nicole_powers

"If I'm such a commodity, how come nobody went to see The Good German," Steven Soderbergh asks at one point during our conversation. Hes being half-facetious and half-serious when posing the question. At 46, Soderbergh has already earned every professional accolade a film director can, including the Palme D'Or for his debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape, and the Oscar for his drug war opus Traffic. His frequent collaborators now include George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Brad Pitt (who is starring in his forthcoming adaptation of the controversial state-of-baseball tome Moneyball). Yet Soderbergh remains a stubbornly anonymous filmmaker, difficult to nail down in terms of style or subject, removed from the public eye, and without a cult following that can be roused to seek out his smaller, more experimental films.

The one adjective that sticks is prolific -- Soderbergh has directed twenty films in as many years, produced several others and racked up a library of television credits, an output that's rivaled only by his latest collaborator, porn ingnue Sasha Grey. At 21, Grey has nearly 200 blue movie titles under her belt, as well as various music and art projects and a swelling public profile that's quickly becoming indistinguishable from stardom. She was a name even before she and Soderbergh teamed up last fall to make The Girlfriend Experience, a slice-of-life indie drama that documents the travails of an emotionally distant, high-dollar Manhattan hooker named Chelsea, who offers a sophisticated brand of personal service that transcends mere copulation.

When Soderbergh called up SuicideGirls last week, we talked sex, money, movies and baseball.

Ryan Stewart: While I was waiting on your call, I was reading an interview with Sasha. Here's an interesting quote: "One thing Steven and I definitely have in common is we're not really into critics." Is she on point?

Steven Soderbergh: She's on point. But the reasons for that might not be identical. What came up during the course of making the movie was that I said after Traffic I'd stopped reading reviews. I'd never read a lot of them, but after Traffic I just stopped completely. That's probably where that came from. You'd have to ask her why she takes that position, but my position at the time, that year, after winning the LA and New York film critics awards, I really felt like, this can only get worse. [laughs] Nothing about reading reviews from here on out is going to enhance my life at all. Whereas, for Sasha, there may be a different issue at play.

RS: James Gray, the director of Two Lovers, told me he resents reviews because often the reason a scene doesn't work is because an actor didn't show up on time, or something like that.

SS: Yeah, I know James, I'm sure that's true. I want to work on instinct. I don't want to be self-conscious and for me it's just a potential distraction or more of a background noise that I want to eliminate so that I can work quickly and clearly. Also, I'm not a result person, I'm a process person. What I really like is making them and I'm content to judge them by my own criteria later. But at the time I just want to make them. I want to make them for the amount of money and time that I've been given to make them and then I just want to move on to the next thing without agonizing.

So, when I stop making them, then maybe someday I'll sit down and look at them and determine for myself what my success rate was. Right now, it's just not relevant. Except if you're making a certain type of movie -- an art-house movie -- and you know from a business standpoint that if you get terrible reviews it's going to be very difficult to get the audience to show up. But in terms of what they say, it doesn't change the movie. Pixels don't get re-arranged because a critic said something. Also, when one film comes out I've usually already made something else or I'm in the middle of something else, and my head has moved on.

RS: Do you shed a tear over the mass firings of film critics that are occurring, or is that out of your field of vision?

SS: It kind of is, yeah. I don't like to see anybody get laid off, but it's not surprising, even from a cultural standpoint. Technology has made everyone a critic. The idea that you can distinguish yourself by how you write and what you write is diminishing rapidly. There just isn't a forum for it the way there was when Pauline Kael was writing for The New Yorker and she could write whatever the hell she wanted. And frankly, the other part of it, which has nothing to do with critics, is that that movies don't matter anymore.

RS: You really believe that?

SS: Well, culturally. Let me be more specific. They are more influential than they've ever been and less important than they've ever been. They're influential in terms of how people act and how they dress, and also what they laugh at. But in terms of importance? In terms of what they can do for us, how they can enhance us? I think they've never been less important than they are right now. There was a period of time when that wasn't true, but that time has passed. I think it's still the dominant art form, but I don't think it's an important art form anymore.

RS: What's the emerging important art form?

SS: I don't know that there is one yet. Gossip?

RS: Interesting. The movie certainly touches on the relentless ability of capitalism to spit out the old and usher in the new. Do you admire that efficiency? Do you fear it?

SS: Both. I don't judge it, it just is what it is. It isn't going anywhere. It's wound into our DNA. I'm fascinated by it, and at the same time it terrifies me. What I liked about it for the movie was coming at it from an angle I wasn't privy to. This woman has this specific job in the upper echelon of a specific business, and I thought, wow, that's an interesting way to talk about value attribution.

RS: Do you believe there's a point at which the commoditization of one's self becomes distasteful?

SS: No. It's a myopic point of view to assume that only entails a transaction that involves money. Everybody is trying to get what they want all the time. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. My whole criteria is 'is everybody getting what they want?' That's how I judge fairness or morality -- parity. Not by the act itself, but by 'is everybody getting what they want?' But I've also had the experience of injecting myself into a situation where I thought that one of the people could not possibly be getting what they wanted and that there was a grave imbalance there. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to mind my own business.

RS: Was this a business situation?

SS: It was a personal relationship, some people I knew. I just felt like "I can't watch this go on anymore," and I said something and they both sort of turned on me simultaneously and told me to shut up. So I learned a lesson and the lesson was that I can only ask "why" when it comes to something that I do. I stopped asking "why" when it comes to the other person. I really did, after that. I went, "You know what? They're right."

RS: More specifically, then, do you find the notion of fake intimacy, a la a "girlfriend experience" to be intellectually offensive?

SS: I don't know if I believe in fake intimacy, or that there is such a thing. Chelsea is getting the "something else" from her boyfriend, you know? That illusion of stability or whatever it is. From the outside, I don't know that I can make the call about whether someone is being really intimate or falsely intimate. I can make that call about myself, but I have to ask you this: If I feel like I am being falsely intimate, but the other person doesn't, what does that mean? If they are getting out of it what you'd get out of a genuinely intimate situation, but I'm not, does it matter?

RS: Tough one.

SS: I know! And I'm not saying I have the answer, but it makes me wonder, because in this situation, if you ask those guys, by their definition, it's genuinely intimate. And since this situation is all about their definition, what does it matter if she's being falsely intimate? That's part of what I thought was interesting about the idea for the film, that it raised all these sorts of questions about fake and real.

RS: Maybe "prostitute" is an outmoded word. It seems to have lost much of its meaning.

SS: I think it's a word that only has a legal meaning now. The cultural meaning of it is so blurry and could be used in so many contexts that, as you said, it's almost meaningless. If the definition of being a whore is that you're doing something that you wouldn't ordinarily do in order to make money, that's 95 percent of the people I know. Most of the people I know do not like their work, or they wish they were working somewhere else. Somebody pays me for my time, that's my job. That's what I do. Two people reaching an agreement that doesn't involve theft or assault is really none of my business. And I don't view the [sex] act as sacred. It's just not an exalted activity to me. That's really the crux of it. There is no evidence I can see that there's anything special about it.

RS: The culture certainly retains a hyper-sensitivity to the monetization of bodies, though. Actresses, in particular, will often feel that a nudity requirement corrupts their artistry. Julia Roberts is a good example -- she once said that any nude scene she did would be in a documentary.

SS: Well, you're talking movies now, I'm talking about prostitutes. But I think she's right. You're talking about someone who has a certain persona and who is a brand, in a way, and she has a certain idea of what that brand is and it doesn't involve shedding her clothes on screen. And that's cool. There are other actresses who feel like its part of their brand to do so.

RS: Did you have these kinds of quasi-philosophical discussions with Sasha, or were most of your talks more practical?

SS: Yeah, the stuff we talked about was more practical. I talked to her about method more than anything else. I knew that if I could just get her to be her, then we would be fine. I talked to her about how we do this, how big the crew is, what the pace is, stuff like that. We didn't really have a need to talk about it conceptually, and I knew from seeing her other work that she was fearless and that there wasn't anything I could think of that she would have a problem with. As it turns out there was nothing extreme, but it was good to know that if I needed her to do that, she would.

RS: When you watched some of the more extreme videos in her filmography, what was your reaction?

SS: It made me feel pretty square! I don't need very much, so I guess my reaction was, "Why is there all this extra activity?" I'm still stuck in first gear as far as that stuff goes, and she's pushing the envelope really far. And that's cool, there are people out there who, that's what turns them on, but I'm still in that place where I'm just marveling that it exists at all. I don't need a lot.

RS: You've somehow been tagged over the years as a director who is very reserved and demure when it comes to on-screen nudity.

SS: I guess that's just not the interesting part of it for me. When you get down to the technical aspects of it, that's just not the interesting part, in terms of movies. I'm interested in the lead-up and the aftermath, because that's the part that separates one person from another. When you get to the actual act itself, although Sasha would disagree, I don't find that there's an incredible amount of variance. And I'm not making porn. If I was trying to make a movie to turn you on sexually, then I would do all that stuff, but that's not what I'm making. I'm making a movie that's supposed to make you think or laugh or compare your life to the characters on screen. I'm not making something that's designed to make you take your pants off. And if I want that in a movie, I'll go and find one of those movies. That's what it's about for me.

RS: Stanley Kubrick thought he had figured out how to make dramatically compelling porn. One of his many unfulfilled ideas.

SS: Yeah, and Terry Southern's book Blue Movie is a great riff on that idea. Kubrick was certainly no scaredy-cat when it came to nudity on-screen. Also, Michael Winterbottom has taken that idea and done it. He's taken a sort of mainstream or legitimate indie movie and put explicit sexual activity in it, but even though all those obstacles have been cleared, I don't think the landscape has been altered and I certainly don't feel the need to imitate it, you know? I feel like Michael did that, so, okay great, I don't have to do it.

RS: Money is one of your pet subjects -- even Erin Brockovich was explicitly about money.

SS: Yeah, I'm fascinated by it. Not because I want to acquire it, but I'm fascinated by the force it exerts. Also, I'm interested in class issues and as soon as you start talking about class, you're talking about money. I think as a subject it's very compelling and complicated.

RS: You seem attracted to the idea of class-busting, in particular. Chelsea the prostitute sitting in a fancy restaurant is almost like Tony Montana saying, "Here I am, rich people - get over it."

SS: I like that idea. I like the idea of someone who is willing to behave in a way that proper society views as transgressive and then parlays that into access. I think that's a really interesting idea, and why shouldn't they? If that's their only way in and that's important to them -- and I'm not saying it should be -- but if that's important to them and that's their way in, then great. But you're right, there is a sort of renegade ethos in play. I don't know if I could ever do a gangster movie, but there are a couple of things I'm working on where that's absolutely at play. I mean, look, I'm getting ready to do Moneyball, and it's front and center in that movie.

RS: Did you see Chelsea as a practitioner of sabermetrics? She's always taking notes about what the client liked and didn't.

SS: Sure, absolutely. There's no wasted material, everything is relevant. You should be looking at everything and analyzing it, in order to exploit inefficiencies. That's what sabermetrics is all about, and yeah, that's how her mind works, for sure. Chelsea is exploiting the inefficiencies in her competitors or in the business in general. Like you said, she writes the stuff down because she feels like there is currency in knowing that some guy doesn't want to see her wear the same thing twice and is also smart enough to notice, therefore she has to be smart enough to wear something different every time. Or know that if he mentioned a book in passing that she should have read it by the next date -- she's looking for ways to create an edge for herself.

RS: Moneyball will be tough to dramatize, I'd imagine. A book about statistics and management techniques.

SS: Yeah, but I think we have a way in, making it visual and making it funny. I want it to be really funny and entertaining, and I want you to not realize how much information is being thrown at you because you're having fun. We've found a couple of ideas on how to bust the form a bit, in order for all that information to reach you in a way that's a little oblique.

RS: Do you have a huge problem with steroids in baseball? Some would say it's just another edge.

SS: Well, I'm frustrated by what I see as the inconsistency of the position. Darryl Strawberry's book just came out. He talks about how all through his career guys were popping greenies. Greenies were in Ball Four, also. So, that was there and may still be there -- it's been around forever. It was just accepted, basically. What are you supposed to say? If you're just a member of the population, like you or me, and you injure your leg or your shoulder, you will often be given a steroid to accelerate the healing process. Well, these are people who make their living through their bodies. Are you going to say to me, "This guy who makes a living off his body needs a steroid to heal because of an injury and we're not going to let him take it," but if you were injured you'd be allowed to take it? We're not going to let him get back to doing his job because we banned it?

That's where, to me, it starts to get a little weird. And that's supposedly a separate thing from "Oh, I'm on a program throughout the season to make me gain thirty pounds of muscle?" They can't even heal themselves when there's a legitimate use for it, so I don't know. On the one hand, yeah, I wish the game were clean, on the other hand, I don't know how you make it clean.

RS: What's the downside to leveling the playing field by making everything legal?

SS: The downside is the destruction it wreaks on their bodies. What happens is the muscles grow, but ligaments don't. That's why these people turn into glass. Their tendons and ligaments cannot withstand the pressure. They weren't designed to withstand the pressure that results from building up your muscle mass at that rate. That's the reason you see these guys running to first base and their hamstring snaps. In the long run, it's probably not great. In terms of a level playing field, if it can't all be clean, then I don't know, I guess it should all be not clean! It's really tricky, but the good news about baseball is that it tends to resist most attempts to alter it in any significant way. It adapts itself. It's not simply a power game.

RS: We talked about branding earlier. You're not a brand and don't seem to want to be. What's the upside?

SS: Experience and anonymity. The fact that I'm not an identifiable brand is very freeing, because people get tired of brands and they switch brands. I've never had a desire to be out in front of anything, which is why I don't take a possessory credit. That's why, if I can help it, I don't like having my picture taken or doing television. I don't want to be out in front of this stuff at all.

If I could convince people to go to the movies without doing interviews, I would do that, but I can't convince anybody of that. So, it's all upside to me. On a movie like this, [the distributor's] rationale is, "We're selling this movie on your back." And my answer is, "Well, if I'm such a commodity, how come nobody went to see The Good German?" I mean, I did more interviews for that movie than any I've ever done and nobody went, so clearly it doesn't mater. I can't convince anybody of this, and as you know, there's a whole cottage industry just in the junketing now, so do I have to now tell everybody that that ecosystem is going to die because I don't want to talk anymore? I don't know the answer.

RS: So, what if there are no more professional film writers and critics around to ask you questions in five years?

SS: People will have to just figure out based on the ad in the newspaper whether they want to see the film. I know I can come up with better ads than most people.

RS: The poster for The Girlfriend Experience is definitely great. I love the ambiguity of the four-letter word.

SS: Isn't that beautiful? That was a positive byproduct of the MPAA saying that we weren't allowed to have F***. So we said, okay, then we'll just make it four stars, and then I immediately thought, oh, there are lots of four-letter words and that's actually better, you know? See this movie with someone you blank.

The Girlfriend Experience opens May 22nd in select cities, and is available now on demand.