Schizopolis was the story of the disintegration of Soderbergh’s marriage to Betsy Brantley, with Brantley playing the wife, and their daughter, Sarah, playing the daughter. Working with his ex-wife in a story about his ex-marriage was “intense. I don’t even know what word to use. We both looked at it as an experience that might teach us something,” said Soderbergh. But he also made the film to figure out what was wrong with him professionally. “Schizopolis was working on a couple levels,” he said later. “I thought, the work’s gotta bust out, and I’ve gotta bust out.” Whether the experience changed Soderbergh on a personal level was hard to tell, but professionally the experience “woke me up,” he said.
Soderbergh had no idea if it would wake up anyone else, and his skepticism turned out to be well placed. Schizopolis was a chaotic jumble of image and plot, reflecting the filmmaker’s energy, but making sense to no one but the most dedicated Soderbergh fan. If the director was reaching for the carefree joy of his idol Richard Lester in A Hard Day’s Night, he fell short; characters spoke to each other in different languages (with no subtitles for the benefit of the viewer) and scenes hopped from one strange exchange to another for no apparent reason. It was as if the audience indeed didn’t matter. Much later he admitted that the movie “probably crossed the line from personal into private filmmaking,” but at the time, Soderbergh nonetheless had hopes of selling the film for distribution, securing a slot for a surprise screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996. Word seeped out that there was a new experimental Soderbergh film in the offing, and Harvey Weinstein, who had just paid Soderbergh to do a rewrite on his movie Mimic, called to make sure no one else had seen it. He requested an advance screening, but Soderbergh declined. Intrigued, Weinstein made a preemptive bid of $1 million for the film just before the official screening began, sight unseen. That was the last time Weinstein mentioned the film; after the screening—during which about fifty people walked out in the first half hour—the mogul made a beeline for the door.
Still, Soderbergh remained bizarrely optimistic, writing in his diary, “I really think the public will be ahead of the critics on this one, should the public ever get a chance to see it.” That seemed unlikely, given the reviews. Janet Maslin in the New York Times called the film a “bizarre, largely impenetrable experiment in linguistics.” Todd McCarthy at Variety hated it, calling the film “cranky” and “disgruntled.”
Back in Los Angeles, a screening was held for distributors and several hundred of Soderbergh’s friends at the Motion Picture Academy theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. One by one the independent distributors passed: first Gramercy, then Strand, then Trimark, finally Sony Classics. Northern Arts showed some interest, but the deal fell through. Soderbergh thought it was ironic that he’d made the ultimate independent film, and all the independent studios were, as he put it, “afraid of it.” He didn’t consider that the film was actually impenetrable. He began to get testy. He wrote in his diary: “They tend to say, ‘We really liked it, but we don’t know who the audience is for this.’ Blah blah blah. Nobody has any fucking vision.”
Soderbergh’s supporters in Hollywood were still trying to lure him back to making movies that people might actually want to see. Bobby Newmyer, the producer who’d first worked with Soderbergh on sex, lies, and videotape, kept encouraging him to come back to Hollywood and make a mainstream film like Leatherhead, the sports film he’d been interested in long ago. He’d call Soderbergh and urge him to pick up the script again. “It’ll be fucking great. It’ll be a blast.” He’d be greeted by long silences and a simple “My head’s just not there now.”
Where was Soderbergh’s head? Nobody knew. “I was frustrated,” admitted Newmyer. “I kept bringing him everything in the world I had. But he had a certain disdain for mainstream Hollywood movies.”
In August 1996 Soderbergh used an advance check he earned from Universal for rewrite work to start on a movie called Neurotica, a sequel to Schizopolis. This seemed almost like a deliberate act of self-sabotage, but apparently Soderbergh couldn’t imagine other options.
“I sit here and think I’m making films nobody wants to see and finding it near impossible to write, even though it’s been my only source of income for the past eighteen months,” he wrote in his diary. “And I can also imagine people who would kill even to be in this situation, as shitty as it seems to me right now. What’s bugging me, I think, is the possibility that this road that I’ve been encouraging myself (and everyone around me) to follow the last year and a half leads nowhere, or perhaps somewhere worse than the place I left. But what’s the alternative? Go back and make stupid Hollywood movies? Or fake highbrow movies, with people who would be as cynical about hiring me to make a ‘smart’ movie as others are when they hire the latest hot action director to make some blastfest?”
The thought of trying to make his kind of movies within the Hollywood system seemed to him absurd, impossible. But it would be surprisingly simple to change this view 180 degrees. Soderbergh hadn’t counted on finding a guardian angel within that same system. (And blessedly, Neurotica never got made.)
IN NOVEMBER 1996 SODERBERGH FINALLY FOUND A script he wanted to direct. It was called Human Nature, a surreal comedy by a young writer named Charlie Kaufman. As Soderbergh noted in his diary at the time, “He actually wrote another script called Being John Malkovich that I liked but it was already set up at New Line with another director.” That other director was Spike Jonze, who would turn that into one of the most innovative films of the 1990s.
Human Nature was what came to be considered typically Kaufmanesque, with characters and a story that existed on a different plane than the rest of the universe. It’s about a behavioral scientist who spends his time trying to teach table manners to mice. He befriends a woman covered in body hair—fur—who wants electrolysis. They meet a boy who thinks he’s an ape and teach him to be human. Soderbergh was enchanted. He spoke to Marc Platt, an executive at Universal, who called the material “challenging,” but was willing to pass it on to his boss, Casey Silver. Silver politely suggested that it might be better suited for, say, Miramax. Silver thought the script had no third act, apart from being entirely bizarre. Soderbergh persisted in developing the project, even going as far as thinking about David Hyde Pierce for the scientist and Saturday Night Live’s Chris Kattan as the Nature Boy (“I think he’s destined for stardom,” Soderbergh wrote), with Marisa Tomei as the Nature Girl. But Miramax passed.
In passing on Human Nature, Universal chief Casey Silver delicately asked if he could slip Soderbergh the script of a movie called Out of Sight, which had been adapted by screenwriter Scott Frank from an Elmore Leonard novel. TV star George Clooney already wanted to star in the movie.
Silver was one of those movie executives who had been watching out for Soderbergh for years. He’d first met him when Silver was a vice president of production at TriStar and Soderbergh came in to pitch doing a musical. It was 1985 or 1986, and Soderbergh, still in his early twenties, had just come to town, a tall skinny kid with hightop red Converse sneakers and a black leather jacket. Silver, who was struck by the young writer’s smarts and drive, hired him to write the musical, which was set in a high school. (It was never made.) After sex, lies, and videotape, Silver, by then an executive at Universal, hired Soderbergh to direct King of the Hill. After that, they maintained a friendship and tried to get a few things going. It was with Silver that Soderbergh tried to develop the screwball sports comedy Leatherheads, but they could never find a star who wanted to do the film.
By 1996, Silver had been promoted to chairman of the studio, one of the rarified jobs that never last very long in Hollywood. (Silver was no exception, but he’d have a few good years.) George Clooney was looking to transition into movies from his career as resident heartthrob on the hit NBC series ER. He was slated to play the Green Hornet for Universal, but for reasons unknown to Silver, he balked at the last moment (though he ended up playing Batman later). Then Clooney heard about Out o
f Sight, which was being developed at Jersey Films, Danny DeVito and Michael Shamberg’s company, which was on the Universal lot. The movie was about a con man just sprung from jail who is chased by a female FBI agent, with whom sparks fly.
In meetings with the Jersey executives, Silver threw out Soderbergh’s name as a possible director. “I remember people looking at me and saying, ‘Are you sure? That’s an odd call,’” Silver remembered. At the time Soderbergh was best known for his post–sex, lies duds. Silver persisted; he was a fan of King of the Hill. Reluctantly, the people at Jersey agreed.
Silver made the call to Baton Rouge and sent the script. Soderbergh wrote in his diary, “I said sure, I’d read it right away, and I did. It’s a terrific script, and all the people involved are good, so of course I called Casey the next day and turned it down.”
Late that next night Silver and Soderbergh spoke by phone, and the movie executive gave the young director some tough love. “Steven, I may be out of line, but I’m going to be honest here. You’re insane. You are a fucking idiot. You love the script. I’m running the studio. This script is a go. You don’t have to worry that the big bad studio is going to come in and fuck up your movie. If you’re ever going to do it, do it now.”
The next day Soderbergh relented. He called back and asked, “Do you still want me to do it?” (Later Soderbergh had a selective memory of this process; he told a Film Comment interviewer in 2001 that “when I got sent Out of Sight, one of the reasons I was so aggressive about pursuing it was I felt, ‘This is the movie where I can now put to use what I’ve just been through in the last two years.’”)
In fact, Jersey wasn’t sure at all they wanted him to. Soderbergh was competing for Out of Sight with Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) and Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral). Crowe passed, and finally Newell did, too, saying it was too much like Donnie Brasco, the film he’d just finished. Soderbergh interviewed for the job, once, twice, but still the Jersey Film producers and George Clooney weren’t convinced. Soderbergh was no idiot; he was well aware of his reputation in Hollywood and knew that the movies he’d been making were hardly the calling card he needed. Jersey’s Michael Shamberg asked to see Schizopolis. Soderbergh stalled endlessly. Shamberg later asked the director why, and Soderbergh said, “I thought you wouldn’t want to hire me if you saw it.” He was probably right. Jersey met with Ted Demme, then gave the script to Sydney Pollack. Meanwhile Soderbergh was still pushing to get Human Nature made, soliciting New Line, Fox, TriStar. No go. (Eventually the movie was made with French director Michel Gondry, starring Patricia Arquette and Rhys Ifans as the Nature Children. It was not a success, lacking the light, humanist touches that Jonze brought to Kaufman’s self-conscious oddness.)
On Valentine’s Day 1997, Jersey was out of options. They needed a director, and Soderbergh got Out of Sight.
THE MOVIE, WHICH CAME OUT IN 1997, WAS A MINOR landmark in many respects, the kind of film Hollywood hardly made anymore—a mid-budget, engaging romantic comedy. It was the first warm, lighthearted movie that Soderbergh had ever made, and it showed a side of him few knew existed. Also for the first time Clooney, playing a raffish ex-con, showed movie star chops, connecting in the sexiest way possible with then acting novice Jennifer Lopez, who played an FBI agent. She gave what some believe is her best performance ever in the film. Unfortunately, Out of Sight was completely ignored by audiences. Universal’s marketing department came under fire for ignoring this small gem on their release slate. The movie, which cost $48 million to make, closed after a few weeks with a dismal box office take of $37 million.
But the film didn’t go completely unnoticed. Those who saw Out of Sight loved it, among them many Hollywood insiders. The film instantly put Soderbergh back on the industry map and gave him a strong reference for the most popular genre in moviemaking, the romantic comedy. In this case, Soderbergh had given it a wry and intelligent twist. There weren’t many who could accomplish that. And in terms of his own quest for artistry in Hollywood, “I think Steven felt, ‘I can be myself as an artist, have integrity, and stand by my work,’” even within the system, said Silver.
Significantly, the movie also launched Soderbergh’s friendship with George Clooney, and the two of them became practically inseparable partners in producing, directing, and acting projects. Clooney and Soderbergh eventually started the Section 8 production company together, with Clooney costarring in the big-budget romp Ocean’s Eleven, and Soderbergh giving Clooney tips on his first directing effort, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which he executive-produced. They ended up becoming a powerful bloc on the Hollywood landscape.
Meanwhile Casey Silver was developing Erin Brockovich, a story that was unusual in 1990s Hollywood because it starred a woman in the lead. (The quest for teen, male audiences had left Hollywood’s actresses with fewer and fewer opportunities.) Erin Brockovich was a legal assistant who had pushed for a class-action lawsuit against a chemical company that was polluting the local water and giving cancer to the residents around its remote factory. It seemed like a good, solid picture for any Hollywood production slate, an uplifting story about a tough cookie, an underdog who took on the big, bad corporations and won. The best part of all was that the story was true. Again, DeVito’s Jersey Films had the script, and initially sent it out to several other directors, including David Fincher.
Fincher told Jersey executive Stacey Sher he had no idea how to make the movie. She said, “Okay, then I have to go to Steven Soderbergh.” While she did, the studio began negotiating with Julia Roberts, the one female star who could reliably open a movie. Soderbergh, who was making one of his quick, small, nonlinear projects at the time—The Limey, with Terence Stamp—initially demurred. In the middle of The Limey edit he read the Brockovich script again and decided he knew what to do. Universal gave him the job. Eventually Soderbergh directed, Roberts starred, the movie was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, and Roberts won the Oscar for Best Actress. Soderbergh was back in the Hollywood mainstream, rising as a new kind of superstar.
Chapter 4
New Line Hits a Bump in the Road;
Paul Thomas Anderson Starts to Boogie;
Steven Soderbergh Hits Traffic
1996
Nineteen ninety-six was the year from hell for Mike De Luca, the thirty-one-year-old boy wonder president of production at New Line. The tousle-haired executive, who drove a motorcyle to his job on the eighth floor of New Line’s dark, modernist building on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood, had had a good run up to that point. In 1994 The Mask had taken in $120 million for the studio, and Dumb and Dumber had brought in an additional $127 million. Both of these films had budgets well below $20 million, which made them huge hits for a relatively small company. De Luca had gotten Jim Carrey to star in The Mask for just $450,000; he snagged him for the second by offering him $5 million to do Dumb and Dumber (a then unheard-of sum), one of many fortuitous decisions. Nineteen ninety-five brought David Fincher’s Se7en, a massive, unexpected hit with the rising star Brad Pitt, which took in $300 million at the worldwide box office, and Mortal Kombat, a successful movie based on the video shooter game. New Line had developed a strong African-American niche with movies like House Party and Menace II Society. The mini-majors reigned: Miramax had Pulp, and New Line’s profit margins were the envy of Hollywood’s larger studios.
But 1996 dawned, and suddenly De Luca found himself under a black cloud. The new corporate bosses at Time-Warner (the publishing giant had bought Turner Broadcasting, which had bought New Line, the previous year) had rejected New Line’s business plan. And De Luca, the executive with the golden touch, found that everything he made turned to sludge. One big budget flop followed another: Last Man Standing, a Prohibition-era shoot-’em-up action film starring Bruce Willis, cost $60 million and made just $18 million at the domestic box office. The catastrophic The Long Kiss Goodnight was hotshot director Renny Harlin’s bloated attempt to make an action star vehicle for his then wife Geena Davis.
It cost $65 million to make and grossed $33 million. Finally there was the disastrous The Island of Dr. Moreau, both a public relations and production bomb, based on an H. G. Wells book, in which Marlon Brando played a mad scientist who combined human and animal DNA to create humanlike animals.
The year, said De Luca later, “was a nightmare I couldn’t get away from.”
Dr. Moreau was a particular headache. New Line had had a good experience with Brando the previous year, casting him as a therapist trying to cure Johnny Depp of the delusion that he was a masked lover in the romantic comedy Don Juan DeMarco. Depp had wanted Brando for the role, though the studio had first insisted on trying to get Gene Hackman or Sean Connery, both of whom turned it down. It was De Luca who was charged with wooing and assessing the legendary actor, whose weight sometimes rose to alarming levels. “I was chosen to go to the house, see what shape he was in,” De Luca recalled. He rode his bike up to Brando’s house on Mulholland Drive, the ridge straddling the Valley and Hollywood. At first the housekeeper refused to let him in, thinking he was a delivery boy. Luckily Francis Ford Coppola, a producer on the project, was there and recognized the executive.
Brando scowled. “So you’re the guy who’s here to audition me.”
Rebels on the Backlot Page 14
