KAFKA "Midnight Cut" Update

Tomorrow's issue of Empire is teased to contain a full "exit interview" with Steven Soderbergh. From the portion excerpted on their website today, we get an update on the new version of Kafka he's been working on, now dubbed the "Midnight Cut":

...“I’ve got a 35 page fax from (screenwriter) Lem Dobbs about it that I’ve got to wade into at some point,” Soderbergh tells Empire. “Lem and I have had this back and forth because I’m trying to alter the DNA of the whole movie. I think we want to put out a dual Blu-ray with both versions. I’ve been calling the new version the ‘Midnight Edition’ because it’s perfect for Friday or Saturday night shows.”

Kafka, Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape follow-up, was made under the fierce spotlight that came with being a Palme d'Or-winning wunderkind, and its original issues have continued to nag away at the director. An oblique conspiracy thriller starring Jeremy Irons and Alec Guinness, it will get a German-language dub, “probably” a new score and a substantive reworking of the edit. The cuts will, as Soderbergh emphasises, “be bloody”.

“I was frustrated with Kafka – it had a mixed-to-negative reaction when it came out – and I’m trying to completely rethink it in the hopes of at least turning it into something that’s unified. The tone was all over the place – which is the classic young filmmaker’s mistake. I’d like to make it a little more abstract and more of a hardcore art movie. It’s not a tweak: it’s triage.” So a better-director’s cut of a director’s cut? “I hope so. It’s shorter.”

A new Soderbergh/Lem Dobbs commentary is like discovering a print of a great lost film.

Soderbergh Re-Cutting/Editing/Making KAFKA

Vulture has a really great longread transcription of an interview with Steven Soderbergh, wherein you actually get some context as to his "post-cinema" career that begins after the release of Side Effects next week.

He talks about painting, the allure of television, and the major cultural transformation seen over the last 30 years or so...

...but one of the most interesting nuggets revealed is that he's working on a recut, German-dubbed (!) reworking of his 1991 movie Kafka. The movie stars Jeremy Irons as Kafka and features one of Alec Guinness' final screen performances. They apparently shot inserts during production of Side Effects for the new version of the 22-year-old movie.

Kafka isn't perfect, but it's really goddamned interesting, and I think it's a lot better than Soderbergh himself thinks it is.

The relevant segment from the interview:

Well, I’m remaking—it’s been a long process—but I’m overhauling Kafkacompletely. 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.

He's not erasing the original cut from existence, either, as he says above. Here's hoping for yet another great Criterionization of a Soderbergh movie. As it stands, Kafka is only on OOP laserdisc, for crying out loud.

The next proper installment of Soderberghopolis, which posts tomorrow, just so happens to include Kafka.