Steven Soderbergh, of all people, thinks cellphones are the “worst thing that’s ever happened to movies”
The Oscar-winning director might like directing on iPhones but can’t stand their presence in movies
Aux News Steven Soderbergh
Photo: Charley Gallay (Getty Images for TCM)
In what could be described as an about-face on the subject, Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who directed no less than two movies on iPhones in the last decade, hates what cellphones have done to film. In a new interview with Variety about his upcoming Max mini-series, Full Circle, in which he either ignores the statement’s irony or, more likely, does not care, Soderbergh declared, “Cellphones are the worst thing that’s ever happened to movies.” This is like finding out T-Pain hates autotune.
However, the director of such shot-on-iPhone classics as Unsane and High Flying Bird, and who has been a booster for shooting movies on consumer-grade electronics since 2017, doesn’t take issue with making cinema on the same device we use to Google “What does ‘Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk’ mean?” Instead, Soderbergh denounces their “awful” prominence in his series’ narrative. He even threatened to build a cut of Full Circle comprised of every “insert that’s in the show, just one after another of all the phones and screens in our show, just so you can have them in one place.” Put simply, movies and television today feature too many shots of people getting their sweet, sweet blue light fixes by submitting to their glass rectangle in every other frame.
Unsurprisingly, Soderbergh’s hatred of cell phones made shooting his period pieces all the more enjoyable, calling it “one of the pleasures of doing The Knick [and] No Sudden Move.” His reasoning is sound, though. “I think you could talk to a hundred storytellers, and they would all tell you the same thing,” he said. “It’s so hard to manufacture drama when everybody can get a hold of everybody all the time. It’s just not as fun as in the old days when the phone would ring, and you didn’t know who was calling. I remember that fondly.”
Upon releasing 2018’s Unsane, Soderbergh described shooting his movie on an iPhone as “the future.”
“There’s a philosophical obstacle a lot of people have about the size of the capture device,” Soderbergh told IndieWire in 2018. “I don’t have that problem. I look at this as potentially one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever had as a filmmaker and that I continue having. The gets that I felt moment to moment were so significant that this is, to me, a new chapter.”
Steven Soderbergh’s latest project, Full Circle, comes to Max on July 13.
41 Comments
However, the director of such shot-on-iPhone classics as Unsane and High Flying Bird, and who has been a booster for shooting movies on consumer-grade electronics since 2017, doesn’t take issue with making cinema on the same device we use to Google “What does ‘Livvy rizzed up Baby Gronk’ mean?”
I do understand how the Iphone sort of kills some of the drama tensions but I do think if used the fullest it works like in succession people use phones to record people, take pictures of evidence, use the translator function and send dicks picks, use them to the fullest in order to make them work.
I mean, even the article itself explains that there’s no conflict between shooting movies on cellphones and lamenting what their nigh-omnipresence has done to storytelling, so…?
Just another crappy clickbait headline that was only worth clicking on because Soderberg always has interesting things to say…which, you know, means an *honest* headline would have been just as effective at generating clicks. But they can’t help themselves any more. They *have* to go for the clickbaitiest headline imaginable even when it’s of no benefit.
That’s what I find most unfuriating with Spanfeller’s G/O Media. His shit mandate isn’t creating any additional traffic, it’s just shit.
Once again this website takes a quote completely out of context to try to inflate it into some kind of clickbait bullshit. If you read THE ACTUAL interview the phone comment is but one response to a wide variety of questions about film AND the response is about the dramatic implications in storytelling NOT the technological impact on actual filmmaking. The same issue came up in an interview with Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne over on DEADLINE and Johnson’s response was similar and it influenced a crucial plot point in the show’s first episode. https://deadline.com/2023/06/poker-face-rian-johnson-natasha-lyonne-interview-1235383900/#!
But sure, AV. Club, act like a Republican and scream that Steven Soderbergh is coming for everyone’s iphone…It’s also funny how you failed to mention that DEADLINE brought up the whole tired Marvel dead horse you guys STILL love to pound on and Soderbergh defused it in a heartbeat.
I can’t believe i’m going to use the phrase “stuck in a cellphone bubble” with a straight face, but It’s clear directors have never used middle to low budget cell phones. They’re hot garbage, and barely workable. I miss calls all the time, fumble with them switching modes in the middle of the call, and as time goes on and phone versions and carrier updates are forced installed, degrade over time to try and force you to a new phone. Also, it’s not like reception hasn’t gone away as a problem in rural areas. Just write better.
One of the common refrains, that is certainly understandable from a narrative point of view, is that the overwhelming presence of cell phones makes certain types of movies (namely thrillers, horror, and mystery whodunits) nearly untenable without certain contortions and contrivances.
You’re either forced to have the movie take place in the most remote areas possible (while also explaining exactly why the characters are in a place so remote where even a modicum of cell service isn’t available), have the characters somehow lose access to their phones (usually in a way that doesn’t take into account the utter panic most people have if their phone is missing, and their refusal to do anything until they find it, or get a replacement), or there’s a purposeful conspiracy by the antagonist(s) to where they’re able to technologically eliminate cell service, even in a locale where cell service (or Wi-Fi) would be widely available (which usually makes the antagonist so much smarter than the protagonists that you now have a situation where they have to do something stupid, or fall to a deus ex machina, in order to lose/fail).
It goes further when you consider how easily, in real life, the authorities can coordinate with cell phone operators to get phone records and triangulate the most recent pings from the towers (not to mention most people have location services on, which can also be used to track them).
It is kind of fun to watch movies from the 20th century and realize just how fast they would be over if just one or two people had a modern cell phone, much less everybody.
This was the problem with the remake of *The Taking of Pelham 123*. Most of the plot stopped working around 1990.
The thing is about most movies and plays throughout history is that most problems are because the characters are idiots. I mean, Romeo and Juliet. “Oh, no, Juliet isn’t moving; she must be dead! I will kill myself without checking for her pulse, even though the existence of the pulse was known since at least Roman times!”.
Yeah, whichever loser screenwriter came up with Romeo & Juliet really needs to be fired.
Hey, hey, hey: in Billy’s defence, teenagers are fucking stupid, and even more so when they’re got stupid teen romance drama going on.
If just checking for a pulse would work, then surely the whole scheme was unworkable. I haven’t read the actual text in a while, but my impression was that the drug was one that slows the heart, breathing, etc, so the person appears dead.
This also happens in modern movies. Everything in CA:CW would have never happened had the characters made use of cell phones.
Very true.
Not only that, but there’s an issue with how modern-day horror movies try to nullify the power of a cell phone and wireless internet. Instead of going through these convoluted means to get people (many of whom would never otherwise go to these places) in remote areas, or have the villain(s) be tech geniuses, there are so many mundane things they could do that would also work.
Wi-Fi is spotty. People often have their phones on Silent or Vibrate. Cell phone and internet bills don’t get paid. People leave their devices in an Uber or on public transit. Internet outages are distressingly common. All of those things are common occurrences, even in big, metropolitan cities, that automatically choosing to place your characters in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, having them voluntarily relinquish or lose their phones and not care about getting them back, or having the villain(s) organize everything to make cell phone and internet usage a moot point, often comes across as lazy.
Also, how they haven’t (as far as I know) come up with a horror/slasher-type movie that takes place during a music festival/rave is beyond me. It combines all of the elements you need that can, authentically, result in cell phones and the internet being nullified:
1. The main cast are all young and likely impressionable.
2. It’s a music festival, so they’re probably drunk and high (or, at the very least, the general level of sobriety for all participants is significantly lower than normal).
3. It’s a music festival, so cell service is notoriously hit or miss (I know from experience).
4. It’s a music festival, so cell phones (and other devices) get stolen to an insane degree (for example, at EDC Orlando last year, police apprehended 3 people who had 70 stolen phones and another individual who had 104 stolen phones. And to think, that’s just who they caught.
5. Getting transportation to and from the festival can be fraught (especially without a cell phone, or while inebriated)
6. Individuals going missing for a spell isn’t so out of the ordinary as to warrant immediate attention from the authorities.
7. People dress similarly enough, and the crowds are large enough, to make disappearing or reappearing relatively seemless and without drawing undue attention.
8. The crowds are large enough to where it’s unlikely that any person who actively attempts to fit in will stand out.
9. They’re over within a weekend, so a reasonably smart villain doesn’t need to constantly hang around and put themselves at unnecessary risk of discovery.
10. An intentional murder can easily be made to look like an accidental overdose, especially with the prevalence of drug use at these events (and the proliferation of fentanyl and other opiods that are used as cutting agents).
Slasher films get made because they’re cheap. Shooting at a music festival would be pretty massively expensive. That’s a lot of extras.
Extras (particularly non-union ones) are relatively inexpensive. You can also don’t need thousands to replicate a music festival or a rave (a crowd of 500 people, shot at a specific angle, can look absolutely massive).
A basic setup that takes into account a music festival/rave setting can consist of, in essence, three main locations: the festival grounds, where the main characters we follow are staying (either on-site or a nearby hotel), and a nearby outdoor area where the skullduggery can take place. You minimize the need for keeping hundreds or thousands of extras around by shooting all of the large wide and establishing shots early in filming, and intersperse them throughout the movie and change the music overlay to take into account the artists’ sets changing through the festival (and the shots of the artists playing don’t have to take up much time because we’re not actively watching them perform, we just need to associate the visual of the artists with the specific music, which can be done quickly). You can finish all of those shots in less than a week, say your goodbyes to the majority of the extras, and focus back on the narrative.
There’s also the fact that most large crowds in TV and film use CGI (in particular, something called crowd tilling), so you’d make an early determination of how you wanted to handle that, cost-wise, but in the end, even 1000 non-union extras would cost you between $100k-$200k per-day of filming, and as I said, you could finish the wide shots of the entire crowd in a single day (and at absolute max, barring unfortunate weather, an entire week).
The main thing is keeping the number of distinct set locations low. That’s what really drives up the costs (and why many relatively low-budget horror movies keep things spacially condensed).
Sounds like you should write it.
Gotta finish a bunch of other shit first (and go to a few festivals in the interim) haha
Probably half of Seinfeld episodes would be over in 5 minutes if all the characters had cell phones.
*You’re Next* has the clever idea that the villain organised for his scheme to take place in a remote area, and also used a radio jammer to make damn sure nobody could call out.
I really liked you’re next, but it’s emblematic of one of my main points (in fact, two of them).
Cell phones almost necessitate a deeply rural location, and to magnify that, a villain (or villains) who take into account other communication possibilities aside from cell phones. It begs the question, then, if they’re that technologically capable, it’s usually much easier to just kill the people they want to kill than go through the more “horrific” aspects that make for a compelling movie to us as an audience.
In fact, I think cell phones are one of the main reasons why we haven’t had a modern-day Friday the 13th movie. Even if you presume Camp Crystal Lake is in a rural area, how are you going to get teenagers to go to a camp either 1. Without their cell phones to begin with or 2. A camp where cell/Wi-Fi service isn’t available. They’re gonna balk at number 1 from the beginning, and they’re gonna bitch and moan so much about #2 that plenty of parents are gonna either bring the phones or take them away from the camp. Because of that, you’d now have to contort Jason (and whomever is assisting him) into a character that takes into account either a large chunk of the killable cast simply leaving, parents asking too many questions and refusing to leave, or the killable kids being so blindingly stupid that the stakes are too low and you simply lose interest in any possibility of Jason being stopped/killed in a way that doesn’t require an additional layer of bullshit on top of what’s already there.
It’s also why I think we’ve seen a shift from slasher-type horror to more psychological horror that takes into account (and often uses) cell phones and the internet as conduits for the horror itself (Scream is undoubtedly the progenitor of this, even though Scream functions as a subversion of many of the tropes laid out by the foundational slashers of the 70s and 80s). Sure, sometimes it’s incredibly cheesy (like the movie Countdown where people download an app that somehow manages to kill them once the timer strikes 0:00, but then again, The Ring was incredibly successful 20 years prior on a much thinner conceit), but when it’s done successfully and in a way that stokes on real-life concerns without veering into the satirical, parody, and camp (unless that’s the goal, such as with M3GAN), you can have some truly masterful work.
To be fair to *You’re Next*, the villain’s ridiculously bloody plan at least had some logic to it.
You forgot one more thing they do: have the movie/tv show take place before the ubitiquos nature of the cell phone (roughly pre-2000). It’s why so many horror movies are now set in the 90s’.There is something weird and cool about watching old media before cell phones and just going “this entire movie or episode would no longer work because of tech advancement”.
I get that it’s an adjustment, a huge percentage of films (tv shows books plays) ever made depend on the dramatic idea of someone acting on missing, incomplete, or incorrect information at some point in the story.But in real life, people still often do the wrong thing, so he’s basically complaining that he might have to portray realistically imperfect main characters or the manner in which good people often still manage to come to poor decisions even with all the information available , which sounds far more interesting to examine as a reflection of real life than the sitcomesque “oh I misunderstood something or got partial info so now I’m going to do something wrong or stupid and all the drama comes from will it all still work out or will I realize in time.”
“It’s so hard to manufacture drama when everybody can get a hold of everybody all the time.”Is it? I’m thinking of the recent episode of ‘Succession’ where – SPOILER! – Logan is dying on his private plane and the best the kids can do is talk into a cell phone miles away and hope against hope he can hear anything they say. The drama there is exquisite, and it’s facilitated by the fact that there is a connection there via technology, but it’s insufficient in that moment. It would be a very different episode if it were set in a time where there was no way to contact the plane.
Agree completely. Modern comms technology has taken away some convenient plot devices, but it has created new ones at the same time. Other examples than *Succession*: there are several amazing sequences using texting in *I May Destroy You*, all the pagers in the room going off within a few seconds in (iirc) *Sum Of All Fears* (not a great movie, but that scene was very effective), there’s plenty of mobile phone use central to the plot of *Gone Girl*, and *Clueless* used mobile phones to great effect way back in 1995!I like to imagine the members of the Hackney Screenwriters Co-operative at their private bar, getting drunk and complaining about mobile phones, while a large oil painting looms over them of the original Hackney Playwright’s Guild complaining that trains have ruined their ability to keep characters tragically separated.
“I like to imagine the members of the Hackney Screenwriters Co-operative at their private bar, getting drunk and complaining about mobile phones, while a large oil painting looms over them of the original Hackney Playwright’s Guild complaining that trains have ruined their ability to keep characters tragically separated.”
Oh, isn’t it great when someone who has done nothing with their lives feels the need to shit on people who are actually making movies?
Good. You thought of one instance. Obviously the filmmaker is wrong.
There are some serious gymnastics happening by the author here
Maybe the plot problems with cellphones will eventually disappear because young people seem to forget that cellphones can actually be used to make calls besides being used for social media and texting. “I’m sure we’ll be rescued soon; I made a TikTok of me twerking while yelling ‘help!’ that will probably go viral!”
“Steven Soderbergh, of all people”
Why “of all people”?
So he shot a movie USING an iPhone, that somehow makes him a hypocrite for not wanting cellphones IN movies?
Do you GENUINELY not understand the difference?
His reasoning is sound, though.So your previous two parapraphs are just a really dumb take?
“It’s so hard to manufacture drama when everybody can get a hold of everybody all the time. It’s just not as fun as in the old days when the phone would ring, and you didn’t know who was calling. I remember that fondly.”I find it funny that there’s a quote about manufacturing drama in an article where all the drama was manufactured for clicks.
The movies could take place inside my stress dreams where no matter how hard I try, cell phones won’t dial 911.
The thing I hate about cell phones in film and TV is that it’s normalized video chatting and speakerphone in public in the real world. It’s done on film and TV so the viewer can follow the conversation. In the real world, unless you want the people around you to participate, you shouldn’t be doing it in public.