Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh
seemingly retired from directing features in 2013 with the double shot of the
theatrical release of “Side Effects” and the HBO premiere of “Behind the
Candelabra”. He’s hardly been restless though.
In film alone, Soderbergh produced
the upcoming spin-off “Ocean’s Eight,” was a producer, director of photography
and editor on “Magic Mike XXL,” and directed and produced all twenty episodes
of Cinemax’s Clive Owen-led hospital period series “The Knick”. He also served
as executive producer on Amazon’s “Red Oaks,” Starz’s “The Girlfriend
Experience,” and Netflix’s upcoming Jeff Daniels & Jack O’Connell-led
western series “Godless”.
He also has come out of
retirement to direct films again, starting with the very commercial-friendly
looking racing world-set Southern heist caper “Logan Lucky”.
Channing Tatum, Adam Driver,
and Riley Keough play a trio of siblings who plan a heist at the Charlotte
Motor Speedway just before the biggest race of the year. To pull it off they
need the help of vault cracker John Bang (Daniel Craig). Speaking with EW,
Soderbergh says the similarities to the “Ocean’s 11” trilogy he directed are
what drew him to the film:
“On the most obvious level,
it’s the complete inversion of an Ocean’s movie. It’s an anti-glam version of
an Ocean’s movie. Nobody dresses nice. Nobody has nice stuff. They have no
money. They have no technology. It’s all rubber band technology, and that’s what
I thought was fun about it. It seemed familiar to me, but different enough.
The landscape, the characters,
and the canvass were the complete opposite of an Ocean’s film. What was weird
is that I was working as a producer on Ocean’s Eight while we were shooting
Logan, and it was kind of head-spinning. That’s like a proper Ocean’s film.
This is a version of an Ocean’s movie that’s up on cement blocks in your front
yard.
Soderbergh explained that it
was a week into filming “The Knick” with its aggressive schedule meant that he
found his groove and came to a revelation:
“I was sitting there on [The
Knick] set, realizing that this is the job that I should be doing. This is my
job. I should be directing stuff. Nobody’s waiting around for my paintings. [You got that
right.] So I kind of flipped a switch. I got reconnected with what I
like about the job… I wasn’t really thinking about movies… until this script
came in over the transom. If it hadn’t, I think everything would be TV
oriented.”
“Logan Lucky” is also a test
bed for a new film distribution model. Bleecker Street and Soderbergh’s new
venture Fingerprint Releasing will release the film August 18th in a wide
release on 2,500-3,000 screens. The aim of this new model is:
“[To] do what the studios
normally do from a distribution standpoint with a lot less resources and with a
much better economic structure for the people who made the film… everybody’s
worked for scale. There is no middle man. There is no one taking a cut. The
money is coming directly back to the creative pool.”
Soderbergh revealed the “Logan
Lucky” shoot benefitted from his time on “The Knick,” and was completed in just
36 days.
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