Hey folks, Harry here... I love Steven Soderbergh movies... even if they disappoint me, even when he isn't doing it for me, I love what he's out there doing. He's making em. He's churning em out. Just 40 days or so ago, he released OCEAN'S ELEVEN... it wasn't what I wanted from it. I'd fallen in love with a script that didn't make it to screen, and ya know what... that's my problem. I'm the ape that reads the frickin scripts, I set myself up for disappointment sometimes. Happened to me on BATMAN, read Sam Hamm's original draft, fell in love... became angry and pissed at the final film, because of what it could have been. What it once was. I understand things change. Sometimes though... I think the writer was right and that sometimes the 'collaborative filmmaking method' is not particularly conducive to the best work... And the flipside is... Sometimes having a dictitorial self financed megalomaniac shooting his/her film and doing it in a bubble that shields him/her from outside influences suffocates the film delivering it stillborne.
Many of you loved OCEAN'S ELEVEN... wonderful, glad it did it for ya, wish ya could've read one of the earlier drafts... that's all I'll say on that. However, I did read the screenplay for this project as well, and I'm currently hunting down the script for SOLARIS, because Soderbergh is an amazing filmmaker. Specifically what he's doing on a project like FULL FRONTAL... well it is what makes Soderbergh so special in a world of filmmaking where the innovators are supposed to go on to commericial success and just churn out variations on those successes and leave that dynamic film spirit they once had with the old explode on impact Pinto they used to drive... discarded on some city street somewhere to be looted and forgotten.
Not Soderbergh. Steven is following up a gigantic mega production, OCEAN'S ELEVEN, with a tiny DV film that he managed to get an excellent cast together to shoot based on a script which is filled with middle moments of scenes, but without beginnings or ends. When I read the script, he had started shooting and it was called HOW TO SURVIVE A HOTEL ROOM FIRE... Sometime in October it became FULL FRONTAL. Now, the name of the film never really made sense to begin with as there was no Hotel Room Fire and the occasional interuptions to tell us how to survive one were random and made you feel like one was coming around the corner at any moment.
This script was not an easy read. It was weird and quirky and on paper, I never could really understand or detect what the main themes were. The scenes always seemed to be in mid-scene when they began, and they never were allowed to end. It was like a series of rough notes or scene sketches. Right up front he said on the front page that there would be a lot of improve and that he would shoot every single bit of rehearsal and that the actors were responsible for... well just about everything. There would be no trailers for them. No worshipping of them. They would do their own make-up, dress themselves and create and contribute to their character.
Well the FullFrontal.Com website opened up and there was some fascinating behind-the-scenes video from the production. Now what's awesome about this behind the scenes looks is how much fun they seem to be having. How few people are actually on these sets, watching the people rehearse in these glimpses you get the idea that the actors were liberated by this intimate setting. Seeing this site... watching Soderbergh work here... I'm VERY Confident that at the very least... this will be one of the most interesting films to come out this year.... success or fail, at least it is daring.
Hi,
I think this is pretty cool, Soderbergh's Full Frontal web site is now active with puzzles that annoy the shit out of me because I can never work the darn things out LOL. It's got heaps of behind-the-scenes stuff as well :-)
Cheers,
Sherrie
