Sodebergh's "natural light " Red feature opening soon

[Peter Hodgins]

Sorry. Let me try again: with $1.6 million today, Steven Soderbergh isn't any more likely to make a good or commercially viable movie, than you, me or any number of other people. In a word, without money, there are few "great" filmmakers.

If this observation isn't as insightful as I seemed to suggest or think, well -- maybe I got carried away.

It's kinda like, lets say we have an auto race and everyone drives an identical car. Then maybe some here to for unheralded driver might be consistently better than thought to be.

 

[jpp]

Story. It all starts with story. If you can write a 5 person stage play confined to one to three locations that is compelling, then you're money. With current tools you can do it for tens of thousands of dollars, not hundreds. The question is can you write the next Sex, Lies, and Videotape...

This claim has been thrashed out here many times before, but if only it were as simple as you contend. Whatever you think of the script of sex, lies and videotape, S.S. had some other indispensable assets: the star glamor of Andie Macdowell, the performance of James Spader, fine supporting players, professional production values, credible locations with production design (all of the above costing money--far more than "tens of thousands"), the luck of stumbling on what's probably the most profitable film title in film history, and the marketing acumen of the Weinstein brothers.

Other than all that -- sure, all you need is $10K and a good script. Just be sure you don't require much in the way of glamor, accomplished theatrical performances, credible locations, good production values and convincing dramatic illusion.

Then again, good and even astounding films have been made for little or no money, and they can offer a gravity and sense of the real that no big-budget film could ever equal. But the project needs to suit the available resources. If there *are* no resources, sex, lies and videotape would be a poor choice, in my view, though the answer to this question is notoriously elusive. Lots of people look, nobody finds. Whether you end up "in the money" is a whole other question.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

get a LOI of the right actor and suddenly you get money to make movies

 

[rod bradley]

jpp, I agree with you that SS (among others) enjoys the luxury of playing in the expensive sandbox and in my opinion the results are often overrated and perhaps would be totally overlooked or dismissed by someone without his celebrity cache. This is not his fault and I think he has marketed himself well from the beginning into an "outsider" celebrity filmmaker.

I believe he is actually a good "Hollywood" filmmaker with some socially relevant content (slightly prone to the gimmick) -- but perhaps as a filmmaker/writer, well, I think he's not the most substantive in that department -- more a clever stylist with a populist instinct.

When you get to play by your own personal rules without worrying about your "readers" -- and you do things quickly, or you improvise a lot (write on the fly) usually things get a bit slack. (Except if you're Mike Leigh at his best, but he spends months and months "writing" the details of characters -- and he works with working actors, not stars.)

A lot of people in this culture get the nod based on celebrity regardless of merit. We've moved away from merit in many ways in this country during the last 40 years -- it is part of the general political motion since Reagan toward aristocracy -- and celebrity of course feeds right into that.

I think it's natural that some of us might envy the opportunities SS has and which he has, I think, earned -- and some would say has also squandered. If he "squanders" them, well, it's his due, I suppose.

I think a far more interesting and original filmmaker who has made films of substance on the studio level and independent level is John Sayles -- although he never cultivated the "indie fame" (SS and the whole Canon ad thing was brilliant) celebrity status that SS did so well. And I guess was too "quiet" (ie introspective) for most American filmgoers tastes.

But this is all of this is part of the general all-or-nothing ball game we're in. The "pulp" movies (150-250K) have no pretenses and are like the drive-in B movies of yore, I suppose. And although serious and interesting films can now be done for that budget, it's almost impossible to get financing for anything but the B movie staples, mostly horror, slasher stuff. And even if something interesting does get made, it's almost impossible to market in any meaningful way -- unless you are connected or do have some kind of celebrity attached.

Witness the demise of Indigent -- who attempted and actually succeeded in producing interesting movies with some real intent for a few years for tiny budgets (150K) -- and actually got some distribution. But still couldn't survive.

As we know -- the rich always get richer, celebrity begets celebrity (and the subsequent opportunities) -- and loud is better than good in most cases. It's the nature of the beast -- it's always been that way to some extent, just even more extreme now. So when there is a miracle -- ie, a serious film made for very little money, it's to be celebrated.

And we should all be forever grateful to SS for using his clout to helping spearhead Charles Burnett's little lyrical masterpiece KILLER OF SHEEP, into the library of film literature by clearing the music rights which cost more than 10 times as much as the film. And Frances Ford Coppola has also gone out of his way to discover and aid "underground" filmmakers, bringing them to light and getting them shown. It's nice to see this kind of generosity in our strange competitive and tortured and limited opportunity craft and sometimes art.

 

[Joel Kaye]

And I doubt the people making these films have any pretensions about enriching Western Civilization.

I don't know about that. I worked on one last year that the writers believed were doing exactly that. In fact, I've probably read 5 scripts in the last year that the filmmakers believed were very meaningful little dramas offering great insight into the human condition and were headed for festival stardom.

I thought they were either pretentious or boring. At this point I would rather read the next new take on vampires 'cause it's probably a better story.

 

[Liam Hall]

Soderbergh's "natural light" Red film, "The Girlfriend Experience" is opening commercially in late May. SS claims only a few shots were augmented with [artificial] lighting. So it ought to give at least some indication of what Red + no light looks like in interiors, particularly when the DP (SS himself) isn't protecting his reputation and is willing to let things go a bit raw.

And, according to me, there's another fascinating lesson here. While it's impossible to know how many people would be able to pull off (as Soderbergh did) Oceans Eleven, Erin Brockovitch or Out of Sight, a $1.6 million film by SS isn't necessarily any better, and could actually be a good deal worse, than a $1.6 million film (or a $200K film, for that matter) made by any other reasonably intelligent filmmaker, including first-timers. If anyone doubts that claim, have a look at "Bubble".

If ever there was proof of the primacy of money in the movie business, it's in the low budget, less than wonderful films of the highly esteemed.

I had to read that three times and the whole thread twice to get what you're talking about. But I have to agree, I've always argued Soderbergh has watched far too many Jean-Luc Goddard movies than is good for a person!

 

[Tom Lowe]

I don't know about that. I worked on one last year that the writers believed were doing exactly that. In fact, I've probably read 5 scripts in the last year that the filmmakers believed were very meaningful little dramas offering great insight into the human condition and were headed for festival stardom.

I thought they were either pretentious or boring. At this point I would rather read the next new take on vampires 'cause it's probably a better story.

I think jpp was talking very specifically about a small number of producer-directors who crank out these 150K or whatever genre flicks with washed up Hollywood stars in order to turn a profit.