These are the three most-ignored movies in Soderbergh's filmography. Every one of these movies bombed, but he would make two more commercial failures right after them. I'm glad that Hollywood used to be a version of forgiving.
Before we jump into this next phase of Soderbergh's career, I wanted to share a commercial he apparently directed in 1985 for a Baton Rouge salon. The agency was run by John Hardy, who would go on to produce most of Soderbergh's features from sex, lies, and videotape through Ocean's Eleven.
As noted in the description on YouTube, this was allegedly a revolutionary, groundbreaking advert: it ran before movies in first-run theaters back when that was a new thing. I feel like Soderbergh probably hated that concept from the start.
If I were making a really shitty TV movie about 90's indie filmmakers (in the vein of Pirates of Silicon Valley), I'd write a scene where Soderbergh throws something at a wall, yelling "this is bullshit, John! Bullshit! This isn't art!" and Hardy shouts back "art doesn't put a goddamn roof over your head, Stevie! You have the potential to change cinema forever. Don't you do this to yourself!"
That was fun. Back to the freelance art appreciation.
“It's about a man who wakes up to find he's been turned into an insect.”
5: Kafka (1991)
realist/surrealist narrative feature
98 min
on disc (US) || out of print laserdisc only
on disc (Germany/R2) || out of print DVD, insanely-priced in the used market
streaming (US) || not available
best way to watch || find a copy of the laserdisc or wait for the Blu-ray Soderbergh says he's putting out
Kafka is a Kafka nerd's definitive Franz Kafka film.
It’s meta-meta-referential across both his best-known writing and his real life. I don’t think I’m imagining direct influence from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
Soderbergh went from the huge acclaim of sex, lies, and videotape into his most ultra-niche film. It's the kind of movie that confuses and annoys people who don't "get" Brazil (like your average Hollywood exec).
Jeremy Irons plays Franz Kafka, an insurance clerk. He’s also a writer. He’s somewhat mixed up with some anarchists.
The movie opens with one of Kafka’s coworkers pursued, attacked, and killed by a wild-eyed drug addict who is accompanied by a mysterious man. Kafka feels compelled to find out the truth.
He has to contend with the office stool pidgeon, played by Joel Grey, and the looming presence of the Head Clerk, played by Alec Guinness in one of his final performances. Ian Holm plays the enigmatic Dr. Murnau (nice name).
Kafka goes after the truth and is shocked by what he finds, to say the least.
The movie makes wild tonal jumps throughout, from silly to dire, and I honestly love it (possibly precisely) for its blend of omni-tonal absurdity. The fact everyone has different accents doesn't bother me, either. It's more distracting when people are trying too hard to sound "British" or "German" or "authentic" and forget to just say the words and inhabit the character.
Kafka could be for a very specific palate: one that is well-versed in Kafka’s life and work. I don’t blame anyone for feeling hopelessly lost in this movie. I'm probably nuts for thinking that the ideal viewer of the movie doesn't even know who Franz Kafka is in the first place.
"Maybe" I'm nuts.
“Kafkaesque” is meant to mean something is absurd or bewildering. This movie is a big, bad, concentrated shot in the arm of exactly that, but also laced with some other stuff that defies simple explanation.
For those who love Soderbergh’s trademark, painstaking attention to detail and intent, this is ambrosia. Kafka has the most narrow potential audience of any of Soderbergh’s movies, and it’s great that he made this in his twenties instead of hope to make it "later on", because then it would surely not exist.
It’s nuts that this movie ever got made, but I’m glad that it did, because I’m part of the very narrow audience that digs the shit out of it. Even people I've spoken to or have read whom are lukewarm on the movie itself are crazy for Cliff Martinez's score, and rightfully so.
I’m not going to pretend that someone couldn’t obtain the movie by “alternative means”, but I guarantee you it looks and sounds like utter shit. I watched the Laserdisc (just like I did for King of the Hill), and it looked like crap compared to even the worst early DVD masters. I should also nitpick that it's in 2.1:1, which isn't the Original Aspect Ratio.
I can't speak to the quality of the impossible-to-find, massively-overpriced out of print German DVD, but look...do yourself a favor and don't waste your money on it. If you're independently wealthy, then fine, buy one for you and one for me. You can contact me through the form here on the site. I'd also like a pony.
In an interview posted by Vulture just yesterday, Soderbergh said he's been working on what I'll call a Revised and Elaborated Cut, complete with new insert shots and a complete German dub of all the audio. Here's the relevant paragraph, as I reported yesterday:
Well, I’m remaking—it’s been a long process—but I’m overhauling Kafka completely. It’s funny—wrapping a movie 22 years later! But the rights had reverted back to me and Paul Rassam, an executive producer, and he said, “I know you were never really happy with it. Do you want to go back in and play around?” We shot some inserts while we were doing Side Effects. I’m also dubbing the whole thing into German so the accent issue goes away. And Lem and I have been working on recalibrating some of the dialogue and the storytelling. So it’s a completely different movie. The idea is to put them both out on disc. But for the most part, I’m a believer in your first impulse being the right one. And I certainly think that most of the seventies directors who have gone back in and tinkered with their movies have made them worse.
The entire cineaste internet and I have already weighed in to say that we would love to see Criterion put it out, since he gets along with them quite well and, according to him, the rights have fully reverted to him. It’d be great to see new interviews with Irons, Soderbergh, and others.
(in reference to a canary) “Here's a pretty sexy-looking dish."6: King of the Hill (1993)
narrative feature
103 min
on disc (US) || out of print laserdisc
on disc (UK/R2) || ~$6 DVD that I can't vouch for
streaming (USA) || Netflix Instant (requires subscription), currently unavailable on Amazon Instant
best way to watch || Netflix, until we hopefully get a Blu-ray
Re-watching this chronologically with the rest of Soderbergh's filmography was jarring due to how leagues away from Kafka this is. There isn't much like Kafka around in the first place.
King of the Hill is very similar in tone to other films I've seen set in the ’30s that were made in the early- to mid-90's. It's a very traditional, sweet coming-of-age story. It’s difficult to imagine that it was once possible to make a period film that looks this expensive for around $8 million.
It stars an early teen years Jesse Bradford as Aaron, the son of a German immigrant and an American woman who is in and out of sanitariums. He has a younger brother that he gets on with really well. The brothers are separated early in the story. Dad strings them along on promises that he’ll find work, and mom goes back to the hospital.
Aaron makes the most of what he has to work with, and is brought up by the neighborhood collective rather than a single parental figure. The cast is full of names that are as recognizable today as they were then, some even more so now.
The hunky teenage hoodlum down the hall is Adrian Brody, and his across-the-hall neighbor is Spalding Gray. Aaron’s two potential love interests are pretty little rich girl Katherine Heigl and a mousy, nervous Amber Benson (be still, my beating heart). Aaron’s teacher is played by Karen Allen, and the gum-smacking elevator attendant is played by a pre-Sister Act 2 Lauryn Hill.
The movie revolves around the theme of it not mattering what happens along the way so long as you end up where you want to be (on top).
Watching it as a double feature with Kafka while I had a Laserdisc player on loan had the unintended effect of making me dislike the gentler, mainstream movie of the two.
King of the Hill grew on me steadily, and I ended up falling for it by the end. The irony that the impenetrable Franz Kafka pseudo-biopic was more immediately accessible for me than the handsomely-photographed “studio picture” is not lost on me. I hope to find time to seek help.
The rich development of Aaron as a person is what is missing from so much modern moviemaking. It's a shame I can’t send you to go watch it, rent it, or buy it. Alas and alack, it’s in the same limbo as Kafka.
One of the few times I'm ever envious of residents of Los Angeles is when the New Beverly Cinema does some amazing event I care about, like when they did a screening in 2011 with Soderbergh, Bradford, and Benson in attendance.
I should mention that we'll get back to talking about Spalding Gray before long. His appearance in this one is very eerie for me. He has an almost supernatural presence compared to everyone else in the movie. He haunts me, and has invaded my dreams. I'll get into why when we look at 2010's And Everything is Going Fine.
“There's what you want, and there's what's good for you, and they never meet”
7: The Underneath (1995)
disjointed narrative feature
99 min
on disc (US/R1) || 1998 DVD with an interlaced, non-anamorphic transfer (~$3 new on Amazon)
streaming || not available
best way to watch || the DVD, which includes all of the Laserdisc extras, including notes from sound guru Larry Blake, Color Bars, and a widescreen vs. Pan & Scan demo
Soderbergh shot this post-Noir heist movie in Austin (with a Richard Linklater two-word cameo!), but that’s not the only reason I enjoy this remake of Criss-Cross, pieces of which I feel Soderbergh repurposed in various future films. I’m avoiding any spoilers of any kind, and I’ll thank everyone to stay away from them in the comments. I know that “the movie’s old! What to spoilLOLOMG?”, but I’m assuming most people haven’t seen this since the title doesn’t start with the word Ocean’s.
Peter Gallagher plays Michael, a gambler. He was doing great until he didn’t do so well betting on an LSU-UF football game. He ditched town and his girlfriend Rachel (Alison Elliott), but now he’s back home in Austin, living at his mother’s house with her and his soon-to-be new stepdad. His brother is a cop who has a massive hate-on for Michael. William Fichtner plays the loose cannon criminal who’s now engaged to Rachel. If you love Fichtner for anything he does and you haven’t seen this movie, get it from Amazon before you’ve finished reading this article, since I've never seen it run more than $5.
Elizabeth Shue plays a bank employee that Michael meets on a bus ride. The incomparable Joe Don Baker has a bit part as the owner of the security company Michael goes to work for, and he makes great use of the microscopic amount of screen time he’s got. He’s in here for less time than in Reality Bites, another Austin-shot movie that probably rolled back-to-back with this one.
I said I wasn’t spoiling anything, and I’m not with any of the above, since the movie works with a fractured narrative timeline. Almost everything in that last paragraph happens in the opening minutes of the movie. It’s not merely a clean split with The Past and The Now, but with splinters of both throughout. There aren’t clear signposts of when you’re jumping to where. For me, the shift was a little disconcerting at first, but it kept me on my toes. All information points to Rachel being a seriously neglected girlfriend who deserves a lot better, but thankfully, she isn’t a resourceless, helpless damsel in constant distress she's incapable of handling.
After his return home, Michael is imperfectly repentant, and he’s still catching up on making everything right with his life. The question for him is let alone whether he really wants to do what he has to do to make things right. You pick up from the beginning that there’s a heist going on at some point, but the job doesn’t go down until some time into the movie. Lots of Noir tropes are at work, including a twist to the ending. I won’t spoil it here, but I will say that Soderbergh steals it for re-use in one of his ’00s crime movies. Part of the fun for me was realizing “holy shit THAT’S where he got X from!”.
Soderbergh is openly unhappy with how the movie turned out. Whether it wasn’t having enough days on the schedule, or not enough location time, or difficult talent, I have no idea.
It’s not a perfect film by any stretch, but it oozes style, and feels like an artier, painstaking antecedent to the rougher-edged, less earnest Out of Sight. Soderbergh is a lot closer to the metal on this thing than I am, so his feeling that it just doesn’t work is as valid as any other person who's seen it, but I think he's too hard on this thing.
I don’t see the complete clusterfuck he apparently does. I’ve had personal artistic catastrophes others have seen as successes, so I get it. I just don’t agree that it sucks. Imperfect work from a great director is better than what hacks can do on their best days with a papal blessing. I’ll concede that it isn't drenched in Soderbergh's cinematic DNA, but it couldn't have been directed by just anyone. The cinematographic flourishes and this first pass at a non-linear narrative are distinctly Soderbergh.
The Underneath marks the first use of “Perennial” as the branding of a company or organization in Soderbergh’s work. Here, it’s Perennial Security, a company run by Joe Don Baker’s character. Also worth noting is that the pseudonym that Soderbergh uses for his credit on the screenplay (due to moronic WGA rules) is Sam Lowry, the main character in Brazil. If you haven't seen it, Sam is a bureaucrat enveloped in a bureaucratic hell.
Every one of these movies bombed. In today's studio system, Soderbergh would be in director jail with a possible life sentence. I'm glad he didn't, since his next movie is the most experimental and weird one yet.
In the Next Installment of Soderberghopolis
The namesake of this series, Schizopolis, Spalding Gray in Gray's Anatomy, and a look at Soderbergh's producing work in the early 90's.
Soderberghopolis is an open-ended, chronological career retrospective series looking at the work of Steven Soderbergh in moving pictures: cinema, TV, installation art, whatever fits.
Essential sources include (but are not limited to): various interviews (linked where applicable) and the various commentaries, booklets, and featurettes produced by The Criterion Collection.
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New to Soderberghopolis? Start at the beginning.