Notes Toward A "Late" Soderbergh

I have an upcoming piece on Steven Soderbergh's The Knick, his fantastic medical drama now showing on Cinemax. While writing it, I revisited a piece I began over a year ago on what I called the "Late Soderbergh" period (a poor name in hindsight), covering an era beginning with The Girlfriend Experience and assumably ending with Behind The Candelabra. It was a wild and ridiculous essay, trying to cover way too much ground with flimsy cohesion. I eventually abandoned it. Revisiting the 10,000 word document, however, I found some insights that helped me contextualize The Knick as well as my own thoughts on how Soderbergh evolved in this era. What follows are some excerpts from that, which I found still managed to make sense, and hopefully have some use.

Young and naive Adam (Alex Pettyfer) sits on a couch, pumped up from adrenaline from the experience he just had. On a complete whim, he has does stripped down to almost his bare ass for a loud of screaming young women. He was awkward and a bit silly, unsure of what to do, which made his so-called “performance” all the more exciting for the crowd. He sits on a couch while the rest of his now-colleagues celebrate and joke around for another successful night. Still dressed in only underwear, dollars are flowing out of his pants, as if his cock was spewing it. His body has a value, and we can see it right there.

Magic Mike: Stimulus Package

Magic Mike

Directed By: Steven Soderbergh

Written By: Reid Carolin

Starring: Channing Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Olivia Munn, Joe Mangeniello, Matt Bomer, Adam Rodriguez, and Kevin Nash

Director of Photography: Peter Andrews, Editor: Mary Ann Bernard, Art Director: Stephen I. Erdberg, Coreographer: Alison Faulk

            Magic Mike is the type of film that deserves to be seen with an audience, and especially one made up of women. Remember the cheering during the CGI extravaganza of The Avengers? Wait until you hear the screams of 250 margarita-filled women when they see Channing Tatum’s perfectly chiseled abs and shaped ass. In fact, I couldn’t tell whether it was the audience in the film screaming or just the people around me.

            But the film, set in the world of male stripping, is not an indulgent “let’s put hot men on screen.” Behind the camera is none other than Steven Soderbergh, who has delivered some of the most unique features of the last few years, not to mention this year’s phenomenally inimitable Haywire. The film is a collaboration between Soderbegh and Tatum, working on a script by Reid Carolin based on Tatum’s own experiences as a male stripper. But more than that, Magic Mike is the essential sequel to Soderbergh’s “grab-what-you-can” 2008 period piece The Girlfriend Experience. The recession is finally bottomed out, but everyone is still on the hunt for cash. And once again, Soderbergh centers on  the body as a commodity fetish. In one moment, Adam (Alex Pettyfer), the dough-eyed child that Magic Mike (Tatum) takes under his wing, sits with the dollar bills he’s earned from his first stage appearance. The bills hide the bulge that is his manhood, or perhaps enhance it.