{"id":370198,"date":"2026-04-08T22:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T22:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/370198\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T22:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T22:26:14","slug":"steven-soderbergh-on-his-new-movie-and-why-he-burned-his-notebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/370198\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Soderbergh on His New Movie, and Why He Burned His Notebooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

In director Steven Soderbergh<\/a>\u2019s \u201cThe Christophers<\/a>,\u201d Ian McKellen<\/a> plays fictional aging artist Julian Sklar, who rose to prominence as a star of London\u2019s 1960s and \u201970s pop art movement. Having stopped painting decades ago, the now 86-year-old records personalized video messages (think Cameo) for money, while living a lonely existence amid his one remaining financial asset: two adjoining London townhouses.<\/p>\n

According to Soderbergh, Julian is living every artist\u2019s worst fear of becoming irrelevant, but his house is the director\u2019s own personal horror film<\/a>. \u201cJulian\u2019s townhouse is a nightmare,\u201d Soderbergh told IndieWire. \u201cThat\u2019s a nightmare to me of a place to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jaafar<\/a> \"'Mikey<\/a> <\/p>\n

Each cluttered floor of Sklar\u2019s home is a reminder of a different aspect of his glory days. When Soderbergh and production designer Antonia Lowe were researching the film, they discovered a common thread: Many artists tend to be collectors, gravitating to hoarding multiples of the same things \u2014 a wall of mirrors, an abundance of clocks.<\/p>\n

The worst part of Sklar\u2019s clutter is the relics of his previous work. Soderbergh said he understands the trap of working \u201cin a field that attracts things that become talismans and symbols of what you\u2019ve done, or what you love.\u201d Add to that the tendency to hold onto them because \u201cyou imbue them with emotions and ideas that they probably don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to imagine why this could be unsettling for Soderbergh, a filmmaker constantly striving to boil his process down to the essentials. He eventually decided to take some \u201ccleansing\u201d steps that Sklar never had in the Ed Solomon-scripted film.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple years ago \u2014 and I\u2019d been thinking about it for a while \u2014 I burned 44 years\u2019 worth of notebooks,\u201d he said. The notebooks contained work product from over four decades of film and TV projects \u2014 some made, some abandoned, but anything still relevant inside each had been typed into a computer file years ago. Soderbergh didn\u2019t want to hand them over as part of his archive, and he realized he didn\u2019t want them invading his space with a false sense that they were still important.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to a friend of mine\u2019s house outside the city, up in the Hudson Valley. He has a fire pit, and I sort of leafed through [the notebooks], and then would spray them with lighter fluid, and torch them. It was really cathartic,\u201d said Soderbergh, who, after telling the story, realized it was the first time he\u2019d thought about the notebooks since burning them, \u201cwhich just proves that was the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doing the Zoom interview from his office, the \u201cChristophers\u201d director looked around the room as if taking stock. If you make things for a living, there\u2019s a constant \u201cacquisition mode\u201d to the task \u2014 making Julian\u2019s end-of-life clutter easy to imagine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been giving away stuff,\u201d said Soderbergh. \u201cI have this poster collection, too many, I don\u2019t have enough wall space to put these things up. So what are they for? They should be seen. So for birthdays and [other events], I\u2019m slowly giving those away. I\u2019m really trying to strip it down to the essentials.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Christophers<\/a>\u2018Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Christophers\u201d largely takes place in Julian\u2019s home, including a 33-minute sequence where McKellen\u2019s character and his newly hired assistant, Lori (Michaela Coel<\/a>), travel through all four floors, into the basement, and into the backyard. Soderbergh always saw the verticality of the townhouse, with each floor representing a different aspect of the life that now haunts him, as key to the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s something psychological attached to the physicality of vertical living that played to the core of this movie, the idea of an attic above you being a place that you never go. The idea that a basement with a pool used to be this kind of netherworld where people would collect and have wild parties,\u201d said Soderbergh. \u201cAnd his age, having to go up and down, and that being something that you\u2019re aware of when you see him do it. It just felt to me like that was all organic. If you were on a sort of straight floor plan, it\u2019s not as dramatic, it\u2019s not as visual, and it wouldn\u2019t be as good.\u201d<\/p>\n

When in the house, the audience experiences it largely through Lori\u2019s point of view, a perspective Soderbergh intended to be unsettling.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you cross the threshold into his property, we are handheld,\u201d said Soderbergh. \u201cThat threshold is the point at which anybody who crosses it becomes destabilized, to give you this sense of not being on solid footing once you enter his property.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Christophers\u201d opens from Neon in theaters on Friday, April 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In director Steven Soderbergh\u2019s \u201cThe Christophers,\u201d Ian McKellen plays fictional aging artist Julian Sklar, who rose to prominence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,593,83811,189465,111,139,69,12524,5946],"class_list":{"0":"post-370198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-ian-mckellen","12":"tag-michaela-coel","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-steven-soderbergh","17":"tag-the-christophers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}