THE MONEY ELITE GLOBAL NETWORK - REVIEWS

Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of ...

Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite review [Book] 2017-11-22 18:0 The globe of secret offshore companies is outrageous. The rich and corrupt, seeking to hide assets and income from taxes, set up shell companies, foundations and trusts - by the hundreds of thousands - every year.

Movie Review - The Laundromat (2019) - flickeringmyth.com

FM Podcast Network; Social Media ... Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite and found the specifics regarding ... Check here for new reviews, ...


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The Laundromat (2019) - IMDb

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5865326/

The Laundromat. Follows a group of journalists who take part in unearthing 11.5 million files, linking the world's most powerful political figures to secret banking accounts to avoid taxes.

The Laundromat (film) - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundromat_(film)

The Laundromat is a 2019 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh, with a screenplay by Scott Z. Burns. It stars Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, David Schwimmer, Matthias Schoenaerts, James Cromwell, and Sharon Stone.

The Laundromat movie review & film summary (2019) | Roger Ebert

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-laundromat-2019

Steven Soderbergh's "The Laundromat" is a star-powered drama about a very complex issue: how the modern systems to protect wealth have left the meek farther from inheriting Earth than ever before. The issue of the Panama Papers never quite got enough attention in the press.

The Laundromat (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_laundromat

The Laundromat Critics Consensus. The Laundromat misuses its incredible cast by taking a disappointingly blunt and unfocused approach to dramatizing the real-life events that inspired it.

The Laundromat Reviews - Metacritic

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-laundromat

The Laundromat is an air-tight, tumultuous info-graph about our rotten to the core financial systems and, in particular, the 2016 Mossack and Fonseca leak when millions of the Panamanian law firm's files were anonymously leaked to the press.

The Laundromat review: Gary Oldman spins lies to Meryl Streep.


Firm Behind Panama Papers Scandal Sues Netflix Over its Upcoming Movie - 'The Laundromat'


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The Laundromat (2019) Movie Review | Screen Rant




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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/01/the-laundromat-review-gary-oldman-spins-lies-to-meryl-streep-in-sparkling-comedy

Sep 01, 2019 · All the same, The Laundromat - "based on actual secrets" and adapted from a non-fiction book by Jake Bernstein - does a fine job in making a drama out of this financial crisis.

'The Laundromat' Review: Meryl Streep in a Cycle of Spin ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/movies/the-laundromat-review.html

Sep 25, 2019 · "The Laundromat" is like an enthusiastic high-school teacher — maybe you know the type — who tries to liven up dry material with skits, games and funny costumes.

The Laundromat (2019) - Full Cast & Crew - IMDb

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The Laundromat (2019) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.

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Synopsis: The Laundromat - The film follows Ellen Martin (Streep), whose dream vacation takes a wrong turn and leads her down a rabbit hole of shady dealings that can all be traced to one Panama City law firm, run by seductive partners Jürgen Mossack (Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Banderas). She soon learns that her minor predicament is only a drop in the bucket of millions of files linking an off-shore tax scheme to the world's richest and most powerful political leaders. Directed by Steven Soderbergh Produced by Scott Z. Burns Lawrence Grey Gregory Jacobs Steven Soderbergh Michael Sugar Screenplay by Scott Z. Burns Based on Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein Starring Meryl Streep Gary Oldman Antonio Banderas Jeffrey Wright Robert Patrick David Schwimmer Sharon Stone Music by David Holmes Cinematography Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews) Edited by Steven Soderbergh (as Mary Ann Bernard) Production Company Anonymous Content Grey Matter Productions Topic Studios Sugar23 Distributed by Netflix
The Laundromat is the brand new biographical comedy-drama movie from Netflix and today, we talk about it. So does Netflix have a terrifyingly funny movie, starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, Robert Patrick, David Schwimmer, & Sharon Stone, on their hands? Watch Jared's The Laundromat movie review to find out all of his spoiler-free thoughts! Be sure to leave your comments on The Laundromat down below!

‘The Laundromat’

(the story of the 2016 Panama Papers)

Based on Jake Bernstein’s book

Secrecy World

New Film

‘The Laundromat’

The Panama Papers...


Steven Soderbergh’s new film The Laundromat, written by his long-time collaborator Scott Z. Burns, is an exciting continuation of his directorial work we’ve admired over the years. Big, flashy, and very funny, this satire, based on Jake Bernstein’s book Secrecy World, illuminates the story of the 2016 Panama Papers, making the scandal and the dark machinations that led to it accessible, while taking the audience on a wild journey through the lifestyles of the filthy-rich and their dirty dealings. Soderbergh often seeks to expose corruption in the stories he tells. As in Erin Brockovich and The Informant!, he selects an incredible all-star cast to bring some humor and humanity to a complex subject.

This highly stylized film, in which actors often break the fourth wall and narrate their stories, tells the tale of the law firm of Mossack Fonseca, whose numerous clients used shell companies and offshore accounts to hide their wealth. Journalists exposed millions of documents from the law firm with the Panama Papers. Among those implicated were athletes, politicians, and celebrities. In Soderbergh's reimagining of the story, he has chosen to make Mossack and Fonseca (Gary Oldham and Antonio Banderas, respectively) into a sparkling Greek Chorus, narrating, as Mossack (Oldman) puts it, “a fairy tale that actually happened.”

Meryl Streep plays Ellen Martin, a sudden widow and a victim of insurance fraud after she loses her husband in the Lake George Tragedy. When Ellen uncovers, in her words, “bribery, corruption, money laundering, millions and millions and millions of dollars,” she knows she must act. Streep and the cast deliver masterful twists and turns in bringing Ellen’s heroic journey to life.

I spoke to Steven Soderbergh about what he views as the root problems this film brings to light. We also discussed the future of filmmaking, his thoughts on streaming services and his next innovative project.

Today In: Lifestyle

Risa Sarachan: What attracted you personally to this story?

Steven Soderbergh: I think if you looked at some of the projects that I've worked on, I'm interested in systems, and I'm interested in power. I'm interested in what people will do or have to do or want to do to make money. When this story appeared in the news out of the blue, I certainly wasn't surprised that this kind of activity was going on. I was aware that people used shell corporations and offshore companies to move their money around and keep it hidden. I think what I was struck by, and what a lot of people were struck by, was just the scale of it. The fact that Mossack and Fonseca were not even, by law-firm standards of those who do this kind of work, very big. And yet, they had a seemingly endless list of people and companies who were indulging in this kind of secret behavior. I think just the sheer volume was what struck me. And then Scott Burns, the writer, came to me and said I think this is interesting. I said I do too. We just have to figure out what our angle is because I don't want to make a movie about the journalists who broke the story. I want to make a movie about how this works and what's attractive about it to people who have a lot of wealth.

Scott was the one who sort of suggested a kind of anthology approach, where we tell multiple stories, and we do a little bit of globe-hopping. We use this character of Ellen Martin, who’s kind of a composite of many of the spouses who lost a loved one in the Lake George tragedy. She acts as an audience in a way. She pulls us through. She starts asking the questions that we want to ask. Once we decided on that approach, we added this idea of Mossack and Fonseca as variety show hosts that would walk us through this. I said, okay, that sounds fun. I think that was key to us, that there was a lot of information that we wanted the audience to absorb. We believed that you're much more prone to ingest that information as you’re laughing. We just kind of stuck with that idea.

Actors Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas in "The Laundromat"

CLAUDETTE BARIUS/NETFLIX

Sarachan: What made you want to make Mossack and Fonseca a blinged-out kind of Greek chorus for the film?

Soderbergh: I described it to someone once as the ultimate mansplaining movie. Where finally, in the end, they have to dispense with the mansplaining, and Meryl takes over.

Sarachan: Do you remember when this story broke? Since the subject matter is somewhat arcane, how did your understanding of the subject evolve as you began work on this film?

Soderbergh: I guess the real question at the heart of this is, as they say very boldly, they were not breaking the law informing these companies. There are guidelines about diligence: who’s creating these companies? Where does the money come from? But it's all very etched in jello. When you're doing the kind of volume that Mossack Fonseca were doing, diligence becomes a problem. From their point of view, their argument would be: we need to spend all of our money and all our time investigating all of these people and all of these entities. That's not practical. I think then you have to back up a step and sort of look at these facilities like HSBC and these giant banks, who, at some point, are probably part of this project. At some point when they're talking about a drug lord that they had created a company for, Mossack says, let's be clear, a banker sent them to us, and before that, a lawyer sent them to the banker. So, it's a very complex system that is going to be very difficult, I think, to unwind or monitor in any meaningful way just because of the volume of that activity.

I like this thing that they're doing in the United Kingdom now, this unexplained wealth order. It's an interesting thing I think, to go after people who would appear to have vast resources and no real story of how they acquired these resources. I don't think that's a piece of legislation you could ever get off the ground in the United States. But I know they have at least two cases being developed right now in the United Kingdom. I'm really curious about how that works. I think the numbers say that something like 40% of real estate in London is owned by entities of individuals that are based outside of the United Kingdom. That's a lot.

When people ask me what is the take away here, especially after the denouncement, and what are we supposed to glean from all this, I guess my response is two-fold. One, well, in terms of policy you might want to think about supporting people who believe this is an issue that needs to be addressed. And do a little dive into how they think it should be addressed. Part two is to look around you and realize to what extent we are all touched by it.

Whenever you think about, well, who owns this block? Who owns the real estate in my neighborhood? Who owns the real estate where I go shopping? It's sort of like the dark matter of our socio-economic life, these companies that behave like this. This is everywhere, and just being aware of it - I think if you're being inoculated to think that way or look at things that way, that's better than being oblivious or ignorant.

Sarachan: Do you feel the way journalists worked together to investigate all the leads with the Panama Papers helped set a precedent for investigative journalism on corruption?

Soderbergh: We bought Jake Bernstein's book to use as a resource. The book is a fascinating description of how that part of the story worked. It's incredibly compelling. These are people that are often risking their lives. People that have been killed for reporting on these kinds of stories. The way that the Panama Papers worked and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism worked to organize the release of the Panama Papers is, I think, a really strong blueprint for any organization or any entity that wants to release this kind of data responsibly.

As you know, I think they had 11 million documents to sort through. They didn't just want to dump this stuff. I mean, they wanted to be responsible, and they also wanted to be smart about not overwhelming people with too much information with no context. And so I think the way the story broke and the way it was reported was handled as responsibly as it possibly could be. And you know, it's not over. This stuff is still happening.

Meryl Streep in "The Laundromat"

CLAUDETTE BARIUS/NETFLIX

Sarachan: In the same way that Erin Brockovich's case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company now speaks to the Flint water crisis, do you feel The Laundromat could use a story that leaked in 2016 to expose wealth inequality in present-day America?

Soderbergh: Well, I think it's one of the two critical issues we're facing right now, and they're not unrelated. The first is climate change, and the other is systemic corruption. And they're not disconnected because in a lot of cases, climate change is being accelerated by situations in which, as I said, in this case, there's literal physical value being extracted out of certain parts of the world by companies or individuals who are then taking that money and keeping it and accelerating the destruction of the physical environment. It's so overwhelming that at times, you despair and think, how do we rewire a form of behavior that predates any of these ideas? It predates any idea about money, or writing, or any notion of civilization that we might have. Human beings have behaved in a sort of acquisitive, semi-irrational way forever. As soon as two people had a cave, one of them was complaining that the other cave was bigger. There's something about us that leads us towards this kind of activity that's bigger than any term like capitalism or shell companies. It's a human problem that we've got to figure out. You can't just treat the symptom. We really need to have a discussion about why we always do that. That we can't seem to wrap our heads around the idea of "enough." What is “enough?”

I think that's just ego. It's just part of having a consciousness that allows you to distinguish between “you,” “I,” and “someone else,” the other. Now you're comparing yourself, right away. You're comparing yourself to everyone else, and status starts to work its way into your psyche. It’s an evolutionary, Homo sapiens problem.

Sarachan: What do you think the solution is?

Soderbergh: Well again, part of the solution is to identify that this is true. And like I said, you sort of vaccinate people to let them know, to make them aware that every time they behave this way they are indulging in an impulse that might have kept us alive on the savannas of Africa 40 thousand years ago but isn't as necessary now. That's step one, I think. The other is pointing out places where this is not happening. Where there seems to be a system in place that everybody buys into, in which the notion of communal responsibility isn't completely annihilated by the notion of personal liberty. This balance-and it's something obviously that the United States grapples with maybe more than any other country in the world, because of its ideals- but this sort of dichotomy of what your responsibilities are to the community, to the state, to the country, versus individual freedom-clearly we're still working on this.

Here's one thing that we know: it works better in small countries. Part of the problem in the United States is that, quite frankly, it's too damn big. I think it should be sort of partitioned, almost like the divisions in the NCAA, like division 1A. Like, turn it into a version of the European Union. Especially in a social context, the idea that there's one set of notions that are going to work in every corner of this country with 330 million people weighing in on it? That's just not going to happen. I think we're just too big. In nature, when a cell gets too big to survive, it divides and continues to divide. I think it's easier for countries that are smaller and less diverse to get everybody to sign off on an ethos that seems to work.

The problem is, even if you came up with a solution-I think there's a Robert Kennedy quote-I think he said something like: "20% of the population is against everything all the time." Now, in a nation that's this big, that's 20 million people or more, and now we're in a period in history where essentially everybody has a microphone. And unfortunately, history tells us that bad ideas scale faster than good ideas. And so when you add technology on top of that, bad ideas are scaling really fast now. So even if you came up with a solve and said look I think we can do X, Y, and Z-we could really kind of reverse this trend of alarming inequality-there would still be enough people who'd be against it who could get the resources to attack it. Saying “no” to stuff is easy. Implementing a plan that's supposed to benefit a lot of people: that's hard. You need a lot of people to work together over a long period of time, and it can never stop. It's never going to be finished. And tearing something down, you're finished as soon as it's torn down. You just walk away and look for the next thing to tear down. So again, it's kind of a human thing. The cliche that it takes a year to build a house, and it takes an hour to burn it down. That applies not just to physical things, that applies to concepts and ideas and policies.

Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas in "The Laundromat"

CLAUDETTE BARIUS/NETFLIX

Sarachan: Was it important to you to admit to your own participation in shell companies in the film?

Soderbergh: Well, I think that's fair, and it's a fun conversation to have. It's obviously come up when people see the movie. I'm happy to explain how these particular corporations work and how they were designed because they essentially are created and exist to produce a specific asset. So, for instance, when I go make Unsane or High Flying Bird, I form an LLC, only to make that movie. It doesn't generate any revenue; it's strictly an entity that is there to do contracts with the Screen Actors Guild or the camera rental house. It's an entity that's there to create an asset. Once the asset is created and sold, its purpose is over. It doesn't generate any revenue. It's just essentially the copyright holder of the assets.

Sarachan: So all filmmakers go through that process?

Soderbergh: They do. I don't know if they all go to Delaware, but anybody who is making anything that isn't in their backyard has to form some sort of entity to produce that asset. And also to protect yourself so that if you're making this thing, and something happens, you can't be personally destroyed.

Since we made The Laundromat, I have a sixth corporation that I formed to make the movie we just finished shooting.

Sarachan: The newer Meryl one?

Soderbergh: Yeah, the new Meryl.

Sarachan: Let Them All Talk is your second film with Meryl Streep?

Soderbergh: Yeah, the second one. It took too long to get to her; I don't know why. Twenty-nine years, why did I wait that long?

She’s also interested in this stuff. She's incredibly well-read. She's very conversant in any socio-political subject you want to raise. She's fascinating to talk to. She's passionate. It was the right time in the sense that I needed her, like I literally didn't know who else could pull this off in a lot of ways. I think, for her, she also felt like, this is a subject I want to be connected to. It takes a certain kind of person to be willing to do what she ends up doing in the final shot of the film, which I think we can say without spoiling it. It needs a certain kind of performer just to pull it off technically. And it needs a certain kind of individual with the credibility as a human to make you pay attention.

Sarachan: I wondered when I watched that ending how much was in the script versus how much was built around Meryl Streep.

Soderbergh: [Spoilers ahead.] It was all very designed. That was very precisely scripted using the words from John Doe's manifesto. A person whose identity is still a secret, which is kind of amazing. Scott and I sort of talked about the movie as this kind of Russian Nesting doll that kind of mirrors the shell company structure. When it comes to Meryl and the multiple characters she plays, the idea that you keep peeling away and peeling away and then visually, I'm doing the same thing by playing her in this environment where I'm showing you all the tools and the tricks that filmmakers use to disguise who they are and what they are doing until finally, it's just her. Just Meryl and all of that stuff has been stripped away, and it's sort of a direct plea to the audience. The movie makes this pivot in the last two and a half minutes that is sort of purposeful but isn't a typical thing to do. Literally up until those last seconds of that long shot, you're seeing her like she's sitting in the chair and brushing her hair out and there is this script on the table, and there's this shawl, and she starts to gather that stuff, and you're like what is she doing? You don't see it coming. And you're like oh my god. And that was her idea. And I'm like, god, that's a really good idea. I guess that's why you're Meryl Streep. So that was fun to witness.

The irony is-sort of riffing off of my Delaware corporations-the irony is that I would argue, given the scale of the industry that I'm in-and I'll even pull in sports as being part of the entertainment industry complex-I actually work in a business that is very transparent compared to other businesses of its size. I would argue that’s because both the sports industry and the entertainment industry are fully unionized. It is one of the few businesses in which labor has the kind of power that we have. Part of that power, part of these minimum basic agreements that we negotiate every three years, is that they have to report on the financial structure down to the dollar of their companies. That's unusual.

I think I used to have that kind of semi-embarrassed feeling, you know, like we're not really doing anything that's valuable, and then two things happened. I realized, no, stories are important, like stories are actually really important. This is how we learn things. This is how we teach what's a good thing to do and what's a bad thing. This is all we have, is stories; this is how we go through the day.

And then the other was, you know, as I got further and further into my service with the Directors Guild, culminating in a nine-year tenure as the vice president, and I got a real look under the hood of how the entertainment business functions economically, I was like I wish every industry worked like this. You know, it works, and it's pretty fair. And the good news is that-unlike in a lot of other businesses-if something or someone generates a crazy amount of money because of the success of a certain project, that's not speculative. That isn't somebody going, hey, I think that movie is worth $300 million at the box office. It made $300 million at the box office, that's a real thing. It's not some guy moving money around making money on moving money around. Steven Spielberg has earned every dollar he's ever made because people go see his stuff. That’s what I really thought, this is how stuff should work.

The question is, you know, to what extent can you make something that is both entertaining and makes people think about a certain subject or an individual, if you're picking up a biography, in a way that that they hadn't considered before they sat down to watch your piece.

Sarachan: I know that Scott Burns spoke to Mossack and Fonseca while working on the film. Do you know if they've watched it?

Soderbergh: Yeah, Scott and Jake did. I don't know, but I'm getting the feeling they probably won't see it until it drops on the platform. A lot of the things that they said to Scott about what they were doing have been repurposed as dialogue that they speak in the film.

I said it's too easy just to make these guys the villains of the film. It's just too easy. This is bigger than just those two guys. They did not write these laws. It’s very obvious they weren't doing a lot of close looking at who was asking to create these companies, but I think they would argue, as I said, with the volume they read, like, is that really our job? Are we the police?

If we want that to work better, I think we do need to have laws that really lay out some kind of transparency. Because that's what it comes down to, ultimately, is transparency. And again, how do you do that when the people who make the laws are working in lockstep with the people who are benefiting from the laws not being changed? The only way to do that, I think, is through sort of public pressure. And I look at the trajectory of where wealth is moving, and I go, this is not a sustainable paradigm. And it's either going to change peacefully or some other way. But this can't-if you have the shifting of, well, since, you know, the turn of the century to now-if that continues at a similar rate this is going to turn into Mad Max.

Steven Soderbergh on set

CLAUDETTE BARIUS/NETFLIX

Sarachan: Do you think whistleblowers are the heroes of the 21st century?

Soderbergh: I have a lot of respect for people who willingly take on that role. There's no good version of it, really. There's the day before you decided to do it, and there's everything after. It's profoundly unpleasant, and like I sometimes have said, a dangerous thing to do. And the forces that align to go after people who are calling out corrupt behavior are significant. It takes a certain kind of person to do that. I don't think anybody knows whether they are that person or not until they're confronted with it, with seeing something or being a witness or a part of something that they know is wrong-it's just wrong-and in that moment, you discover who you are.

Sarachan: I watched an interview with Mossack asking if he thought John Doe was someone within the company, and he didn’t seem to think so.

Soderbergh: Nothing would make me happier than for the two of them [Mossack and Fonseca] to review the movie. I'm fascinated either way. I just am. I'm very curious to hear how they feel about it.

Sarachan: I'm curious: this is your second Netflix directorial effort this year. I just wanted to know about working with them. What do you like about working with streaming platforms versus traditional studios in terms of creative control?

Soderbergh: You know, I've had two experiences that are on both ends of the spectrum. They bought the finished movie from me, with High Flying Bird, and then they fully financed and produced another movie. Both the experiences have been positive. It's interesting to work for a company whose economic structure is unknown in any meaningful sense. I'm used to working for companies where I understand very clearly what the assumptions are, what the five-year plan is, what the 10-year plan is like. So I'm in this situation where I don't know the structure, where there is no opening of the kimono, and that's kind of fascinating.

I'm always curious to know like, well, you know, what does all of this look like in two years? What does it all look like in five years? When it comes to expenditures and growth, I don't know what their assumptions are.

Sarachan: I saw that you're working with Quibi, which creates short-form series content backed by studio money. How do you feel about it so far?

Soderbergh: That's a model that seems a little more in focus to me because what happens is, at a certain point, with Quibi, the thing that you've made reverts back to you and you're able to exploit it in any fashion you wish.

So, that's a really interesting model. It’s one that I've kind of put in place before. I think I have seven titles now of things that I've directed in which the rights have reverted back to me. I'm now in the process of remastering them and figuring out how I want to put them out. I like this idea that, at a certain point, if you've made something for someone, when they feel like, hey, our time of exploiting this product is over, now it's yours again and you can go for it. I kind of like that. I'd rather backload something like that, where I'm not making a lot of money on the making of the thing- I'm gambling on the quality of it-I like that model a lot because it seems familiar to me.

That's obviously not the Netflix model. When you make a deal with them, or at least in these two cases, it's in perpetuity. They own that forever. I think there are questions that I would ask of them.

One is: will there come a time when they adopt a more curated approach to making things? Will there ever be a time where they go, okay, we need to essentially recalibrate how people think about this brand and move from being we have everything, to you have a lot of stuff, and it's all good. The second thing is, will they ever be in a situation financially, where they will have to essentially resell some of their massively successful shows to other distribution systems to generate cash?

Stranger Things, by all accounts-I have moles that work over there-the number of eyeballs on that show: it's a ridiculous number. But, at a certain point, everybody who wants to watch it have all watched it. At that point, do you go, okay, well, now I've got however many seasons of that, let me do a basic cable deal for a bazillion dollars. Because the problem is that for a series, especially for Netflix, the economics of having a show that runs for many seasons is actually the inverse of the economics when you do that for a network. The more seasons you make on a network, that is-it's a very clear trajectory-the more money you will make down the stream. You make a show that's on for x many years that you can syndicate: that's the promised land.

That's not the model for Netflix. The model for Netflix means, every year I make that show I have to pay everybody involved a lot more. And the eyeballs, maybe they're increasing every year a little bit, maybe they're not, maybe they're decreasing, maybe they've plateaued. But the bottom line is that once it's sort of played out and been seen, it stops being, you know, an asset that accrues to your bottom line. It has no other life. If you're the network, you're counting on it having another life off the network. So you're willing to keep paying that actor more and more money every year because you're going to get it back, you know, tenfold. Here, that's not necessarily true, so there's gonna be some big news that I think they'll have to consider. But again, that's all I'm speculating now, because these other competing platforms haven't gone live yet. I think they're very well positioned. I mean, they have a whole lot of subscribers. They're very well positioned to maintain the amount of real estate that they currently occupy. It is going to get really competitive, but I'm trying to prognosticate. I just think at some point in the next two to five years, one of these giant companies, I'm convinced, is just going to look at the content business and just go, why am I doing this? It's incredibly expensive. I don't see that this is actually-given the hassle of it, and the resources required to do it properly-why am I doing this? Particularly if I'm a company that's in some other businesses.

Sarachan: I saw the speech you gave at the San Francisco Film Festival, and you were speaking about the kill porn the guy sitting next to you on a flight was watching, going from a violent scene to a violent scene. Is the onslaught of serialized plot-driven streaming content distorting the audience's expectations?

Soderbergh: It will. Like I said, it keeps evolving, it keeps expanding, it keeps growing until it starts to kind of eat itself and then somebody can find a lane that is created in reaction to that. It may not be a big lane initially, but there will be enough people that want to drive in it that it will become viable. I was trying to make a point in that speech, which still holds, that there are economic forces that are creating pressure on creative decisions that we just need to acknowledge, you know? But if you're a certain kind of filmmaker, there's always a way to play off of the thing that everybody thinks should be done. As anybody can tell by looking at my resume-I'm not anxious to do the thing that I did before. I'm always trying to look for a new way to do something that is a different story to tell. I get bored quickly.

Sarachan: Clearly, you have a strong interest in pushing boundaries in your work, from your choose-your-own-adventure experience of Mosaic to filming High Flying Bird on an iPhone. Both point to your commitment in exploring what's next. Can you hint at what new formats or technologies you're excited to explore next?

Soderbergh: I'm working on another branching narrative piece that will, I think, build upon what I learned when we made Mosaic. I feel like we learned a lot. So that's in development right now. I'm really excited about that because I feel like there will be a lot of things that can be done that we didn't do that we can now do, both creatively and technically. There were some variations in that format that have shown up and gotten some attention. I feel like this is absolutely a space that I want to play with in the future. This is what everybody's going to want.

I just want to push it a little and see if it can become another tool for storytellers. That’s an open question.

I'm involved with the creative team from Mosaic and I'm really excited to help put into play all the stuff that I learned. So I'm not done with that format yet.

The Laundromat is now streaming on Netflix.

Steven Soderbergh directs actors Jessica Allain and Nonso Anozie in "The Laundromat"

CLAUDETTE BARIUS/NETFLIX

Steven Soderbergh:

On His

New Film

‘The Laundromat’

The Panama Papers...


This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity...And What

Film ‘The Laundromat’

Teach Us?

2,621 viewsOct 17, 2019, 06:16pm

Risa SarachanContributor
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