The Oscar-winning director is at work on a giant book about the making of Spielberg’s 1975 action thriller, which inspired him to make his own.
Soderbergh has been working on a giant book for nearly 15 years, it’s about Jaws, the classic Spielberg thriller that he first saw in 1975.
“I’ve been working on this book that is about directing and uses as its spine an analysis of the making of Jaws day-to-day,” Soderbergh revealed during conversation at Toronto Film Fest.
The book isn’t done and may never be completed, the Oscar-winning director warned. Writing about Jaws will get Soderbergh back to the first movie that had him thinking he could become Hollywood director.
He recalled seeing Jaws at a cinema in St. Petersburg, Florida, at 13 years of age and emerging back into the real world with two questions: “What is directed by mean? And who is Steven Spielberg?”
And when Soderbergh got to high school and around filmmaking equipment, he began making short films. The director was speaking at TIFF as his latest film, the spooky ghost story Presence, starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan and newcomer Callina Liang, is set to receive an international premiere.
He recalled his success with Sex, Lies and Videotape in 1989 changing indie cinema because Soderbergh, along with fellow directors Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch, had the film industry suddenly seeing dollar signs from embracing signature auteur films after an early high point during the 1970s.
Horror Films
Where are those signature auteur films today? “This overlay of commercial filmmaking and signature directorial presence lately, that’s most apparent in horror films,” Soderbergh said.
He first screened Presence earlier this year, 35 years after the debut of Sex, Lies and Videotape in Park City.
Genre Films
Soderbergh said that horror films are a perfect delivery vehicle for directors and even argued every film he has done since Che had been a genre film.
“I just feel everybody wins if you’re respectful of the pillars of what that genre is. You can load this thing up with anything you’re interested in,” Soderbergh explained. The story of Presence was filmed entirely in one setting and from the visual point-of-view of the ghost, with the camera moving throughout the house as the apparition.
Soderbergh’s subjective camera reaching into every corner of the family’s old two-story house in a leafy suburb, passing quickly over some spaces and getting in close for longer looks at others. “It’s a simple movie idea. You’re in a point-of-view and you’re in a house and you know you’re in a point-of view, but you don’t know who’s,” he insisted.
Soderbergh said Presence is about a family, but the genre element “is the Trojan horse to show a family in a dire circumstance made more intense because they don’t know they’re in trouble.”
Presence is set for a release by Neon.
A changing business model for Hollywood has made it more difficult to measure the worth of movie stars. “It’s gotten more difficult to quantify what is bringing people to a specific film, and what makes a specific film a hit,” Soderbergh observed.
Which makes it all the more critical that directors do good work from great scripts. “At the end of the day, the only solve is good shit. You got to make good shit.” Soderbergh said.
