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AP: Was there something you were bumping up against that made you feel like you weren't evolving? Soderbergh: It felt like: I need to tear everything down and start over. I've been thinking about that and thinking about what it might be. I want to take advantage of what people bring to a movie when they watch a movie. The fact that we're so image-driven and that we've been watching images since we were infants, and we have associations that are carried with them. I want to figure out a way to take advantage of that, so that I'm sort of using those associations as fuel for what I want to do. I think that's going to require me taking some time to think about what those associations are, how I can use them, how I can build off of them, how I can subvert them. And see if there's some way that I can reverse-engineer a narrative in which you, by the end of it, understand everything that happened but you're not quite sure how or why you did. AP: It seems your search for a new kind of narrative is connected to what you've said about the confusing, fractured nature of life today. Soderbergh: Especially in this country now, it's really hard not to look around and go: What the hell is going on? Is it possible to get anything done? Is the center of this country going to hold or is it just going to be completely marginalized by extremists on every side of every issue? I don't know. I'm alarmed. AP: The private sexuality of "Behind the Candelabra" bears some similarities to "Sex, Lies." Soderbergh: It was a great way to express my appreciation for a kind of movie I've watched my whole life but never got to make, which is kind of a melodrama. I looked at as being in line with all the Douglas Sirk movies and "Sunset Blvd." and "All About Eve" and "Valley of the Dolls." . It was interesting to look around and wonder when I'll be doing this again.
AP: What will you miss the most? Soderbergh: Editing. AP: What's surprising about you stepping away from filmmaking is that you seem to relish the process so much, shooting and editing your own films. Soderbergh: I have a plan. I have an idea of how it can go, and I'm willing to throw it all out at a moment's notice to go somewhere else with it. I expect to discover things. I expect accidents. I expect something that somebody suggests or says will move me in another direction. I'm creating an environment in order to conjure that kind of things. I want my experience of making something to be fluid and to be surprising. I want it to come alive in front of me. AP: Some filmmakers spend years carefully constructing the films they hope will be masterpieces. That kind of approach has never been appealing to you? Soderbergh: No, mostly because it makes my work worse. I discovered early on, the more time I had to mull something over, the worse it got
-- or the more insular it got, the more introspective, the more self-conscious. I needed to treat it like a sport. AP: HBO picked up "Candelabra" after no studio would take it, and you're currently contemplating several TV projects. Are you excited about television? Soderbergh: Very. Very. There's a lot of great stuff being made. You can go narrow and deep, and I like that. And this is all David Chase. He single-handedly rebuilt the landscape. Anything that's on now that's any good is standing on his shoulders. I don't hear anybody talking about movies the way they talk about TV right now. . Knowing that I can't swim upstream forever, it seems to me that if I want to work, that I need to move to a medium in which the way I like to do things is viewed as a positive and not a negative.
[Associated
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