Steven Soderbergh’s Sequel Interview: Petty Crime, Punishment, and the Sasha Grey Experience

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh sat down with BlackBook previous to the release of his newest film, the four-hour two-part epic CHE!, about the life of Argentine revolutionary Che Guavara. The film is open in limited release right now, will be opening in more locations over the next two weeks, and is going to be made available On Demand come January 21. It's pretty fitting that -- like CHE! -- our interview with Soderbergh was long, epic, and eventually had to be spliced into two parts; the first is here. Below, Soderbergh discusses his plans for revolution, his work with Sasha Grey, and why petty crimes deserve totally draconian punishments.

A lot of filmmakers feel that ("films can’t really do anything").
They’re influential without being important I guess is what I’m trying to say. They have a lot of influence. I think they’re influential in terms of how people dress, talk, and behave in a social environment.

You don’t think in this current climate—we’ve got these hard right-wingers that are giddily paranoid that we elected a socialist President. And we’ve got an economy that’s tanking. And you don’t think this movie that’s about somebody who saw these ideas, who saw these ...
Saw the worst face of imperialism, absolutely. And I’m saying he didn’t get that from watching a movie. He got that from a series of life experiences that imprinted on him in a very intense way, so much so that he was able to sustain this outrage for the West in his life, and he was (still) in his 20s. Until he died he was outraged.

And the experience of a movie can’t sustain that?
For an hour. Long enough to double click on some site and give them $25 to feel like you did something.

So where do those experiences come from now?
Well, we’re going to see some of them in the next year. People are having that experience right now, that’s where it’s going to come from. There are people that are ... It’s not just going to be people that have always gotten it in the shorts, it’s going to start rising up the economic ladder now. You’re going to see people who are middle class, upper-middle class finding themselves in really dire circumstances there’s really no market for or the competition is so extreme that it’s like the lottery. And those are the kinds of experiences that galvanize people.

Where do you see your place in this?
It’s sort of a multi-step process, even though I feel as if time is running out. It has to be organized in a certain way. There have to be certain kinds of people involved. So that’s what I’m working on now, I’m talking to people.

Did working on this movie about (a guy like Che) influence that?
It certainly gets you in that frame of mind ... it’s impossible to work on a project like this and not be aware of every moment of your day of what’s around you. This room, and the taxi that I took here. The record store that I went to. The ways in which my life, for instance, exceeds the dreams of most people, including me. And that there’s a cost for that. You can’t help but feel that any sort of extreme positive in one direction, and I mean extreme, has to mean an extreme negative in another direction. It feels like that to me. When you look at the world on a macro-level it feels like karmically there is some sort of zero-sum game at play.

But when you look at it on a micro level ...
Well, when you look at it on a micro level, you feel as if there is some way you’ve got to sustain ... it’s all about growth. It’s all about managing growth. And you got to start with the population. This is where I start talking about it, this is where I get despairing—I think that this idea, or this concept I have for a new version of the 95 Theses is doomed because this is gonna involve people thinking in a completely different way. And I’m not convinced they can. Here’s an example ...

That’s fatalistic.
No, it’s realistic. Here’s an example. You go to Heathrow Airport, you go to the baggage claim area, they have a yellow line around the baggage claim area that’s about four feet from the edge of the machine…The idea of it is that if all of us stand at this yellow line, not only can we see our bags coming a longer way away, when we go to get it we aren’t bumping into people and hitting them in the legs, or being hit in the legs. It’s a much more civilized solution to the problem of being crowded around the baggage claim.

How many people actually take that solution?
None. So there’s an example. A tiny, small example but a telling one. What do you do? Police that? How can you convince people: It’s so much better if you stand at this line.

Maybe policing it is the answer because people are ...
Well, part of my whole idea is that you should be really draconian about really petty shit. Like really, really, really, really excessive punishment for small things. But how do you adjust the sort of self-organizing principles that comes into play with any group? There was some guy on TV last night, some Nostradamus type thing. This guy’s claiming that he’s come out with an algorithm, this sort of conflict resolution algorithm, and he used to work for the CIA. They acknowledged that they had some pretty good success. In both directions, using his algorithm and then applying it to situations in hindsight, but it worked. Now here’s what’s annoying with this: This guy treats it as a proprietary piece of information. And I feel like—dude, you know you should be mass mailing this thing. It’s simple. If you made it that on your first DUI, you lost your license for 10 years, you’d see a lot less DUIs. You would figure out a way to not be driving. What’s the harm in that? Who’s being harmed by that?

To transition: You’re in post-production on The Girlfriend Experience, right? How’s working with Sasha Grey?
Yeah. Really good.

Did you feel like you trained her as an actor at all?
Oh, absolutely. She was really smart about it. She found exactly the right balances. Sort of doing her homework and being prepared, but not imposing ... It’s a tricky thing, the way these movies (like Bubble) are made, because I want as much of them as I can get. But you’re working from sort of a detailed outline. You’re doing these sort-of improvisations that have bullet points. When we were done with something, she would immediately go into her notebook and write down everything that she heard and everything that she said. ‘Cause she knew that a couple days later there might be some reference to it, and you need to remember the world of movies as we do in our lives. And she was really diligent about that, and it really paid off.

When did you get the idea to start working with Sasha?
I read this article in Los Angeles Magazine two years ago. She’s seen a ton of movies, and she’s really inquisitive. She’s interesting, she’s really interesting. She’s got a quality that’s totally unique. I mean, she really delivered. She was great.

Would you ever write another Getting Away With It?
I’m working on one.

Yeah? Tell me about it.
I can’t, cause it’s like a ... I’m working on one like that with another filmmaker.

What neighborhood do you like to hang out in while in New York?
Well, I live in Chelsea. 22nd Street.

Are there any specific restaurants or bars you like to frequent?
If somebody’s looking for me I’m at Il Bastardo a lot.

What about LA, any place out there?
Mexico City, in Loz Feliz. ‘Go there every week, same time, same day. And it’s good.

Oh, are you still re-cutting and re-scoring Kafka?
Yes. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. The rights got reverted back to the guy that was going to pay for it. So we can do whatever we want with it. And when I finish it, we’ll decide. I think it’s a midnight movie. I think it’s the best way to do it, and then put out a double DVD.

What’s it like going and re-visiting the film?
In this case it’s great, because I was never happy. So this has been a great opportunity to ... it’s different. I mean it’s a complete re-thinking of the whole thing. I’m treating it like someone dumped it in my lap and said “Fix this piece of shit.”

Would you ever do that to any of your other films?
I don’t think I would, except that I don’t think there’s as much opportunity for improvement as there is here.