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1.
This isFreshAit. I'm TerryGross.
I want to start today's show by saying how sorry we are for the people
of[TheStateOf]Oklahoma, whose lives were devastated by the tornado, people who
have lost possessions they cherished, their homes, their pets, their friends,
members of their family. Our thoughts are with you. Today onFreshAir, we're
talking about the newHBOmovie based on the life ofLiberace.
2.
(As Liberace) You know, I
always get asked: How do you play the piano with all those rings on your
fingers? And I always tell them: very well, indeed.
3.
That's MichaelDouglas,
starring asLiberace in the newHBOfilm, BehindTheCandelabra
which premieres this sunday. It's about thefiveyearrelationship betweenLiberace
and his boyfriend, ScottThorson, which had to be kept secret from the public.
Thorson, who's played byMattDamon, was fortyyears younger thanLiberace, and was
still in his teens when they met in1977. Liberace was already a star, famous
for his showy pianoplaying, the candelabra that was usually on the piano and
his wild, flashy outfits: bejeweled jackets, feathered capes, furcoats. Liberace's
home, where he broughtThorson to live, was also extravagant. For a while, Liberace
madeThorson part of his act. Thorson wore a rhinestone-studded chauffer'suniform
and droveLiberace onstage in-aRollsRoyce. BehindTheCandelbra was directed by my
guest StevenSoderbergh, who previously directedMichaelDouglas inTraffic and
directedMattDamon in theOcean'smovies and TheInformant. Soderbergh also directedSexLiesAndVideotape
and, more recently, Contagion, MagicMike and SideEffects. He's said
theLiberacemovie will be hislast, at least for a while. Let's start with a scene
from BehindTheCandelabra. It's twoyears into the relationship. Liberace and
Thorson are at home on a couch, watching videotapes of Liberace'sTVshow.
Thorson has one leg swung over onto Liberace's lap and is eating popcorn.
Liberace speaks first.
4.
Liberace and Thorson are
watchingTV. "I'm the first to..."
5.
StevenSoderbergh, welcome
back toFreshAir. So you were about twentyfour when Liberace died in1987. What did you know aboutLiberace when you were growing up?
6.
I have a pretty distinct memory
of seeing him as a child onTV. My parents liked him and found him very
entertaining. And I did, too, although I couldn't quite at that age ["]put
my finger on["] what was different about him. And then I didn't really
think about him again until theyear2000. I was standing on the set
withMichaelDouglas inCincinnati, where we were shootingTraffic, and for some
reason, I just turned to him and said, Have you ever thought about playing
Liberace? And he sort of smiled and did a thirtysecondimpression. And I said,
OK, I'm going to come back to you about this. And yearslater, I did.
7.
What made you think of even
asking him if he wanted to do a film aboutLiberace? Did you see a physical
resemblance? I mean, like, what would inspire that question?
8.
I just don't know. I mean, it
literally came out of nowhere. There must have been something that triggered
it, but it certainly wasn't conscious. And Michael later said he thought, because
we didn't know each other that well at that point, that this was some sort of psychological
mindgame that I was playing with him. But obviously, it wasn't. And it took me,
it took me severalyears to even figure out how to approachLiberace as a
subject. I did some research and started reading, and I was having real trouble
figuring out what ["]the angle["] should be. And then a buddy of mine
inNewYork told me about theScottThorsonbook,
BehindTheCandelabra. And when I read that book, it sort of solved all of
my problems. It gave me a sort of specific timeperiod to deal with. There was
the arc of the relationship between the two of them to give me a structure, and
that's when things really started to move. So that was2006.
9.
So, why did you even want to
make a movie aboutLiberace? What interested you in the man and in his
sensibility and the feathers and furs and sequins, the virginfoxfur with the sixteenfoottrain
that cost thirtythousandUSD? I mean, so much of his sensibility was this kind
of, like, smiling, pleasant, ["]middle of the road sensibility["]
[Middle of what?], but with all this just like ["]gaudy["],
extravagant luxury. You know, I mean, it was. Laughter ofGross.
10. Yeah, well, I mean, obviously, there was an inherent visual appeal.
You could make an argument that Liberace really invented the idea of ["]bling["].
I mean, nobody, nobody was dressing themselves like this. I mean, when you look
at the people that have followed him, whether it's Elvis or EltonJohn or Cher
or Madonna or LadyGaga, you know, all these people are sort of building on
something that he began. And then the other thing that I realized when I
started researching his life and his work was he was an incredible technical
keyboardist. And I was really fascinated in this idea of an incredible level of
Professionalism sort of being almost hidden behind, you know, the exterior of
this flamboyant performer. That was reallyinteresting to me.
11. I think my favorite line in the film, this is before ScottThorson
has actually metLiberace. And so ScottThorson, played by MattDamon, and his
friend, played by ScottBakula, are in a club together watchingLiberace
performing in his sequins at this, you know, mirrored piano. And, you know,
ScottThorson says to his friend, It's amazing the audience would like something
this gay. And the friend says, They have no idea he's gay. Laughter ofGross.
12. Right.
13. You know, I rememberLiberace from when I was growing up, and I was
trying to think, like, Did people I know think he was gay? And I think there
was a sense of, like, he's gay, but that meant that that was just synonymous
with, like, feathers and rhinestones or something. I don't know. What do you
think? Do you think people knew he was gay?
14. Perhaps, but my sense of it is people just, I don't think they
cared, you know, I really don't. My parents didn't, and they were, I think,
sharp enough to probably see what was happening. There was a story that was
told to us byRayArnett, who was Liberace's sort of directorchoreographer.
He staged all ofLiberace'sshows. And he told us about when the story ["]broke["]
in the tabloids ofScottThorson revealing his relationship withLiberace and the
beginning of the palimony[law]suit, and that they had a show that night, and
Liberace was veryworried about what the response was going to be from the
audience. And he was saying, What are we going to do if they start booing me,
or if they start heckling me? And Ray said, I don't know. I mean, I guess we
could do a blackout and you could leave the stage, but I don't think that's
what's going to happen. And Ray described listening as Liberace left backstage
to go out and be introduced, and he said the room just exploded, like it was a
bigger and more positive response than he'd ever gotten before. And that, to
me, indicates that people just, they didn't care. They just loved him as an
entertainer, and I don't think that really mattered to them.
15. You referred to this in the movie. Liberace sued a newspaper that
wrote that he was gay, and he won the suit.
16. Yeah, in theUK. It's true. I mean, he was, SeymourHeller, his
manager, was veryaggressive about that kind of thing.
17. So even Liberace, even somebody who was, like, such a queen onstage,
it would have been reallybad for his career if he had been outed, even though,
as you say, eventually when he was, it was OK. But still, it was a risk. It was
a big risk.
18. Oh, I think there's no question for him, at a certain point in his
career, it would have done a lot of damage, you know, for it to be publicly
known that he was gay. So he had legitimate reason, as did a lot of other
performers, to be ["]closeted["]. And I think there's a, watching the
film, of course, there's this sort of ["]undertow["], an emotional ["]undertow["]
because you can't help thinking, as you're looking at it, you know, if it were
today, or if it were even just a few years ago, none of this would be an issue,
and he could live any way he wanted. And, you know, if he were in a certainState,
he could even be married. So it's unfortunate to think that for so long, he had
to spend so much effort to keep that part of his life a secret.
19. If you're just joining us, my guest isStevenSoderbergh, and he
directed the new movie BehindTheCandelabra. It's the story of one relationship
in Liberace's life, with a younger man, about fortyyears younger, played byMattDamon.
And the movie premieres onHBO may twentysixth. Let's take a short break, then
we'll talk some more. This isFreshAir. If you're just joining us, my guest is
Steven Soderbergh, and he directed the new movie about Liberace, which is
called BehindTheCandelabra and it's going to be shown on HBO. It's so interesting that you cast MichaelDouglas, because, you
know, most of MichaelDouglas'sroles, he's such a kind of, you know, macho, straight
guy. And here he is asLiberace, and it's a veryconvincing performance, and even
though you told us a little about it earlier, I'm still so surprised that you
saw that capacity in him.
20. Yeah. Laughter ofSoderbergh. I certainly, in meetingMichael and
working with him onTraffic, recognized veryquickly that he was an intelligent,
complex person, in addition to being a reallygifted performer. And he knows a
lot about a lot of different things. And I never questioned the idea of him
playing a role like this. I knew he could do it, and my only hope was that he
would want to do it, which he did. But I think the, it ended up, you know, the
movie got postponed a couple of times for various reasons, and then Michael was
ill for a while. And this was thefirstproject.
21. Yeah, he had throatcancer.
22. Yeah, so this was the first film he made after recovering. And I
think there was an aspect of being there on set, that things felt a little more
heightened because of, you know, what he'd been through and how long it had
taken us to get to thefirstday of shooting. And he just, he and Matt both, I
was fascinated to watch howquickly they sort of fell into these roles, and
howcompletely. [Completeness has no degree.] They both just kind of jumped off the
cliff, and there was no hesitance, there was no sense of them ever sort of
looking back at themselves as they were performing. They just seemed completely
inside of it. And I don't know if part of that is the physical aspect of
putting on the clothes and the wigs, and in some cases, you know, prosthetics
that allowed them to feel so comfortable in this transformation, but it was
really something to watch. I mean, if they, they both had to meet each other,
you know, at the exact same point, or it wasn't going to work.
23. Is it true that MichaelDouglas'sfather, KirkDouglas, lived nextdoor
toLiberace?
24. I know they both had houses inPalmSprings. I'm not sure how close
they lived to each other. But Michael, you know, Michael metLiberace manymanytimes
when he was younger.
25. Oh, really? Because of his father living in the same neighborhood as
Liberace?
26. Yeah, and the parties, you know, people would throw parties, and
everybody would show up. And so he at least had a pretty strong reference
point. And then, of course, we hadDebbieReynolds in the film playing
Liberace'smother, and Debbie knewLiberace veryverywell, because they were both
performing in[Las]Vegas at the same time. And she knewFrances, Liberace'smom
verywell. And so she was able to sort of recreate her whole affect and her
sound pretty remarkably.
27. So did MichaelDouglas or DebbieReynolds tell you stories about
Liberace that were helpful to you as the director?
28. Only in the sense of, well, we talked to a prettygood amount of
people, and you can't find anybody to say anything bad about him. Everybody
said he was just a sweetheart, verygenerous, verykind, veryloyal and loved
performing. So that was interesting, just to get everybody's impressions and
have them be that synchronous. On the other hand, it was clear that he didn't, he
didn't like conflict, and he didn't like, sort of, negativity. And, so, when
things would start for, if a relationship started to sort of ["]go south["],
he would kind of avoid dealing with it directly. You know, this is where
sometimes his manager would come in and sort of take care of things.
29. You say it was hard to find somebody who had anything negative to
say about him, but ScottThorson, theMattDamoncharacter, has plenty negative to
say about him. And, you know, the movie's based on his memoir. And he seems
like such an interesting character. I mean, when the movie ends and you have a ["]crawl["]
updating what's happened to people, it says that ScottThorson lives inReno[NV].
But I think right now, he's actually living in prison. You know, there's a
NewYorkTimesarticle that said he's in prison now. "In february, he was charged
with burglary and identitytheft after buying 1300USD worth of computer and
cell.phone merchandise, using a creditcard and license that weren't his. He was
arrested at a hotel, where he and a man he had just met rented a room for 33.90USD
a night." But it seems like he was not themostreliable character, not only
because he's in prison now for having done this identitytheft and stealing, but
the people quoted in the article in theNewYorkTimes who know him basically said
he's not a reliable character. ["That's not a verygood evidence."]
30. Well, you know, I think part of what enabled-Scott and -Liberace to
have a relationship that went on as long as it did and was as serious as it was
had to do with both of them, I think, to some extent, being kind of broken
people in different ways, and finding some connection in that. Scott'supbringing,
if you were to read his book or even see the film and [or] have him
describe it, was, you know, not pleasant, and it's, you could make an argument
that the fact that he got out of that childhood at all intact was an
accomplishment of sorts. But more to the point, I firmly believe that their
relationship was real. I think they really did love each other. I think they
had a period of a couple of years that were veryveryhappy for both of them.
31. You told us a little bit about how you decided you wanted to use
MichaelDouglas asLiberace. What about MattDamon? You've worked withMattDamon
on-theOcean'sfilm and onTheInformant. Did you have to test their ["]chemistry["]
together to see whether MichaelDouglas and MattDamon would be convincing as a
couple?
32. No, I didn't. It's funny. I had no doubts that their sort of mutual
respect for each other and their incredibleProfessionalism would result in
something that would be convincing. And I knew it had to be, because that was
really, at the end of the day, the movie is really kind of a ["]twohander["]
between the two of them, and my ["]compass["] was always focused on
their interaction. And it's a veryintimate movie. It's a veryemotionallyintimate
movie. And there are scenes between them that are almost uncomfortable in their
intimacy, and would be if it was a man and a woman involved. You know, there
are some veryvery.
33. You're talking about sexually intimate.
34. No.
35. You mean.
36. I mean, in every way.
37. In every way, right.
38. Just conversations that take place between people who are in, you
know, serious relationships that can be veryvolatile and veryuncomfortable. You
know, I always felt that if we did our jobs correctly, that halfway through the
movie, you'd forget it was Michael and Matt, and you'd forget it was twomen and
just feel as though you're watching a relationship.
39. I was talking to my producer, Lauren, about this, and, you know,
because I was saying there's something musically, in terms of just being an
entertainer, with the kind of patter he'd have with the audience that was just,
like, so ["]middle of the road["], and, at the same time, he's like
so extravagant and queenly and everything. And she was saying it's as if
LawrenceWelk. Laughter ofGross. Like, you know, suddenly became this queen or
something. You know, it's just like two totally different sensibilities in one.
40. Well, I think, you know, the story that he tells in the movie about
theHollywoodBowl is kind of instructive and absolutely understandable, when
he's saying he went to theHollywoodBowl for the first time to prepare for a
performance and was looking at, you know, the setup on the stage with this
blackfloor and this giant clamshell. And, as he said, traditionally, pianists
always wore blacktuxedos, and he realized, I'm just going to disappear, like
literally, people won't be able to see me. And that's one of the things that
led him to start wearing these gigantic outfits, you know, as he tells the
story. And then he's wearing this crazy ["]getup["], and he says, Can
you see me now. You know, on the one hand it's funny, and on the other hand, I
get it. I think he's totally right. You know, when you're sitting in front of a
piano on a stage somewhere, and you want to be seen, you've got to ["]step
it up["]. And so what was funny, obviously, was over the years, to see how
he kept trying to ["]top himself["]. I mean, these outfits are just ["]crazy["].
I mean we, you know, we were able to show a fairly decent amount of them, but
there was, there's, you know, there are books just entirely made up of images
of his outfits, and and, they're just, just ["]jawdropping["].
41. Steven Soderbergh will be back in the second half of the show. He
directed the new HBOmovie, BehindTheCandelabra, which premieres onHBO sundaynight.
Here's MichaelDouglas asLiberace. I'm TerryGross, and this isFreshAit. This
isFreshAit. I'm TerryGross. In a moment, we'll get back to our interview with
Steven Soderbergh about his new HBO movie BehindTheCandelabra based on the life
of Liberace. First, let's hear from Liberace himself in a clip from one of
hisTVshows in the '60s. He's dressed in a brocaded black and gold suit, seated
at his white piano with a mirrored keyboard with his signature candelabra on
top of the piano. He's talking to the studio audience.
42. (APPLAUSE) LIBERACE: You know, ladies and gentlemen, there's one
song that I think everybody in show business has done and I don't want to be
left out, I'm going to do it too. But I'm going to try to do it a little bit
differently. First of all, to refresh your memory, I'm going to play in its
original form, and then as a Viennese waltz by Strauss, a Swiss music box, in
that popular Latin tempo, the bossa nova, and last of all, the way that kids
seem to like it best. And all of this is going to happen toMackTheKnife.
43. That's Liberace from aTVshow in-the[19]60s. Here's another scene
from the newHBOmovie, BehindTheCandelabra starring MichaelDouglas as Liberace,
directed by our guest Steven Soderbergh. This is the scene in which Liberace
first meets his boyfriend Scott Thorson, played by MattDamon. Thorson, who's
still a teenager, 40 years younger than Liberace, has just seen Liberace
perform at a Vegas club and is taken backstage by a friend who knows Liberace.
In the dressing room, they also see Liberace's director, Ray, and his
accompanist Billy. After being introduced, these are some of Liberace's first
words to Thorson.
44. The first encounter betweenThorsonAndLiberace.
45. That's MichaelDouglas as Liberace from the new HBO movie
"Behind the Candelabra." And my guest isStevenSoderbergh who directed
the film. It's so interesting that MichaelDouglas's
firsttime back acting after throatcancer, he's doing a role where getting the
voice right is so important. I mean this is not his regular way of speaking
and, you know, he's doing a pretty interesting job of capturing
Liberace'sspeakingvoice. Were you or he concerned at all that, you know, his
voice physically couldn't hold up to something where he would be, you know,
having to put on a voice?
46. No. He seemed, by the time we started shooting, he seemed to be onehundredpercent
recovered and healthy. And I think for us the trick was more because there's a
lot of material available to look at that he not get hung up in doing an
impression ofLiberace. You know, I didn't want him sort of, you know, I didn't
want his focus sort of pulled by having to technically try and reproduce, you
know, exactly how Liberace sounded and I think he found a reallynice sort of ["]sweet
spot["] where there is a voice and it's very distinctive and it's not
Michael'svoice. But it's not just him parroting Liberace. I just think I don't
think either of us would have felt that that would be interesting.
47. You expected this to be studiofilm, but apparently the studios
didn't want the film. Did you find that out after the movie was already made?
48. No. I mean we were taking the film around town trying to get a
domestic partner and nobody, nobody wanted to do it. I think there was a, there
was a.
49. When you say taking around do you mean the script or the actual
movie?
50. The script.
51. OK.
52. The script with Michael and Matt attached. And yeah, we didn't need
verymuch money. We'd sort of presold the majority of the film overseas, but
there was a sense that the movie wouldn't have any appeal outside of a gay
audience and that that audience wouldn't be big enough to return the investment,
and so we just couldn't get anybody to do it. And fortunately, JerryWeintraub,
our producer, was in the middle of working withHBO on a documentary about
himself called HisWay, which I encourage everybody to see, it's pretty fun, and
he had a conversation withHBO and said, you know, we're trying to get this
Liberace movie ["]off the ground["] and they said that's exactly the
kind of thing we want to do, and it was done immediately.
53. I suspect, in theUS, more people will see it onHBO than would have
seen it had it been released to theaters.
54. Oh, I don't think there's any question. Yeah, I think you're
absolutely right.
55. But what does it say to you about-TVversusMovies?
56. Well, you know, this is something I've talked about over the past
couple of years, which is the sort of migration of a particular kind of
audience fromMovies toTelevision. And, "at a certain level", it's not
surprising to me at all that we ended up atHBO, because I've seen a drift over
the last decade or so, and it's partially I think as a result of the fact that
there's just so much great television being made, and a lot of this is, I think,
due toTheSopranos, which kind of altered the landscape in a way that is still
evolving. But I think everything that's good now is sort of standing on the
shoulders of what DavidChase did, and it just completely changed people's
attitudes aboutTV and, you know, here we are where I look at it and, you know,
it feels like a sort of second golden age of television. There's reallyreallygood
stuff being made.
57. My guest is Steven Soderbergh. He directed the new movie BehindTheCandelabra
which premieres on HBO Sunday night. More after break. This isFreshAir. If
you're just joining us, my guest isStevenSoderbergh and his movie about
Liberace starring MichaelDouglas asLiberace and MattDamon as his younger
boyfriend premieres onHBO, may twentysixth. You
have said that this is going to be your last movie before either retiring fromFilm
or at least taking a hiatus fromFilm. Which do you think of it as now?
58. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just going to step away from that
particular job for a while, and I don't have a sense right now how long, you
know, my ["]break["] will last or whether it's permanent or not. I certainly
wouldn't be unhappy if [BehindThe]Candelabra turned out to be thelastmovie I
made. That would not be a problem for me. But I've got some, you know, as we
were just talking aboutTelevision, I've got a few televisionthings that I'm
trying to ["]get off the ground.["] So it's not, I'm not going to be
idle.
59. Oh, I see. You're not giving up on shooting stuff and directing
stuff. You're just giving up, for now, on it being in theaters.
60. Yeah. In terms of what I, you know, for lack of a better term, Cinema,
I'm taking a ["]break["] from that. But I'm hoping that a couple of
theseTV["]notions["] will becomeReality. That would be fun.
61. And I presume it's premature to tell us what they are?
62. Yeah, because they're not ["]set up["] yet. I'm still
trying to get them together. But, you know, if you're talking about what, you
know, a ["]long form["] piece, it's an opportunity to go narrow and
deep and to present characters who are complicated and probably flawed. And, in
this sort of medium, that's not a problem, it's a plus.
63. So what are some of the reasons why you want to stay away from
MovieMovies now? Does it have to do with financial constraints and creative
freedom?
64. It's partially [partly] that. It's partially the fact that ["]the
box["] is getting smaller, that there are economic pressures that sort of
force it to become more and more constricted, and that's neither here nor
there. It's just that's just the way it goes. The business isn't as fun as it
used to be, or at least as fun as it was when I came up a long time ago. And
then there are just creative issues of my own, of feeling that I need to sort
of tear down everything I've done and rebuild from scratch. And that's a
process that I think is not incremental. I feel I can go and work on some
things inTelevision while I'm thinking about my relationship toMovies, whereas
I don't think I can think about my relationship toMovies while I'm trying to
make a movie. I just need to just destroy everything that's come before and see
if I can kind of become a primitive again. I'm not even sure it's possible. I
don't know if it's something you could do.
65. What you even mean by that?
66. It means just throwing away everything that you've learned and
thought and trying to become in essence a completely different filmmaker,
because I've hit a wall of what I feel I'm able to do at this point - not
because I've figured everything out, I've just figured out what I can't figure
out and I need to tear it down and start over again.
67. Why would that be different inTelevision?
68. Because they're different mediums and they have different demands.
And the things that I can do currently I think dovetail very well with what's
happening inTV right now. And I like to be busy. I don't like to sit around, so
it was always in my mind that I would be making things, it just wouldn't be Movies.
69. When did you first become aware that there was such a thing as a
director and that the director had a lot to do with why you liked a movie when
you were watching it?
70. When I was twelve.
71. Through watching what?
72. Jaws.
73. Really? Because of the suspense?
74. Yeah. That was the first that.
75. Because of the way you were.
76. No. It was just I came out of that film inStPetersburgFL in the
summer of1975, and my relationship to movies had completely changed. I had
always seen a lot of films because my father loved Movies, but in that
twohoursandfourminutes, they went from something that I used to view as
entertainment and became something else. And I had two questions when I came
out of that theater. One is, What does directed by mean, exactly? And who
isStevenSpielberg? And luckily, there was a book that had been published around
the time the movie came out calledTheJawsLog, which was
written by CarlGottlieb, one of the coscreenwriters, and
it turned out to be one of thebest makingofbooks that anybody has ever produced,
and I bought a copy of that, and read it over and over again and highlighted
any mention ofStevenSpielberg and what that job entailed. And, from that point
on, I realised, Oh, this is a job, you could have this is as a job.
77. Does StevenSpielberg know this story?
78. I have no idea.
79. So you haven't had a chance to tell it to him?
80. No.
81. OK.
82. No.
83. So then you realized you wanted to be a director and it was before
every cell.phone had a videocamera on it. Laughter ofGross.
84. Yeah.
85. And so what did you do to start trying it out?
86. Well, I managed to get my hands on some equipment, some, you know,
supereightequipment, occasionally some sixteenmillimeterequipment. You know, it
did, it required you had to save up some money and, you know, getting supereightequipment,
occasionally some sixteenmillimeterequipment. You know, it did, it required, you
had to save up some money and, you know, going out and shooting stuff wasn't as
simple as it is now. And there were ["]plusses and minuses["] to
that. The plusses were, like I said, you really had to plan things out
and be verycareful about what you shot, because you only had a limited amount
of film in a ["]cartridge["]. And this was also a period in which,
you know, in order, this was sort of prevideo, videocassettes and being able to
get access to everything all the time. Luckily, during this period inBatonRouge[LA],
I was going to highschool on theLSUcampus, and there was a filmprogram there
and there was a repertoryhouse next to the campus. So I was seeing films almost
everynight of the week for-fouryears. And things imprint in a way when you're a
teenager, I think, that is unique. You know, things sort of hit you in a way
they'll never hit you again. And I was just verylucky that during that fouryearperiod
I saw a ton of movies from all over the world. And they made a gigantic
impression.
87. Now, your father, I think, was DeanOfEducation or something atLSU,
LouisianaStateUniversity?
88. During that time, yeah. Mm-hmm.
89. So, did he impress upon you the importance ofEducation, and then did
you, like, not go to college so you could go toHollywood? Laughter ofGross.
90. Well, here's what you want, is to see your kid ["]lit up["]
by something.
91. Yeah.
92. And I inherited from him a bit of a, both sort of workaholicaspect
and also an obsessive quality. And, when he saw what was happening, he just
sort of stood back and let it happen. And I, believe me, highschool, I never ["]cracked["]
a book. I mean, I got by just on the fact that I read a lot and sort of ["]coasted
on["] what I knew. But every, every waking moment during that period, I
was either making a movie, reading about a movie, or seeing a movie, if I was
awake. And he just, he let it happen, you know, he was verysupportive. Because
he loved movies too. And I think, at a certain age, I've had this happen with
my daughter, who has a prettyremarkable singingvoice. And, when I saw her
perform as a ninthgrader in the lead of a schoolplay, to see your child do
something that you could never do is a great, it's a great moment. And I think
he saw veryquickly that I was doing things, you know, that he would never have
been able to do.
93. Your mother taught paraPsychology. What were the things she believed
in?
94. My mother was ["]ahead of the curve["] in a lot of
different ways when I was growing up. And being in the house, it was unusual
because she had a kind of fascinating cast of characters floating
through. But she was interested in the paranormal. She was interested in the
kind of healthfoods that now, again, you can get anywhere. But, back then, you
really had to pursue getting, you know, people, when you talk about, you know,
anything like kale or algae or, you know, any of the things now that are prettycommonplace,
back, you know, these were things that she was interested in back then. She was
just sort of a free thinker, and I think I ended up being a kind of combination
of the two of them, because my father was verystructured and verygood at
working at a job that had certain hours. I could never do that. Like, I
wouldn't be verygood as someone who had to go to an office everyday and be
there from this point to that point. That would be hard for me. So, I'm kind of
a combination of the two of them. I have her sort of abstract, uh, quality and
I also have his kind of verylinear approach to process and problemsolving.
95. My guest is Steven Soderbergh. He directed the new movie BehindTheCandelabra
which premiers on HBO Sunday night. More after a break. This isFreshAir. (SOUNDBITE
OF MUSIC) Let's get back to our interview with directorStevenSoderbergh. His
films includeSexLiesAndVideotape, Traffic, Contagion and MagicMike. He said his
newHBOmovie, BehindTheCandelabra will be his last - at least for a while. So I read that one of the movies you'd like to make now, if you were
making movies, which apparently you're not going to be for a while, would be a
movie aboutLeniRiefenstahl, who was the filmmaker who did, you know, just like
amazing.
96. Nazipropaganda.
97. Amazing Nazipropagandafilms.
98. Yeah.
99. That when you watch them, they're so, like, powerful and frightening.
She's such a controversial figure.
100.
Yeah.
101.
Because you have to keep twothoughts
in your mind at the same time, that she was, you know, a reallyterrific
director and had a great ["]eye["] and knew how to stir up
emotion, and, at the same time, she was doing this on behalf of just like
themostdespicableIdeology. So why have you been having trouble getting the film
made?
102.
Well, we, Scott Burns, who
wrote SideEffects and TheInformant and Contagion, and I were thinking about
this project and we had what I thought was a pretty interesting, bold take on
the material, which was basically Hitler and Goebbels are the studio and she is
the aggrieved artist who is fighting for her vision. And so the movie, at no
point, leaves her point of view or delves into any of these Moralquestions at
all. The whole design of the movie is that you are ["]rooting["] for
her to win. And the film ends with her onstage after the premier of TriumphOfTheWill
with people throwing roses at her and she's beaming, and that's the end of the
movie. Now, what we realized after we solved this sort of creative problem was
no one would go see this. Laughter ofGross. That we would break our, we'd break
our backs for two years for no money making this movie and that not even our
friends would want to see it. And we were supposed to go in the next day to
pitch this idea to our producers about how we were going to do it. And I said
toScott, you know, I've done this before, where I've, you know, had an unusual ["]take["]
on a piece, and we've all gone out and killed ourselves to do it, and then
people have just shrugged. And I go, I don't want to do that again. Do you have
anything else that we can go in and pitch tomorrow instead of this? He said,
well, I've always wanted to make an ultrarealistic film about a pandemic. And I
go, OK, we're doing that.
103.
Oh, Contagion.
104.
And we went in the next, yeah.
We went in the next day and said we're not doingLeni, we're doing this. And
they said great. And we went off in that direction. So it was kind of, we agreed,
basically, to abandon it.
105.
Why would you even consider
making a film aboutLeniRiefenstahl and her documentary work for-Hitler and -theNazis
and not want to raise any of the Moralquestions? [Fucking dumbass.]
106.
Because she
never raised them. That's the whole point. I wanted to just be inside of her
point of view.
107.
Mm-hmm.
108.
I wanted you to, you know what
I mean? I just wanted it to be what, how, what she thought when she was doing
it. Because that's what's so - that's the whole point of it, is we look at that
and go could you not be thinking about these issues, and the point is, she
wasn't. And I thought it would be really.
109.
Do we know that she wasn't? Do
we know that she wasn't thinking about them and that. Do we know that she
didn't agree with-theNaziregime? [Fucking dumbassCunt selfrighteous. She
doesn't understand and she never will.]
110.
I just don't think that's where
her ["]head["] was at. I think her ["]head["] was, you guys
need to give me the money for this crane so I can get these shots. I mean,
that's, that's all she cared about, you know. And so to me, it, the questions
are there for the audience. They don't need to be there for her. So anyway, the
good news is that film is never going to happen. Laughter ofGross.
111.
So finally, you have written, I
think it's complete now, a Twitter, quote, novel. You know.
112.
Oh, it's not done.
113.
It's not done. OK.
114.
No, no.
115.
All right.
116.
Who knows how long this is
going to go on.
117.
I think my question is, Why?
Why are you doing that? It seems like such an oxymoron because Twitter is all
about this short little ["]burst["] that's ephemeral and, you know, a
novel is really like for those times when you actually have time to commit, and
you want something ["]rich["].
118.
Well, it's an opportunity,
because of the format, to exercise a muscle that I want to keep exercised, and
it's not entirely unrelated to my process of trying to figure out what I want
to do withMovies. I don't even know if I could really articulate how it's
connected to that process, but I know that it is somehow, that there's some, there's
something in the process of me sort of ["]dribbling["] this thing
out that is connected to how I'm thinking aboutCinema. And the idea of
Twitter and tweets, I've never viewed it as something that I would ever use for
topical issues, or, as you say, sort of ephemeral. I would hope that the things
that are on there are true today and are true tenyears from now or fifteenyears
from now. I don't want to use it as, you know, what I ate or what I went to go
see that night. You know, I'd like it to be somewhat more permanent than that,
and in this case, like I said, it lends itself to a certain kind of format, in
this case a kind of genre, I don't know how to describe it, a sort of spy, abstract
spybook with some photographs thrown in. And it just seemed like, all right,
this could be fun, and I'll do it as long as I can sustain it.
119.
OK. Well, StevenSoderbergh,
thank you so much for talking with us.
120.
Oh, thanks for having me.
121.
Steven Soderbergh directedBehindTheCandelabra
starring MichaelDouglas asLiberace. It premiers onHBO sundaynight.
