This One Falls Slowly

Creepy bust of Robert Kennedy is is going to be staring at me all day. (at Youth Radio)

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Due to unprecedented demand, Steven Soderbergh has given The San Francisco Film Society permission to release this video that was recorded initially only for archival purposes. The full transcript is also provided. —Steven Soderbergh: The State of Cinema Video & Transcript

With endless thanks to Ted Hope, The Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society.

“Cinema is under assault,” Steven Soderbergh told an audience in San Francisco over the weekend. He said that the Hollywood studios are to blame and that moviegoers are their accomplices. “Fewer and fewer executives in the industry love movies,” Soderbergh continued, “There’s a total lack of leadership in my opinion, that’s what’s killing cinema.” The director’s remarks came at the San Francisco International Film Festival’s annual State of Cinema Address. It was a sort of Jerry Maguire memo, “Cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s as unique as a fingerprint. If it’s done well, you know exactly who made it,” Steven Soderbergh defined on Saturday, “Is there a difference between cinema and movies? If I ran team America, I’d say fuck ya. Cinema is something that is made, movies are seen.”

Soderbergh said that he needed $5 million to make his upcoming Liberace movie, Behind the Candelabra, which stars Michael Douglas as the famous piano player and Matt Damon as the musician’s lover. Yet he said that the studios needed the movie to gross $70 million to make it work financially. “No one has figured out how to lower the costs of marketing movies…no one,” Soderbergh said. “The thing that mystifies me is in terms of spending, is there anyone in the galaxy that doesn’t know Iron Man 2 is opening that weekend!?” He continued, ”Studios only gamble on openings instead of supporting filmmakers over the long haul. In my opinion, it’s about horses - not races.”

“Executives don’t get punished for making bombs the way filmmakers do,” Soderbergh charged, “So there’s no turnover with people who don’t know their own business.” “I’m spending so much time talking business and sexy math because this is what’s driving everything right now,” Soderbergh said. Yet he also sounded a few optimistic notes. So what would he do differently? “If I were running a studio, I’d get a Shane Carruth, a Barry Jenkins and an Amy Seimetz and ask ‘What do you wanna make?’” Soderbergh said, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect someone running a multi-billion dollar business to be able to identify talent. I’m wrong a lot, it doesn’t even raise my blood pressure anymore, maybe the audiences are happy, the studios are happy – maybe I’m wrong. Maybe everything is just fine,” Soderbergh said at one point near the end of his speech. The room erupted with some chuckles because clearly those in the audience agreed with him that everything isn’t just fine. —The World According to Steven: Insights from Soderbergh

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