Gavin Smith:
Ten years ago you told me that you and a few of your filmmaking pals were going to set each other exercises where you’d each have to make a film without resorting to any of the things in your bag of tricks. What happend with that?


Steven Soderbergh:
The purification film? I’ve done a lot of that. The whole point is to shake you out of your thing, and I tend to find ways of doing that anyway.


Who was in the group f/64?

When we were going to do it together, it would’ve been each of us doing it for each other. There were five of us, and so the other four would do it for the one. It was me, Fincher, Spike Jonze, Sam Mendes, and Alexander Payne.


Why didn’t it happen?

Barry Diller sold USA (Network) to Universal like the week we were going to close it. It only worked if it were Switzerland. If it were attached in any way to a studio, it wouldn’t work. It had to be an independent entity. What I would love would be for someone to hand me a script that’s been cast, scouted, scheduled, you start tomorrow, and you have 18 days. You’d have to create it on the spot, all of it.


Like an exam.

Yeah. I’d have to submit to some significant choices that have been made for me, and figure out how to make it mine within that context. That would be fun.

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Aus dem ausführlichen, sehr aufschlussreichen Interview mit Steven Soderbergh, in der aktuellen Print-Ausgabe von Filmcomment.