Last night I cracked open the forthcoming two-disc Blu-ray set of Steven Soderbergh’s Che, due on Criterion DVD and Blu-ray next Tuesday, January 19. Before firing up my second viewing of the film I decided to check out the 49-minute making-of documentary included on disc one and while listening to the story of the eight year process of bringing the film together was fascinating, the quotes from Soderbergh at the end of the piece are simply too good to save for my review alone.
The last five minutes of the doc discuss the difficulty in selling the film and getting distribution as it made its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival while only weeks earlier five independent film distributors shut their doors leaving the film with few options. As a result, and at Soderbergh’s encouragement with IFC’s help, a roadshow distribution deal was established that would screen the two-part film as one four-and-a-half hour double feature. Title star Benicio del Toro comments on this saying, “In the iPhone era four hours is like a week,” but Soderbergh doesn’t brush it off so easily.
Just as he begins delivering his thoughts on the current state of movies, the doc flashes to Todd McCarthy’s Variety review from Cannes, highlighting the following snippet:
Neither half feels remotely like a satisfying stand-alone film, while the whole offers far too many aggravations for its paltry rewards. Scattered partisans are likely to step forward, but the pic in its current form is a commercial impossibility, except on television or DVD.
While the above block is featured Soderbergh begins his commentary, which I have transcribed and added below:
I agree 100% with everything he says and it’s evidenced by the swath of recycled garbage and sequels we are seeing recently. Take for example word of a sequel to Four Brothers of all films. The world of film is dominated by this kind of chatter and movie blogs feed on it, primarily because it’s what brings in the most traffic.
I can’t blame anyone for trying to make a buck, both on the film side and the news reporting side, it’s a business, but it’s a business that has gotten progressively dumbed down to the point a director such as Soderbergh sounds entirely defeated.
Along these same lines is the decision many directors are faced with, which is whether or not to continue making smaller independent films or go the blockbuster route. It appears 500 Days of Summer helmer Marc Webb has just that question to ask himself now as yet another report has come out saying he is the leading candidate to direct the Untitled Spider-Man Reboot.
Devin Faraci at CHUD does a good job boiling the scenario down to one paragraph:
For one thing Webb has to think hard about what kind of career he wants. Signing on to Spider-Man Love Mary Jane: The Motion Picture means the next few years of his life are spoken for. That’s great on one hand, but if you’re not looking to be just a blockbuster director that’s kind of a scary proposition. But who knows what Webb wants to do – he’s only made one movie so far, although he’s done a bunch of videos and stuff. Maybe he never wants to go to Sundance again.
Strangely enough I asked Webb a question exactly along these lines back when I interviewed him for 500 Days of Summer. We got to talking about the subject of blockbusters as it was reported Fox put a feeler out there to see if he would be interested in directing The A-Team, a gig that ultimately went to Joe Carnahan. When I asked him if he could see himself taking his career down that route he first replied, “You never know, but probably not,” before delivering the following statement:
To me it doesn’t matter, blockbuster or small movie, that shouldn’t be the criteria. It’s whether it’s good or bad, because I think there are movies, like Pirates of the Caribbean – the first one – I thought was really an interesting movie about being true to your blood. It was saying very interesting things in a very pop way, and that I find very compelling. I’m a huge fan of popular movies if they’re done well and I think you can say a lot in those bigger movies and I think independent cinema in the past few years has had a huge impact on the complexity of bigger movies. The Dark Knight is definitely a great example of that.
So, it’s not the size of the movie. Whether or not The A-Team is going to be a good movie or not I have no idea, but I wouldn’t discard it out of hand.
Who could blame Webb for taking part in such a massive franchise? But just imagine if all the up-and-coming indie filmmakers went that route. What if Rian Johnson and Duncan Jones gave up on their personal style of filmmaking and decided to direct superhero movies for a quick buck instead? With Guillermo del Toro directing The Hobbit and its sequel who knows when we will see an original project in the vein of Pan’s Labyrinth or Devil’s Backbone directed by him again?
Now don’t get me wrong, I love blockbusters, bring ’em on. The movies wouldn’t be the same without them. However, there comes a point when the marketplace can get so saturated with them that the quality continues to decline to the point mediocre films can appear to be better than they really are because everything they’re competing against is so bad. Even worse, truly awful films settle among the year’s top grossing movies, while films that move you and make you think are left to be found on DVD. If we aren’t careful the sugar-coated crap is all we’ll be left with and films from directors such as Soderbergh will be harder to find.
Soderbergh’s final quote in the Che doc speaks to this continued decline and the fact Criterion and producer Kim Hendrickson decided to use it as the doc’s parting message after 49-minutes of interview footage really says something to me:
I guess the point of some art is to illuminate. I just don’t see any evidence that it’s happening. It happens for ten minutes and then everybody’s thinking about where they want to go eat. [fade to black]
I wonder, can any of you argue against his points? If so, where do you find flaws in his logic?
