Soderbergh Q&A

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a screening of The Good German, starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Toby Maguire. Steven Soderbergh, who participated in a Q&A session afterwards, directed the movie. If you count Out of Sight among your favorite films, you may find today’s long post interesting. If you’ve never seen it, I order you to stop reading, leave work, rent it, watch it, thank me, and then join us again tomorrow.

I’m no Roger Ebert, but I’ll tell you what I thought of The Good German (no real spoilers, but read at your own risk). I liked it and want to watch it again because I feel like I missed stuff. It’s in gorgeous black and white, and will remind you in many places of Casablanca. Soderbergh told us later that was what he was going for. Cate Blanchett is stunning, even more so in black and white, and perfect for her role and a movie like this. You haven’t seen cheekbones like that since Katharine Hepburn.

There were two things I loved. One was a shot as it begins to follow Cate through a street. It looks as though the camera is next to her left knee and pointing up at her face. Very dramatic. Another was a time cut in a style that was new to me. Clooney and a woman are standing in a kitchen far apart, and she says, “Aren’t you going to offer me a cigarette?” They cut to another angle but he is already standing right next to her, lighting it. Why is that so cool?!

And now we’ll open it up to the audience. My friend T-finger was the first to ask a question. “Did you shoot it in black and white or color?” Color, said Soderbergh, much to my surprise. Because certain scenes required green screen, they opted to shoot in color. The alternative, if he had wanted to shoot in B&W, would have been to preshoot footage in B&W to project onto a screen while they filmed the actors, and it seemed too time consuming. He knew he could get the same result if they printed on B&W stock.

Soderbergh said he asked the cast to watch a handful of films to show them the shooting and acting styles he was striving for: Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, and White Heat, to name a few. He said, “I wanted to shoot this film the way Michael Curtiz would shoot it.” Curtiz was a contract director at Warner Brothers who worked in many genres. Soderbergh was able to research Curtiz’ old script continuities, so that he would be better able to follow Curtiz’ “rules.” For example, he learned that only five lenses were used for all of Casablanca, so Soderbergh used those same five lenses.

Soderbergh said something he really had to think about while shooting was consistency of tone from day to day. You shoot it one way on week one, and if you’re not careful by week six it’s totally different, and then it doesn’t match. He pointed out that with Kafka, his B&W film from 1991, he felt it suffered from that lack of consistency. Soderbergh said it was unfortunate, knowing what a luxury it was (and is) to get to shoot B&W, to walk away feeling like he didn’t get what he was after.

Everything was shot in town. “Like Casablanca,” said Soderbergh, “we couldn’t leave LA.” An audience member asked where the town of Pottsdam was filmed. “Pottsdam is in Pasadena, as we all know,” he said. Much of the archival footage throughout the movie came from Russia.

As for Cate, Soderbergh said he was completely enamored by her, that he could watch her paint the hash marks on a football field. She required little direction and basically "she showed up with this.” He said they did talk about the Marlene Dietrich voice Cate affects, and that she dropped her voice a register.

Lastly, the moderator asked why Soderbergh was closing up his production company with George Clooney, Section Eight Pictures. Soderbergh said they were simply overwhelmed by the workload. It was six years of eighty-hour workweeks. As producers, you have to read and watch everything, talk to everyone, and it just got to be too much.

I know this was a long one… I hope it didn’t bore you.

Today’s Coffee Beverage: NF White Chocolate Mocha from Starbucks. When the barista handed it to me he said, "This drink was specially crafted to be the highlight of your day." Definitely NOT part of the employee handbook. Long live Corporate America!