Steven Soderbergh is perhaps more prolific in TV than he ever was making movies. This year alone, including Magic Mike XXL, we will get somewhere around 12 hours of Soderbergh-directed or -shot content, and compare that to his run of 4 films, totaling 9 hours, during his “scrambling to retirement” period of 2011-2013. It makes sense; as I said here, Soderbergh is the kind of guy who likes to work fast, work often, and work under some kind of restraints, so it’s no shocker he took up TV as a hobby alongside painting and reediting famous movies. And thus far, that TV work, The Knick, has been utterly fucking fantastic, the best showcase for Soderbergh’s directorial talents to come along since… fuck, Che? Even when the writing gets a little slack (and that’s primarily in the first few episodes), his direction is never anything less than crazypants amazing (I live for the shot that follows Nurse Elkins as she retrieves medicine for a patient, a patient who dies by the time the camera and Elkins reenter the room). The news that Soderbergh has another project in the pipeline would always be welcome news, but the news that he’s working on another TV show (or movie) is particularly encouraging. And oh, what a TV show (or movie) he has signed onto direct.
His next project will see him return to HBO (as opposed to its bastard offspring, Cinemax), the network that broadcast his Behind the Candelabra (which you should really watch if you haven’t already) and his previous foray into television, K Street, in 2013 and 2003, respectively. The project will be called Mosaic, and it will star Sharon Stone and possibly Garrett Hedlund, and oh, it’s a “choose your own adventure” type thing. Soderbergh will shoot multiple variations on the story (which is being kept under wraps), and the viewing audience will be the ones to decide which paths the story takes. These are the only details known about it thus far. Obviously, the most notable ancestors for this kind of technique are the Choose Your Own Adventure books and, to a certain extent (without the audience participation angle), Clue (I hope this means we’ll get to see Sharon Stone do the “flames, flames on the side of my face” monologue), but its closest relative is actually the 1995 film Mr. Payback, where audiences also got the power to decide the film’s story. Before you wonder about how I knew this, I literally only know about it because Siskel & Ebert tore it to shreds.
Any Soderbergh is good Soderbergh, but this sounds like superior Soderbergh, with him literally working at the whims of the viewing audience. This is my reaction, pretty much verbatim:
(Now that I’ve really got your attention, The Knick season 2 premieres on October 16. Watch it. If you don’t get Cinemax, leach off someone else’s MAX Go account. If you don’t know anyone who has Cinemax, torrent that shit. If you haven’t watched the first season yet, it’s on HBO Go for the time being and available on DVD and Blu-Ray. You will not be disappointed. If you are disappointed, then we can no longer maintain this friendship.)
