Last time I checked up on Twitter enthusiast/reluctant retiree Steven Soderbergh (before this season of The Knick started airing), he had a new project in the pipeline entitled Mosaic. Details about the project, which stars Sharon Stone and Garrett Hedlund, were limited at the time and limited now. Is it a “choose-your-own-adventure”-type thing? Is it just a TV movie? Is it a way for Soderbergh to pay off his gambling debts (damnit, Soderbergh, have you learned nothing from your fiction about that?)? Other than that, whatever else Soderbergh has been up to has been a bit of a mystery. Well, Indiewire has the scoop on Mosaic and several other possible projects for Soderbergh, including one particularly near and dear to my and many other Solute commenters’ hearts.
Let’s start with Mosaic and what we learn from this article about it; not much. Soderbergh, ever the cagey bastard, only had this to say on the subject:
“It’s going to be very confusing for people until they see it. It’s something I’ve been working on in the background for three-and-a-half years and that I’m really excited about. […] If it works, if it works for the audience, it’s a way of doing things that I think has enormous potential for people who think a certain way. In a way, I’m very conscious of the fact that this is the first iteration of it. I can already see its potential and I know I’m making a cave painting but it’s exciting at the same time because it’s like, ‘Oh, man, some friends of mine that I know when they get their hands on this are going to do some crazy shit.’
“It’s not a technical idea that we’re now trying to put a story on top of. It grew out of an interest in trying to push storytelling in a different direction and coming up with technology that allows us to do it. It all originated from people who were thinking about story — the hope is the experience of it will be very organic and not technical.”
Other than that, what we learn about Mosaic is its release date (sometime in 2017, probably), its filming status (half-done), and the expanded cast. Other than Stone and Hedlund, the project also stars Paul Reubens (I’m really excited to see how he works with Soderbergh), Beau Bridges (already a Soderbergh Player thanks to his role in the massively underrated The Good German), and The Knick‘s Jeremy Bobb (Barrow, who went from merely pathetic to downright monstrous in last week’s episode) and Maya Kazan (poor Eleanor Gallinger, blessed with the most obvious fake chompers this side of Hope Harlingen after Dr. John Hodgman thought that removing her teeth would make the crazy go away).
The conversation didn’t just talk about Mosaic. As anyone who has witnessed me during Criterion’s monthly announcements, I’ve consistently been disappointed by Criterion’s apparent hesitance to release Soderbergh’s Kafka, which he’s said that he’s been radically reworking (adding new scenes, dubbing the film into German) for the last five years or so (Soderbergh jokes it’s been “year 12” since he started working on it). Well, it looks like it isn’t Criterion’s fault so much. Soderbergh’s still working on it, and he has reshot some scenes, but he isn’t sure when exactly it and the theatrical cut will get released on home video. He’s also recently gained the rights to Bubble and Full Frontal, and will get the rights to The Girlfriend Experience next year, although he’s not sure what exactly he’s going to do with them (maybe Criterion can bunch all four movies and maybe a Blu-Ray of Schizopolis together for a “Soderbergh: The Weird Days” box set).
There’s also the matter of Soderbergh’s other long-gestating project, his miniseries adaptation of John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor for HBO. Straight from the horse’s mouth:
“I have scripts for that,” he said. “We’re getting ready to do another draft and so that’s something that I really, really want to do. I’ve been working on it for a long time. That’s a TV mini-series thing. That’s like 10, 12 hours long.”
That’s encouraging for Soderbergh’s future prolificness, as is his cryptic comment about there being “a couple of other TV things that I’m working on the background”. Even if Kafka still seems like it’s eons away, this news heartily earns the obligatory inclusion of that Magic Mike XXL gif.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good pony-ride.
(Also, The Knick season 2 has been great, and if you haven’t been watching because the Lord hasn’t blessed you with a Cinemax subscription/the password to someone else’s MAX GO account, torrent that shit or go to a friend’s house and watch that shit.)