can we convince the government as part

of some stimulus package to help the exhibitors uh weather this over the next 12 months that they're they're going to need help um so i'm i'm hoping i know there's a there's a plan in place and there is you know there are people lobbying for this and nato um is gathering support they really need it Like it's, I think, you know, it's just a reality that a theatrical exhibition business that can't be at full capacity is not really a viable business. So we need to figure out a way to keep the theaters alive until this comes back. But I'm absolutely convinced this will come back. There's just too much money on the table.

So it's not about the romanticism of like, we need the theaters. It's no, it's, there's only one way to make a billion dollars. It's a release of a movie in a theater. Well, there's the, I mean, economic forces tend to be very, very powerful. Sure. And part of their power is that they can be quantified. Now, the subjective experience of going to a movie, I would argue, as time goes on, continues to become even more unique. think about the number of activities that you engage in, in which you're only doing one thing

for two hours. There's no distraction. There's nothing else going on. You are staring at one thing for two hours, sometimes more. That's getting increasingly rare. And so I think that experience is solid. Like, I don't think it's going to go anywhere. I think people are always, whether they can articulate it or not, they're always going to want that. There's something really pleasurable about it and the fact that you're doing it with a lot of other people. That's pleasurable too. So it's, this is just going to be a really ugly drought, you know, in the U.S. But, you know, it's going to rain again. it will definitely rain again. It always does. A couple odds and ends for you, just in looking at

the many films and experiences you've had. This is not related to a film, but you posted at one point, not so long ago, a rejection letter of sorts you got from Lucasfilm in 1984. What were you asking for? What was the pitch? I just wanted, I put my shorts on a three-quarter-inch cassette and I just wanted to see if somebody would put eyes on it just to just to, just to just out of curiosity. So I'm, I was, I was thrilled to get that letter. You kept it, clearly. It meant something.

It was on their station area. I thought, that's, that's nice. This is random, but I came across this. There was a report, okay, so let's go back 20 years, Ocean's 11. There was a report in variety that you were close to casting Joel and Ethan Cohen in Ocean's 11 in the Casey Affleck and Scott Con roles. Do you have any recollection? of that, Steve?

I don't, but it doesn't sound like a terrible idea. It sounds amazing, to be honest. And I'm sure George had a hand in that because he had just worked with them. And if it didn't, if it didn't get shot down fairly quickly by one of us, they would have shot it down pretty quickly. I can't admit. It seems like a pretty quickly. a pretty. Hey, but not the worst, not the worst casting idea I've ever heard. I'll say that. No, no.

Here's, here's, here's, this was a nightmare I had while we were shooting Kafka. Um, I, I always, I always have anxiety dreams when I'm shooting. Um, but in this case, I, I had awakened to discover, to my surprise, because I didn't remember doing this, that I had cast Paul Hogan. as coffee and that I arrived on set and and this was it was a gradual process of this dawning on me by the by what people were saying to me as I approached the set and I started to feel like something's up like the way people are looking at me and talking to me when I get to set something's going to be up and what was up was that Paul Hogan was there ready to to play that part.

Well, you have been infamously re-editing for a decade, this film. Is that what you're doing? Are you inserting Paul Hogan back into this film? No, but I'd forgotten about that dream until I dove back into this

and remembered. I had a, I had a beard at the time and I woke up in the course of one night, overnight, I woke up and had a big white patch in my beard. I was stressed. I don't know.

if it was that night that I had that dream. But, yeah, those are the kinds of dreams I have when I'm shooting. Things that can't be solved. The point was I was sitting in, I'm like, I can't solve this. There's no way to solve this. I can't fire it. And here we go. The answer is to embrace it, because that's a version of the film. Frankly, I would enjoy in some way as well. Wouldn't have been boring. The infamous retirement a few years back of Steven Soderberg, what did it do for you coming out of it? You've been pretty prolific, to say the least, since the Nick and getting back into features. Do you find, did you reorient your approach to filmmaking, your attitude?

What's the most important post and pre-retirement difference between the way you're approaching material? Well, I think I'm just in a very basic way confused the business with the job. Right. And allowed my frustrations with one part of it to bleed into the other. part of it, which was stupid, but I don't know. That's what happened. What the Nick did for me was re-energize my love for the job, just for that job, being on a set doing that job. When we started it up on the Nick, I thought, oh, this is what I'm

supposed to be doing. I just really, I'd allowed myself to sort of not get disconnected, but distracted a little bit psychologically by my frustrations with the way the business functions economically, sometimes, creatively sometimes. So like one week into the Nick, I was totally back into wanting to work as much as possible. So maybe that was just a necessary step for me to get there. There probably should have been a smarter way to get there. It's not fun to walk back such definitive statements. And I promise if I do it again, that I'll accompany it with some comments that will guarantee

no one will ever hire me again. You're going to go out with a bang? Just, yeah, I'll do something that really is scorched earth and that will not even allow for the option for me to come back, I promise. I feel like the fear of any artists, and I talk to a lot of filmmakers, is diminishing returns as a career continues. We've seen a lot of great filmmakers

where, like, the last few films, they've lost the step. Something is missing. And I feel like that's part of why Quentin has this like, you know, 10 and out. He's not going to let himself see, produce anything that's less than the utmost quality. Is that part of the reason for yourself? Because your stuff is so dynamic and so interesting and always it's experimental. You're trying new formats. You're trying new approaches.

Is that part of the reason to keep it fresh to make sure you stay sharp? Well, certainly if you get a group of filmmakers together for any length of time, that subject comes up a lot. Yeah. Because nobody, nobody wants to be perceived at a certain point in their career as, as,

you know, having lost the thread. So how do you not lose the thread, Stephen? I don't, I don't, I try not to, I try not to think of the choices I make

beyond the near-term and how I feel about the timing of it all. So I'm my, you know, my metabolism is such that I need things in front of me to keep me moving forward. and so I don't I don't think I as a result there isn't as much psychic real estate given over to how is this going to look later I just know that I get the best results from myself when I work quickly and it feels more like a sport than then the creation of a dissertation that's just me that's I just I just know that from experience the longer I have to to stew on it that's different

than working on it stewing on it picking at it the worst things tend to get I tend to I'm much more of a tagged artist in that regard doesn't mean I didn't set up a structure and a plan but I need to I need to move quickly if that ends up mitigating this this potential slide into something that feels repetitive or complacent then that would be good but that's not the reason that I'm working sort of at that RPM that's more just a personal a personal need in order for me to get a result that I'm happy with I'm always amazed when I see that year-end list that you always have like a cut of the film

like a day after you've shot the film. Do you already have a cut of no sudden move from the film you've just shot? Are you already looking in the edit room? Yeah, yeah. We just over the weekend actually had a little friends and virtual friends and family screening of the first cut.

So I'm collecting notes now. Is that the hardest screen, the first screening? Yeah, typically. What you're looking for is just some consistency in the responses. I mean, nobody, nobody ever sees a first cut and goes, walk away, you're done. What you're hoping is that there's a couple of things that everybody seems to be bumping on, and they're fixable. That's what you're hoping. That's, that's, that's, that's, you know, because there's, there's certain things that people can say, um, if they're

having a problem with that aren't going to be fixable, right, that are, that are so wound into the DNA, somebody goes, oh, I hate the person you cast as that lead, you know, that's a problem. Yeah. Can you put Paul Hogan in instead of David Harbor there? Well, if you have enough money, you can do it. He's got, he, didn't he, I saw an ad for he's got a new movie. Rocket Al Dundee, kind of a, I think, I don't think it's like officially a sequel, but he's still banking on that image persona in some way. He's got at least one set of eyeballs. It's going to be on that.

Got two sets right here. And do you know what you're planning to shoot next? Should I hold out any hope for the long-awaited Clio 3D musical? No, probably not. I mean, not soon. There are two things that I won't jinx that I want to do. I want to do and I'm I'm hoping literally this week I'm gonna get the word on the first one the one that would be at the front of the queue but I haven't gotten word

yet so you know I want to I want to keep going I'm hoping by the spring things will have changed to an extent that the just the pure scale of the COVID protocols for production have been diminished a little bit that's really you know it's and it's going to get we're in this weird as you know we're in the middle of another surge and you're you're We talked about this when we were doing the negotiations this summer to create the industry protocols of the sort of public relations battle that we should be prepared for when we're going to work and trying to make movies and TV shows while other people are trying to figure out how they get tested. Now, we're privately sourcing all of the personnel and the materials, but it's, I said, you know, we need to talk about what we're going to do if somebody comes after us and says, hey, are they stealing from the public? Right. Well, the same thing's going to happen on the vaccine. Like, you know inevitably, like, wait, why did every sports team and big budget movie get the vaccine before my grandmother? Like, that's, that's, you don't want that. They better have a good answer.

And that's what I was saying, is we better have a good answer. Beyond, like I said, we're not pulling from the public stockpile, but it's still the optics of it are, you know, potentially fuzzy if we're not clear. But hopefully, look, every, all of my, all of my colleagues that I worked with on contagion, who are in the middle of this in a very significant way are very, very, very bullish about the vaccines. So I'm hoping that that all, you know, takes its course. There's gonna need to be a huge public relations campaign about it.

To make sure everyone actually takes it, yeah. Yeah, well, just to have a real conversation with people about expectations, you know, expectations. What, what, you know, what, what is 95.4% mean? What does that mean? Like, people need to know this stuff in a very clear way. And there are legitimate questions that need to be answered. You know, a vaccine is a sort of a weak version of the virus that creates a response in your body that makes you immune.

Now, if you happen to be one of those people, that if you caught it without the vaccine, would have a very acute and fatal response, what is your response to the vaccine going to be? Right. Or, you know, they just need to know the answers to those kinds of questions. So I hope that, you know, the government and the state, however this gets rolled out, you know, really sits down and thinks deeply about how to message all of this.

because the quickest path to this thing being, you know, it's never, and by the way, talk about expectations, this is not going to be a lifetime immunity. Exactly. You're going to have to get these shots occasionally. We still don't even know when. Two years, four years, we don't know. But one thing we do know is nobody I've talked to says this thing's going to work forever. So that's something that people need to be aware of. And the faster we get to 80% of the population vaccinated, the faster this thing starts to drop and go away. How quickly did the studio come to you and say,

well, contagion's being watched by a gajillion people right now. Maybe you want to explore a follow-up. Now is the time. Is that interest you at all? No. Well, not in a literal sense. I mean, I've got a project in development that Scott Burns is working with me on.

That's a kind of philosophical sequel to Contagion, but in a different context, it's not, it's... Not the same character, it's not the same one. You look at the two of them as kind of paired, but they're very, they're very different hair colors. So we have been, Scott and I were talking about, well, what's the next? What is the next iteration of a contagion type story?

So we have been working on that. We should probably hot foot it a little bit. I could talk to you for hours, sir. Thank you so much for the generous time today. Congratulations on the new film with them all talk on HBO Max. And yeah, seriously consider Paul Hogan for all of these variety of projects that you're working on. He's still viable. He's still talented.

He's hungry. As are you? You look healthy to me. It looks great. Thanks. I really appreciate it. No, thanks again. And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused.

Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pushing to do this by Josh. Goodbye, Summer Movies, Hello, Fall. I'm Anthony Devaney. And I'm his twin brother, James. We host Raiders of the Lost Podcast, the Ultimate Movie Podcast, and we are ecstatic to break down late summer and early fall releases.

We have Leonardo DiCaprio leading a revolution in one battle after another, Timothy Salome playing power ping pong in Marty Supreme. Let's not forget Emma Stone and Jorgos Lantamos' Bagonia. Dwayne Johnson, he's coming for that Oscar in The Smashing Machine, Spike Lee and Denzel teaming up again, plus Daniel DeLuis' return from retirement. There will be plenty of blockbusters. chat about two. Tron Aries looks exceptional plus Mortal Kombat too and Edgar writes the running man starring Glenn Powell. Search for Raiders of the Lost podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.