It’s Friday, so there’s nothing like discussing porn…and early retirement. Yes, Steven Soderbergh still insists he’s getting out of the game and soon. Don’t like it? Tough, he basically says he’s done enough in his lifetime, which is true considering his prodigious output. Soderbergh says he’ll retire in less than four years.
Does that mean, “Knockout,” “Liberace,” “Cleo,” the 2nd Spalding Gray doc, maybe another lo-fi Magnet film, and one more maybe if we’re lucky?
“I just feel that this is a young person’s game, and I don’t want to be doing this when I’m 50. By then I’ll have made 20-something movies, and that’s a lot,” he told the London Times Online. So, does that mean he’ll be retiring in the next four years? “Oh, I think before that,” he says. Surely he can’t be serious. A workaholic and consummate movie-maker at the height of his powers, with Clooney, the cream of Hollywood, at his feet? “It’s funny, but every time I say I’m trying to wind things down, people get really angry. ‘Why are you saying that? Stop saying that!’ But look, if I decide I want to do something else I am allowed to do just that.” He gives a perplexed shrug and says: “It’s my life, after all!”
The ever-candid filmmaker also calls his herculean “Che”epic, “a mistake from day one.” If you say so Steven. We still love it.
He also love his skin flix (he discusses this often in his “Getting Away With It” book) and will leave a hotel if they don’t have pay-per-view porn.
“I was in a hotel in Anaheim about five years ago, and after checking in I literally went down to the front desk and said, ‘I don’t understand, there’s no pay-per-view porn!’ I called my producer and said, ‘I can’t take this, I’m checking out’. And I went to the hotel across the road. I think it should be in the bill of rights — when you’re travelling, access to pornography should be the number three thing on the list after clean towels and 24-hour room service.” He rolls his eyes upwards, to indicate the hotel rooms above, and sighs, “They don’t have it here!”
Maybe he can try and rival Andrew Blake‘s arty work after he finishes his film career? We can only hope he sticks around in at least some capacity.