Sex, Lies and Good, Clear Writing

"The Believer" magazine was started by a few people in the orbit of hip-yet-earnest writer Dave Eggers, who made his mark in 2000 with his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The August issue of "The Believer" features a rambling, "we're having more fun doing this than you'll have reading this" interview with Steven Soderbergh. Some excerpts:

When asked how much Bubble cost: "One point six million. Because I paid people. There's a tipping point. If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right now for ten grand, if you have an idea. That's the trick."

When asked what movies he has hated, Soderbergh demurs, and explains: "There's a difference between failures and things that are bad. I'd like to think that I've made movies that were failures, creatively and otherwise."

When asked about filmmaking: "The hardest thing in the world is to be good and clear when creating anything. It's the hardest thing in the world. It's really easy to be obscure and elliptical and so fucking hard to be good and clear. It breaks people. Because you don't often get encouragement to do that, to be good and clear."

The full interview is here.