57TH SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Steven Soderbergh

A few months ago I was on this Jet Blue flight from New York to Burbank.

And I like Jet Blue, not just because of the prices. They have this terminal at

JFK that I think is really nice. I think it might be the nicest terminal in the

country although if you want to see some good airports youve got to go to a

major city in another part of the world like Europe or Asia. Theyre amazing

airports. Theyre incredible and quiet. Youre not being assaulted by all this

music. I dont know when it was decided we all need a soundtrack everywhere

we go. I was just in the bathroom upstairs and there was a soundtrack

accompanying me at the urinal, I dont understand. So Im getting

comfortable in my seat. I spent the extra $60 to get the extra leg room so Im

trying to get comfortable and we make altitude. And theres a guy on the other

side of the aisle in front of me and he pulls out his iPad to start watching stuff.

Im curious to see what hes going to watch hes a white guy in his mid-30s.

And I begin to realize what hes done is hes loaded in half a dozen action sort

of extravaganzas and hes watching each of the action sequences hes

skipping over all the dialogue and the narrative. This guys flight is going to be

five and a half hours of just mayhem porn.

I get this wave of not panic, its not like my heart started fluttering but I

had this sense of, am I going insane? Or is the world going insane or both?

Now I start with the circular thinking again. Maybe its me. Maybe its

generational and Im getting old, Im in the back nine professionally. And

maybe my 22-year-old daughter doesnt feel this way at all. I should ask her.

But then I think, no: Something is going on something that can be

measured is happening, and there has to be. When people are more outraged

by the ambiguous ending of The Sopranos than some young girl being stoned

to death, then theres something wrong. We have people walking around who

think the government stages these terrorist attacks. And anybody with a brain

bigger than a walnut knows that our government is not nearly competent

enough to stage a terrorist attack and then keep it a secret because, as we

know, in this day and age you cannot keep a secret.

So I think that life is sort of like a drumbeat. It has a rhythm and sometimes

its fast and sometimes its slower, and maybe whats happening is this

drumbeat is just accelerating and its gotten to the point where I cant hear

between the beats anymore and its just a hum. Again, I thought maybe thats

my generation, every generation feels that way, maybe I should ask my

daughter. But then I remember somebody did this experiment where if youre

in a car and youre going more than 20 miles an hour it becomes impossible to

distinguish individual features on a human beings face. I thought thats

another good analogy for this sensation. Its a very weird experiment for

someone to come up with.

So that was my Jet Blue flight. But the circular thinking didnt really stop and

I got my hands on a book by a guy named Douglas Rushkoff and I realized Im

suffering from something called Present Shock which is the name of his book.

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

This quote made me feel a little less insane: When theres no linear tie, how

is a person supposed to figure out whats going on? Theres no story, no

narrative to explain why things are the way things are. Previously distinct

causes and effects collapse into one another. Theres no time between doing

something and seeing the result. Instead the results begin accumulating and

influencing us before weve even completed an action. And theres so much

information coming in at once from so many different sources that theres

simply no way to trace the plot over time. Thats the hum Im talking about.

And I mention this because I think its having an effect on all of us. I think its

having an effect on our culture, and I think its having an effect on movies.

How theyre made, how theyre sold, how they perform.

But before we talk about movies we should talk about art in general, if thats

possible. Given all the incredible suffering in the world I wonder, what is art

for, really? If the collected works of Shakespeare cant prevent genocide then

really, what is it for? Shouldnt we be spending the time and resources

alleviating suffering and helping other people instead of going to the movies

and plays and art installations? When we did Oceans Thirteen the casino set

used $60,000 of electricity every week. How do you justify that? Do you

justify that by saying, the people who couldve had that electricity are going to

watch the movie for two hours and be entertained except they probably

cant, because they dont have any electricity, because we used it. Then I think,

what about all the resources spent on all the pieces of entertainment? What

about the carbon footprint of getting me here? Then I think, why are you even

thinking that way and worrying about how many miles per gallon my car gets,

when we have NASCAR, and monster truck pulls on TV? So what I finally

decided was, art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France

30,000 years ago, and its because we are a species thats driven by narrative.

Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and

information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes

when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost

achieve that thing thats impossible which is entering the consciousness of

another human being literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if

you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in

some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute youre

experiencing that piece of art, youre not alone. Youre connected to the arts.

So I feel like that cant be too bad.

Art is also about problem solving, and its obvious from the news, we have a

little bit of a problem with problem solving. In my experience, the main

obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about

making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the

ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and

it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be.

Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model.

Now we finally arrive at the subject of this rant, which is the state of cinema.

First of all, is there a difference between cinema and movies? Yeah. If I were

on Team America, Id say Fuck yeah! The simplest way that I can describe it is

that a movie is something you see, and cinema is something thats made. It

has nothing to do with the captured medium, it doesnt have anything to do

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

with where the screen is, if its in your bedroom, your iPad, it doesnt even

really have to be a movie. It could be a commercial, it could be something on

YouTube. Cinema is a specificity of vision. Its an approach in which

everything matters. Its the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the

result is as unique as a signature or a fingerprint. It isnt made by a

committee, and it isnt made by a company, and it isnt made by the audience.

It means that if this filmmaker didnt do it, it either wouldnt exist at all, or it

wouldnt exist in anything like this form.

So, that means you can take a perfectly solid, successful and acclaimed movie

and it may not qualify as cinema. It also means you can take a piece of cinema

and it may not qualify as a movie, and it may actually be an unwatchable piece

of shit. But as long as you have filmmakers out there who have that specific

point of view, then cinema is never going to disappear completely. Because its

not about money, its about good ideas followed up by a well-developed

aesthetic. I love all this new technology, its great. Its smaller, lighter, faster.

You can make a really good-looking movie for not a lot of money, and when

people start to get weepy about celluloid, I think of this quote by Orson Welles

when somebody was talking to him about new technology, which he tended to

embrace, and he said, I dont want to wait on the tool, I want the tool to wait

for me, which I thought was a good way to put it. But the problem is that

cinema as I define it, and as something that inspired me, is under assault by

the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience.

The reasons for this, in my opinion, are more economic than philosophical,

but when you add an ample amount of fear and a lack of vision, and a lack of

leadership, youve got a trajectory that I think is pretty difficult to reverse.

Now, of course, its very subjective; there are going to be exceptions to

everything Im going to say, and Im just saying that so no one thinks Im

talking about them. I want to be clear: The idea of cinema as Im defining it is

not on the radar in the studios. This is not a conversation anybodys having;

its not a word you would ever want to use in a meeting. Speaking of meetings,

the meetings have gotten pretty weird. There are fewer and fewer executives

who are in the business because they love movies. There are fewer and fewer

executives that know movies. So it can become a very strange situation. I

mean, I know how to drive a car, but I wouldnt presume to sit in a meeting

with an engineer and tell him how to build one, and thats kind of what you

feel like when youre in these meetings. Youve got people who dont know

movies and dont watch movies for pleasure deciding what movie youre going

to be allowed to make. Thats one reason studio movies arent better than they

are, and thats one reason that cinema, as Im defining it, is shrinking.

Well, how does a studio decide what movies get made? One thing they take

into consideration is the foreign market, obviously. Its become very big. So

that means, you know, things that travel best are going to be action-

adventure, science fiction, fantasy, spectacle, some animation thrown in

there. Obviously the bigger the budget, the more people this thing is going to

have to appeal to, the more homogenized its got to be, the more simplified its

got to be. So things like cultural specificity and narrative complexity, and, god

forbid, ambiguity, those become real obstacles to the success of the film here

and abroad.

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

Speaking of ambiguity, we had a test screening of Contagion once and a guy in

the focus group stood up and he said, I really hate the Jude Law character. I

dont know if hes a hero or an asshole. And I thought well, here we go.

Theres another thing, a process known as running the numbers, and for a

filmmaker this is kind of the equivalent of a doctor showing you a chest x-ray

and saying theres a shadow on it. Its a kind of fungible algorithm thats used

when they want say no without, really, saying no. I could tell you a really good

story of how I got pushed off a movie because of the way the numbers ran, but

if I did, Id probably get shot in the street, and I really like my cats.

So then theres the expense of putting a movie out, which is a big problem.

Point of entry for a mainstream, wide-release movie: $30 million. Thats

where you start. Now you add another 30 for overseas. Now youve got to

remember, the exhibitors pay half of the gross, so to make that 60 back you

need to gross 120. So you dont even know what your movie is yet, and youre

already looking at 120. That ended up being part of the reason why the

Liberace movie didnt happen at a studio. We only needed $5 million from a

domestic partner, but when you add the cost of putting a movie out, now

youve got to gross $75 million to get that 35 back, and the feeling amongst

the studios was that this material was too special to gross $70 million. So

the obstacle here isnt just that special subject matter, but that nobody has

figured out how to reduce the cost of putting a movie out. There have been

some attempts to analyze it, but one of the mysteries is that this analysis

doesnt really reveal any kind of linear predictive behavior, its still mysterious

the process whereby people decide if theyre either going to go to a movie or

not go to a movie. Sometimes you dont even know how you reach them. Like

on Magic Mike for instance, the movie opened to $38 million, and the tracking

said we were going to open to 19. So the tracking was 100% wrong. Its really

nice when the surprise goes in that direction, but its hard not to sit there and

go how did we miss that? If this is our tracking, how do you miss by that

much?

I know one person who works in marketing at a studio suggested, on a

modestly budgeted film that had some sort of brand identity and some A-list

talent attached, she suggested, Look, why dont we not do any tracking at all,

and just spend 15 and well just put it out. They wouldnt do it. They were

afraid it would fail, when they fail doing the other thing all the time. Maybe

they were afraid it was going to work. The other thing that mystifies me is that

you would think, in terms of spending, if you have one of these big franchise

sequels that you would say oh, we dont have to spend as much money

because is there anyone in the galaxy that doesnt know Iron Mans opening on

Friday? So you would think, oh, we can stop carpet-bombing with TV

commercials. Its exactly the opposite. They spend more. They spend more.

Their attitude is: You know, its a sequel, and its the third one, and we really

want to make sure people really want to go. We want to make sure that

opening night number is big so theres the perception of the movie is that its

a huge success. Theres that, and if youve ever wondered why every poster

and every trailer and every TV spot looks exactly the same, its because of

testing. Its because anything interesting scores poorly and gets kicked out.

Now Ive tried to argue that the methodology of this testing doesnt work. If

you take a poster or a trailer and you show it to somebody in isolation, thats

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

not really an accurate reflection of whether its working because we dont see

them in isolation, we see them in groups. We see a trailer in the middle of five

other trailers, we see a poster in the middle of eight other posters, and Ive

tried to argue that maybe the thing thats making it distinctive and score

poorly actually would stick out if you presented it to these people the way the

real world presents it. And Ive never won that argument.

You know, we had a trailer for Side Effects that we did in London and the

filmmaking team really, really liked it. But the problem was that it was not

testing well, and it was really not testing as well as this domestic trailer that

we had. The point spread was so significant that I really couldnt justify trying

to jam this thing down distributors throats, so we had to abandon it. Now

look, not all testing is bad. Sometimes you have to, especially on a comedy.

Theres nothing like 400 people who are not your friends to tell you when

somethings wrong. I just dont think you can use it as the last word on a

movies playability, or its quality. Magic Mike tested poorly. Really poorly. And

fortunately Warner Brothers just ignored the test scores, and stuck with their

plan to open the movie wide during the summer.

But lets go back to Side Effects for a second. This is a movie that didnt

perform as well as any of us wanted it to. So, why? What happened? It cant

be the campaign because all the materials that we had, the trailers, the

posters, the TV spots, all that stuff tested well above average. February 8th,

maybe it was the date, was that a bad day? As it turns out that was the Friday

after the Oscar nominations are announced, and this year there was an

atypically large bump to all the films that got nominated, so that was a factor.

Then there was a storm in the Northeast, which is sort of our core audience.

Nemo came in, so God, obviously, is getting me back for my comments about

monotheism. Was it the concept? There was a very active decision early on to

sell the movie as kind of a pure thriller and kind of disconnect it from this

larger social issue of everybody taking pills. Did that make the movie seem

more commercial, or did it make it seem more generic? We dont know. What

about the cast? Four attractive white people this is usually not an obstacle.

The exit polls were very good, the reviews were good. How do we figure out

what went wrong? The answer is: We dont. Because everybodys already

moved on to the next movie they have to release.

Now, Im going to attempt to show how a certain kind of rodent might be

smarter than a studio when it comes to picking projects. If you give a certain

kind of rodent the option of hitting two buttons, and one of the buttons, when

you touch it, dispenses food 40% of the time, and one of the buttons when you

touch it dispenses food 60% percent of the time, this certain kind of rodent

very quickly figures out never to touch the 40% button ever again. So when a

studio is attempting to determine on a project-by-project basis what will

work, instead of backing a talented filmmaker over the long haul, theyre

actually increasing their chances of choosing wrong. Because in my view, in

this business which is totally talent-driven, its about horses, not races. I think

if I were going to run a studio Id just be gathering the best filmmakers I could

find and sort of let them do their thing within certain economic parameters.

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

So I would call Shane Carruth, or Barry Jenkins or Amy Seimetz and Id bring

them in and go, ok, what do you want to do? What are the things youre

interested in doing? What do we have here that you might be interested in

doing? If there was some sort of point of intersection Id go: Ok, look, Im

going to let you make three movies over five years, Im going to give you this

much money in production costs, Im going to dedicate this much money on

marketing. You can sort of proportion it how you want, you can spend it all on

one and none on the other two, but go make something.

Now, that only works if you are very, very good at identifying talent. Real

talent, the kind of talent that sustains. And you cant be judging strictly on

commercial performance, or hype, or hipness, but I dont think its

unreasonable to expect someone running a multi-billion dollar business to be

able to identify talent. I get it, its the studio, you need all kinds of movies. You

need comedies, you need horror films, you need action films, you need

animated films, I get it. But the point is, cant some of these be cinema also?

This is kind of what we tried to do with Section 8 is we tried to bring

interesting filmmakers into the studio system and protect them. But

unfortunately the only way a studio is going to allow that kind of freedom to a

young filmmaker is if the budgets are low. And unfortunately the most

profitable movies for the studios are going to be the big movies, the home

runs. They dont look at the singles or the doubles as being worth the money

or the man hours. Psychologically, its more comforting to spend $60 million

promoting a movie that costs 100, than it does to spend $60 million for a

movie that costs 10. I know what youre thinking: If it costs 10 youre going to

be in profit sooner. Maybe not. Heres why: OK. $10 million movie, 60 million

to promote it, thats 70, so youve got to gross 140 to get out. Now youve got

$100 million movie, youre going spend 60 to promote it. Youve got to get

320 to get out. How many $10 million movies make 140 million dollars? Not

many. How many $100 million movies make 320? A pretty good number, and

theres this sort of domino effect that happens too. Bigger home video sales,

bigger TV sales, so you can see the forces that are sort of draining in one

direction in the business. So, heres a thought maybe nothings wrong.

Maybe Im a clown. Maybe the audiences are happy, and the studio is happy,

and look at this from Variety:

Shrinking release slates that focus on tentpoles and the emergence

of a new normal in the home vid market has allowed the largest

media congloms to boost the financial performance of their movie

divisions, according to Nomura Equity research analyst Michael

Nathanson.

So, according to Mr. Nathanson, the studios are successfully cutting costs, the

decline in home videos have plateaued, and the international box office,

which used to be 50% of revenue is now 70%. With one exception in that all

the stock prices of all the companies that own these studios are up. It would

appear that all these companies are flush. So maybe nothings wrong, and Ive

got to tell you, this is the only arena in history in which trickle-down

economics actually works, because when a studio is flush, they spend more

money to make more money, because their stock price is all about market

share. And you know, theres no other business thats this big, thats actually

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

this financially transparent. You have a situation here in which there is an

objective economic value given to an asset. Its not like that derivatives

mortgage bullshit that just brought the world to its knees, you cant say a

movie made more money than it actually made, and internally, you cant say

that you didnt spend what you spent on it. Its contractual that you have to

make these numbers available.

Now dont get me wrong, there is a lot of waste. I think there are too many

layers of executives, I dont know why you should be having a lot of phone

calls with people that cant actually make decisions. Theyll violate their own

rules on a whim, while they make you adhere to them. They get simple things

wrong sometimes, like remakes. I mean, why are you always remaking the

famous movies? Why arent you looking back into your catalog and finding

some sort of programmer that was made 50 years ago that has a really good

idea in it, that if you put some fresh talent on it, it could be really great. Of

course, in order to do that you need to have someone at the studio that

actually knows those movies. Even if you dont have that person you could

hire one. The sort of executive ecosystem is distorted, because executives

dont get punished for making bombs the way that filmmakers do, and the

result is theres no turnover of new ideas, theres no new ideas about how to

approach the business or how to deal with talent or material. But, again,

economically, its a pretty straightforward business. Hell, its the third-biggest

export that we have. Its one of the few things that we do that the world

actually likes.

Ive stopped being embarrassed about being in the film business, I really have.

Im not spending my days trying to make a weapon that kills people more

efficiently. Its an interesting business. But again, taking the 30,000 foot view,

maybe nothings wrong, and maybe my feeling that the studios are kind of like

Detroit before the bailout is totally insupportable. I mean, Im wrong a lot. Im

wrong so much, it doesnt even raise my blood pressure anymore. Maybe

everything is just fine. But Admissions, this is the number of bodies that go

through the turnstile, ten years ago: 1.52 billion. Last year: 1.36 billion. Thats

a ten and a half percent drop. Why are admissions dropping? Nobody knows,

not even Nate Silver. Probably a combination of things: Ticket prices, maybe,

a lot of competition for eyeballs. Theres a lot of good TV out there. Theft is a

big problem. I know this is a really controversial subject, but for people who

think everything on the internet should just be totally free all I can say is,

good luck. When you try to have a life and raise a family living off something

you create

Theres a great quote from Steve Jobs:

From the earliest days of Apple I realized that we thrived when we

created intellectual property. If people copied or stole our software

wed be out of business. If it werent protected thered be no

incentive for us to make new software or product designs. If

protection of intellectual property begins to disappear creative

companies will disappear or never get started. But theres a simpler

reason: Its wrong to steal. It hurts other people, and it hurts your

own character.

ErnestoResaltado

I agree with him. I think that what people go to the movies for has changed

since 9/11. I still think the country is in some form of PTSD about that event,

and that we havent really healed in any sort of complete way, and that people

are, as a result, looking more toward escapist entertainment. And look, I get

it. Theres a very good argument to be made that only somebody who has it

really good would want to make a movie that makes you feel really bad.

People are working longer hours for less money these days, and maybe when

they get in a movie, they want a break. I get it.

But lets sex this up with some more numbers. In 2003, 455 films were

released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677

films were released. So youre not imagining things, there are a lot of movies

that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio

films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio

films, and yet, ten years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. Youve

got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and youve got

twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie.

Thats hard. Thats really hard.

When I was coming up, making an independent film and trying to reach an

audience I thought was like, trying to hit a thrown baseball. This is like trying

to hit a thrown baseball but with another thrown baseball. Thats why Im

spending so much time talking to you about the business and the money,

because this is the force that is pushing cinema out of mainstream movies.

Ive been in meetings where I can feel it slipping away, where I can feel that

the ideas Im tossing out, theyre too scary or too weird, and I can feel the

thing. I can tell: Its not going to happen, Im not going to be able to convince

them to do this the way I think it should be done. I want to jump up on the

table and scream, Do you know how lucky we are to be doing this? Do you

understand that the only way to repay that karmic debt is to make something

good, is to make something ambitious, something beautiful, something

memorable? But I didnt do that. I just sat there, and I smiled.

Maybe the ideas I had dont work, and the only way theyll find out is that

someones got to give me half a billion dollars, to see if itll work. That seems

like a lot of money, but actually in point of fact there are a couple movies

coming down the pike that represent, in terms of their budgets and their

marketing campaigns, individually, a half a billion dollars. Just one movie.

Just give me one of these big movies. No? Kickstarter!

I dont want to bring this to a conclusion on a down note. A few years back, I

got a call from an agent and he said, Will you come see this film? Its a small,

independent film a client made. Its been making the festival circuit and its

getting a really good response but no distributor will pick it up, and I really

want you to take a look at it and tell me what you think. The film was

called Memento. So the lights come up and I think, Its over. Its over. Nobody

will buy this film? This is just insane. The movie business is over. It was really

upsetting. Well fortunately, the people who financed the movie loved the

movie so much that they formed their own distribution company and put the

movie out and made $25 million. So whenever I despair I think, OK,

somebody out there somewhere, while were sitting right here, somebody out

ErnestoResaltado

ErnestoResaltado

there somewhere is making something cool that were going to love, and that

keeps me going. The other thing I tell young filmmakers is when you get going

and you try to get money, when youre going into one of those rooms to try

and convince somebody to make it, I dont care who youre pitching, I dont

care what youre pitching it can be about genocide, it can be about child

killers, it can be about the worst kind of criminal injustice that you can

imagine but as youre sort of in the process of telling this story, stop yourself

in the middle of a sentence and act like youre having an epiphany, and say:

You know what, at the end of this day, this is a movie about hope.

Thank you