{"id":2890,"date":"2026-04-11T10:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T10:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/2890\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T10:01:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T10:01:15","slug":"steven-soderbergh-interview-explaining-his-approach-to-a-i-the-christophers-and-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/2890\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Soderbergh interview: Explaining his approach to A.I., The Christophers, and movies."},"content":{"rendered":"

No one makes movies like Steven Soderbergh. A director who works as his own cinematographer and editor\u2014the latter two under the pseudonyms Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard\u2014he has so streamlined the filmmaking process that he\u2019s been known to send out a rough cut of the completed feature by the end of the last shooting day. That process has allowed him to move faster than any major working director, releasing two movies,\u00a0Presence\u00a0and\u00a0Black Box, in theaters in the past year alone, and premiering a third,\u00a0The Christophers, which is just hitting cinemas now. A ghost story, a sexy spy thriller, and a seriocomic two-hander about the art world, the three films are wildly different, but they share a spirit of freewheeling experimentation and the feeling that, 37 years after\u00a0Sex, Lies, and Videotape\u00a0made a splash at Sundance, the 63-year-old director is still as in love with the process as ever.<\/p>\n

He might not, therefore, seem the most likely person to make a movie about a washed-up, embittered art-world legend who hasn\u2019t put brush to canvas in decades. But through the character of Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) and his new assistant Lori (Michaela Coel), Soderbergh and his frequent screenwriter Ed Solomon throw into relief a set of lively debates about the way the marketplace electrifies and distorts the experience of art, and what if anything remains when the economic stimulus is removed. The title refers to several sets of paintings, all of Julian\u2019s mysterious former lover, two of them released at the height of his fame and now selling for millions apiece, and a third that sits in his attic, unfinished, as his health fails and he spends his days monetizing what\u2019s left of his once storied name. Lori is a painter herself, as well as a conservationist, neither of which prevents her from having to run a food truck to pay the rent, but she\u2019s also an accomplished forger, which is why Julian\u2019s children hire her for a clandestine mission: insinuate herself into Julian\u2019s life, complete the final set of Christophers in secret, and wait for the old man to die so his kids can sell the newly discovered canvases and make themselves rich.<\/p>\n

Most of\u00a0The Christophers\u00a0takes place in Julian\u2019s twin town houses, as Julian and Lori spar over his inflated reputation, her failed career, and the chances each of them have in a world where art barely even qualifies as a commodity. Despite the movie\u2019s relatively cloistered setting, McKellen and Coel\u2019s verbal jousting makes for one of Soderbergh\u2019s keenest, purest entertainments in years. And because Soderbergh has in recent years taken on the role of unofficial industry sage, it felt like a good moment to check in for one of his legendary interviews, where he discourses at length (famously never less than 45 minutes) about the state of the art form and the business it uneasily coexists with. So, earlier this week, we sat down at a Tribeca hotel to discuss art, A.I., and whether there\u2019s still a place for movies for grown-ups\u2014or if grown-ups even want them. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Sam Adams: At the end of every year, you post a\u00a0daily log of your media consumption<\/a>\u2014the books you read, movies you watched, and so on. But you don\u2019t include visits to museums or galleries, even though at one point you intended to give up filmmaking and become a painter. How much do you keep up with the art form?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steven Soderbergh:\u00a0Not at all. It\u2019s embarrassing and indefensible that I don\u2019t spend more time in museums and galleries, because I always find them incredibly inspirational and feel happy that such spaces exist. I think it says something about art that the spaces that contain it are, I find, a combination of calming and inspiring. I think it speaks to its power or its effect on us. Being in a space filled with art, the default mode is to feel pretty positive, to feel good. I should get some more hits of that.<\/p>\n

Ed Solomon wrote the leads in\u00a0The Christophers\u00a0for Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel without them knowing, almost as if you cast them in the parts in advance. Why did you see them as these characters?<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a combination of pure intuition and attraction, with certain practical considerations. You have two characters who need to be of a certain age, at a certain stage in their lives. You\u2019re looking for sort of maximum contrast, just in terms of vibe. So I can\u2019t say that I thought about it very long at all. I probably thought of Ian first, because you need somebody who speaks and acts in a very specific kind of performative way and is a man in London in his 80s. It\u2019s not a long list of people. Michaela\u2019s somebody who, like everybody else in the world, I was obsessed with after seeing\u00a0her last show<\/a>. So she went into a mental list of fascinating people to work with someday. And the image of the two of them in the same frame just seemed really interesting. If somebody just saw an image, they\u2019d be like, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on there?\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been\u00a0some criticism<\/a>\u00a0aimed at\u00a0The Drama\u00a0that the movie doesn\u2019t take the race of Zendaya\u2019s character into account, and while it feels undeniable that race would inflect the relationship between Julian, a white male legend who has been \u201ccanceled\u201d for an unspecified transgression, and Lori, a young Black painter who\u2019s still struggling to get her art seen, The Christophers\u00a0doesn\u2019t explicitly reference that element. What kinds of conversations, if any, did you have with your lead actors about that dynamic?<\/p>\n

It seemed like it was kind of all or nothing, like either make that part of the point or don\u2019t at all. And the fact is, you could have switched them. He could be a person of color, and she could be white. It was about issues that are kind of human, in the sense that they literally apply to everyone. They define themselves first and foremost as an artist. Now, secondarily, they may start using adjectives to fill out that idea, but it\u2019s a movie about two artists.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Dana Stevens
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<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s interesting, because for me it\u2019s very present in the interactions between them. Julian is a cruel and thoughtless person in general, but it\u2019s sharper when he seems so oblivious to what Lori might have gone through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I guess I felt that way too. It goes without saying that in equivalent terms, he, as a white man, has had and would\u2019ve had more opportunities and access than she has and has had. We know that.<\/p>\n

And he feels, not unjustifiably, that he\u2019s been through his own struggles as well. As he says to her, \u201cI was bisexual when it actually cost you something.\u201d Although things obviously worked out quite well for him eventually.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Emotionally, let\u2019s put it this way: His situation is entirely self-generated. He made choices that led him here. His inability to own that is why he\u2019s alone and why he can\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

So much of this movie is about authorship: whose name goes on a work of art, and whether and why it matters. Even the Cameos Julian records for fans are worth more when he \u201csigns\u201d them by drawing his signature in the air. You do so many jobs on your sets\u2014you direct, you\u2019re the cinematographer and the camera operator, you even edit the day\u2019s footage on the ride home\u2014that the movies are yours in a way that few other directors could claim. And I\u2019m wondering, partly because the internet is up in arms about it, how that maps onto\u00a0your experience with generative A.I.<\/a>\u00a0You\u2019ve been talking about using it for years, but we\u2019re going to get the first glimpse at the result next month, when your documentary\u00a0John Lennon: The Last Interview\u00a0premieres at Cannes. When you create an image with A.I., does it still feel like it\u2019s yours?<\/p>\n

Yeah. It just turned out to be the thing that I needed to solve a very serious problem. I have a 91-minute piece of audio. I am, for 90 percent of it, able to use archival imagery to support that audio, but for some very crucial sections that are John and Yoko speaking philosophically about some serious issues, I needed imagery that wasn\u2019t real and yet was very specifically designed to sort of enhance what they\u2019re saying. So for me, this is just the right tool at the right time for me to solve this problem in a way that was not prohibitive. It\u2019s a documentary. We don\u2019t have a lot of money here. And some years ago, I really would\u2019ve been stuck because the only way to get what I ended up getting would\u2019ve been to go through a very expensive and labor-intensive visual effects process that I couldn\u2019t have afforded. It would\u2019ve been impossible, and I wouldn\u2019t have had the schedule.<\/p>\n

My attitude is: Everybody has various, very emotional responses to this whole issue. I don\u2019t find it in the creative context to be the existential threat that it is in the real world, in that every time you use it, you\u2019re draining a lake to cool off the server farm. Those are very serious issues. In the creative context, it is simply, to me, a tool and will eventually find its place.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting that the most recent\u00a0Writers Guild agreement<\/a>,\u00a0released this week, protects writers from having credit taken away from them for A.I.-generated products but also establishes their right to use A.I. as a tool. It\u2019s not the blanket anti-A.I. stance some might expect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe most important issue facing the industry right now is the issue of getting people to leave the house and go to the\u00a0movies.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

I mean, look, to me, its limitations are obvious and insurmountable. And at the end of the day, you\u2019ve got to ask yourself, would you take travel advice from somebody who has never left their home? It\u2019s ultimately reductive and based on things that have already happened, and it always will be. Its ability to iterate quickly is helpful in very specific contexts, but it can\u2019t finish anything. There\u2019s no universe in which I would hand something over that I hadn\u2019t really touched a lot. It\u2019s very obvious in a way, and my whole thing is trying to avoid the obvious. It\u2019s hard for me, again, just in a creative context, to get too activated about it, given some of the other issues that the industry is facing. The most important issue facing the industry right now is the issue of getting people to leave the house and go to the movies. How do we get people back in the habit of going to the movies? And even more so to see all kinds of movies. The fantasy, spectacle, super-event-type things are one thing. It\u2019s great when\u00a0Sinners<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Weapons<\/a>\u00a0blows up. The trick is, can we get people in numbers to go see anything else?<\/p>\n

You talked a good deal about how disappointing\u00a0Black Bag\u2019s box office was, because you viewed it in part as kind of a pilot program for: Can we get adults to see midbudget movies again? Can I make a $50 million\u2014<\/p>\n

Forty-four.<\/p>\n

\u2014a $44 million movie and get people to buy $44 million in tickets? And the movie didn\u2019t do badly, but it didn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

No, I mean, look\u2014they told me, \u201cWe\u2019ll get out ultimately.\u201d And I said, \u201cI hope you\u2019re not lying to me,\u201d because I was frustrated and I don\u2019t like losing people money. I talked to [Focus Features Chairman] Peter Kujawski on the Monday after, and he goes, \u201cThis will have a long life, and we\u2019ll get out.\u201d And I said, \u201cI hope you\u2019re right.\u201d But it just becomes one more data point for me and for other people in the business as they try to figure out what they should make. It would seem to support the idea that midrange-budgeted movies for grown-ups are not a growing enterprise. But it\u2019s also hard, or ill-advised, perhaps, to use that as an example of anything other than itself. For all I know, a different midrange-budgeted movie aimed at grown-ups could have blown up, and then we\u2019d be going, \u201cSee, it\u2019s back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The system works!<\/p>\n

Right. So it\u2019s hard to know what to take from it.<\/p>\n

Maybe 10 years ago, friends my age would tell me they hadn\u2019t been out to a movie in a long time, and they would be almost shamefaced about it. But at a certain point, they just stopped apologizing. They don\u2019t go out to the movies anymore, and they\u2019re fine with that.<\/p>\n

I get it. It\u2019s a big ask. But I feel that the reward is so worth it, if only from a kind of mental health standpoint. I think there\u2019s something of value in the experience of being in that theater and just looking at one thing.<\/p>\n

This may also be trying to draw a conclusion from too few data points, but\u00a0Black Bag\u00a0and\u00a0The Christophers\u00a0feel to me like the most pure entertainments you\u2019d made in a while\u2014movies I could recommend to anyone without even telling them who the director was. Are you trying to make movies for a larger audience? You were even close to\u00a0making a\u00a0Star Wars<\/a>\u00a0movie with Adam Driver last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, I would argue that everything since\u00a0Che\u00a0has been a genre piece of some form. Because genre, I think, is just the most efficient delivery system for any idea that you have. And I think anybody who makes stuff wants it seen by as many people as possible. So if or when I can find things that I love, that I think I can execute well, that have the potential to reach a wide audience as opposed to being designed not to, I\u2019m excited by that. Those are hard to find, actually. In the case of\u00a0Star Wars, [you had] 100 percent awareness, 100 percent \u201cwant to see\u201d\u2014and\u00a0I was excited about it. I knew how to do it. It\u2019s hard to check all of those boxes. But I\u2019m still looking. I\u2019ve got things I\u2019m trying to get going that I feel are both interesting and have the potential, whether conceptually in terms of what they\u2019re about, or because of their scale, to be event-sized and hook people and create enough FOMO to get them out of the house.<\/p>\n

One of the questions that comes up explicitly in\u00a0The Christophers\u00a0is: Is art about a relationship between the artist and their audience, or is it simply about the artist\u2019s individual vision\u2014as Julian puts it, \u201ca man in the room\u201d? Movies might be inherently a relationship medium.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing that says it can\u2019t be both. You know what I mean? It\u2019s complicated, and it shifts for the artist, I think. I think I\u2019m more conscious of the audience now than when I started.<\/p>\n

Do you ever test-screen your movies?<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe hardest thing in the world is to be good and clear, because sometimes in order to be clear, you become obvious. And when you\u2019re obvious, you\u2019re not\u00a0good.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Certain movies. It depends. There are certain movies where there\u2019s literally just no point. We didn\u2019t test this. We tested\u00a0Black Bag\u00a0three times, and that was extremely helpful and led to strategic reshoots after each one, because what information was released and when and by whom was critical to the audience being at the exact right stage of trying to reach it without being able to predict it, but not getting so frustrated they tapped out. There was no other way to calibrate that other than showing it and having people go, \u201cI didn\u2019t understand the connection between these two things.\u201d The hardest thing in the world is to be good and clear, because sometimes in order to be clear, you become obvious. And when you\u2019re obvious, you\u2019re not good. So that is a lifelong sort of process, figuring out on each project, given its intentions and its demands, how to make it good and clear. Being obscure is easy. It\u2019s easy to make something that is elliptical and sort of difficult to grasp and sort of fob it off on being artistic, and if you don\u2019t understand it, that\u2019s your problem. But there are certain things I won\u2019t do just to get a reaction out of an audience. I don\u2019t pander to them. But I want to be fair.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to me that in\u00a0The Christophers, Julian, who hasn\u2019t painted in years, finds his way back to enjoying the act of creation through a much more physical approach: getting up on his feet, throwing stuff at the canvas like an action painter. There\u2019s a little bit of an analogy to your evolution there, the way you stepped into operating the camera because you wanted to be closer to the scene rather than observing it from a monitor.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

I became the primary operator on\u00a0Erin Brockovich, but it really started on\u00a0Traffic, where I was the operator and the director of photography. I just jumped in. That was absolutely out of a desire to exert more control over the momentum of what was happening on set and to have a more intimate relationship with the performers. I\u2019m not Roger Deakins or Emmanuel Lubezki, and I never will be. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m bad. I know what I want, and I know how I like things to look, and I know how to get that. Those people are on another level, but I\u2019ll trade not having them for what I get in terms of the experience, and the experience for the actors of me being in it with them.<\/p>\n

The cinematographer\u2019s impulse is to sort of touch everything and make it look beautiful and make it look like a movie. And it took me a while to be like, \u201cDon\u2019t do that.\u201d I feel\u2014I can\u2019t prove it\u2014that the audience has a different reaction to something that doesn\u2019t look \u201clit,\u201d that it feels more real to them. In\u00a0Black Bag, that pub where they all meet before they go to the house, we went and scouted it, and the lights were on, and I just started laughing because I\u2019m like, \u201cThis is hideous. Don\u2019t change a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one makes movies like Steven Soderbergh. A director who works as his own cinematographer and editor\u2014the latter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,2966,25,2638],"class_list":{"0":"post-2890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}