It’s easy to forget that Steven Soderbergh has been making movies for more than twenty years. Somehow he still seems like the new kid on the block, that secretly talented young director you can delight in sharing with your friends. He first gained notoriety in 1989 though, with Sex, Lies, and Videotape and it’s been nothing but critical acclaim since. Critical acclaim he has apparently, gotten sick of.
It seems the massive, overlong Che Guevara biopic he released last year really took a lot of the wind out of his sails. It probably didn’t help that he killed himself to make it, and then no one really liked it or for that matter, bothered to see it. In an interview with The Guardian he says, “You know, for a year after we finished shooting I would still wake up in the morning thinking, 'Thank God I'm not shooting that film.'” He then goes on to admit he wishes he’d never done it and, not only does he wish he’d never done Che but he hints around that maybe he’s starting to think about never doing anything else.
Of course it’s all the fault of the stupid studios. He says, “I'm looking at the landscape and I'm thinking, 'Hmmm, I don't know. A few more years maybe, and then the stuff that I'm interested in is only going to be of interest to me.” Soderbergh is obviously starting to plan his retirement. He continues, “In terms of my career, I can see the end of it. I've had that sensation for a few years now. And so I've got a list of stuff that I want to do – that I hope I can do – and once that's all finished I may just disappear.”
Actually, he's starting to talk a lot like the mostly retired Francis Ford Coppola who instead of making movies, now hangs out on his vineyards and should he pick up a camera just does whatever the hell he wants and doesn’t bother to put much thought into whether or not someone might ever want to see it. How long till Soderbergh starts shopping for vines? Worn out or not, he’s got at least a few more films in him. He already has The Informant with Matt Damon coming out later this year. Then there’s his song and dance movie Cleo, a Liberace biopic, some sort of Spalding Gray project, and of course the sequel to The Limey which his wife revealed earlier this week is also on his mind. Don’t panic Soderbergh nerds, he’ll be around for awhile yet.
