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.

Despite director Steven Soderbergh's several belt-notches -- Traffic, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Oceans Eleven (Twelve, and Thirteen) -- he continues to work as hard as ever, with projects as impressive in their ambitions of size, scale, and high art as they are in actual execution, something that rarely happens in Hollywood. His latest is Che, a four-hour epic about the life of Argentinean revolutionary Che Guevara. Che is split into two parts, with a majority of the time focusing on actor Benicio Del Toro's portrayal of Guevara from his early years through his death. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Soderbergh; in the first part of our interview (see part two), Soderbergh discusses the trouble he had getting the movie made, and his plans for changing the world (none of which involve movies).

You and Benicio Del Toro started talking about Che eight years ago, when you were doing Traffic -- what were those first conversations about? At any point, did you see what came to fruition as a possibility when you were directing Traffic?
There really weren't many conversations at the beginning. Because, obviously, the first thing we needed to do was start researching. We had, at that time, John Lee Anderson's book. There were a couple of other books, of course. But the key was to get to Cuba, to start talking to people. That was our first order of business. And we sort of started backwards, because the end of Che Guevara's life was the period I didn't know at all. I knew about him, but I really didn't know anything about him.