Producer Gregory Jacobs has noted that new movie ‘Side Effects’ is perhaps the first thriller set in this milieu. “I hadn’t seen anybody do something about the drug industry or the prevalence of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication in our society,” he says. “At the same time, it’s just such an entertaining thriller.”

As his script continued to evolve, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns turned to a pair of trusted collaborators: Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. “Lorenzo hired me to write ‘The Informant!’ for Warner Bros. at a time when I wasn’t qualified to lead a tour at Warner Bros.,” says Burns. “But he trusted me and believed in me. He had just started his production company, so I called him first. He was there when the movie had no home. He was open to casting ideas. This is a man who has made some giant movies, but he just loves filmmaking and he wants to make a lot of different kinds of movies.”

Di Bonaventura threw his full support behind the project. “I loved the idea of making an authentic thriller,” he says. “Hollywood has sort of abandoned the genre, so this is somewhat different in the marketplace. We developed it together. Scott wrote I don’t know how many drafts, but he always stayed true to his original vision. It was a long road, but a fun one.”

Over the period he was writing ‘Side Effects’, Burns worked with Soderbergh on ‘The Informant!’ and ‘Contagion’, as well as ‘PU-239’, which Burns wrote and directed, and Soderbergh executive produced. He shared the script with Soderbergh as it developed and the director closely followed his progress.

“Scott is very adept at identifying interesting issues and wrapping them in a commercial skin,” Soderbergh says. “I like movies that try to do more than one thing at a time. Like ‘Contagion’, ‘Side Effects’ can be described as a thriller, but both have an undercurrent of reality that reflects the contemporary world. If you can do that gracefully, the audience always appreciates it.”

Soderbergh says Burns is also very good at what he calls the “mathematics of a story.” “How many elements need to be in play? How you can play off the audience’s expectations? How do you navigate your way around clichés? He’s very good at the architecture, as well as creating intriguing characters and writing great dialogue.”

Burns had always planned to direct ‘Side Effects’ himself, but when Soderbergh asked if he could direct, it didn’t take the screenwriter long to agree. “Steven had a window and ‘Side Effects’ was the film he was most interested in making,” Burns recalls. “We had a very similar take on the material. It was hard to make an argument for me doing it, other than my ego, which is not a great place from which to make artistic decisions. I thought, if there were two minutes left in the game and either I could play quarterback or Drew Brees could play quarterback, what would be better for the team?”

Di Bonaventura also gave a thumbs up to the change in plans. “Steven brings a singular perspective to whatever he does,” the producer says. “He makes each movie feel unique, with its own set of strengths. And his sets are great to work on. They’re really professionally run and surprisingly quiet, which gives actors the room to do what they do.”

Burns and Soderbergh had already proven themselves a winning team on ‘The Informant!’ and ‘Contagion’, adds the producer. “They are a good match. Steven’s films always include some kind of social commentary. This story is built on the underlying notion that we don’t really know what these medications are doing to us, but our society has come to rely on them. We leave it to the viewer to decide if it’s good or bad in the end.”

That’s just one of the questions audiences are confronted with in ‘Side Effects’, a tightly plotted thriller rife with moral ambiguity and human frailty. “I believe that what draws you into a thriller is humanity,” says Burns. “You get twisted around as much by your own heart and your own perception as by the plot mechanics. It’s great to pull the rug out from people and I think that’s a really fun thing that can happen in a movie theater. But what Steven and I wanted, beyond that, was for audiences to have the rug pulled out from under them in terms of their own experiences.”

The movie is intended to pack a one-two punch that will first entertain and then spark a discussion. “We hope that the audience will come out of the theater saying, I didn’t see that coming,” says di Bonaventura. “And then we hope they’ll realize how deeply the issue of pharmaceuticals has permeated our society.”

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Los Angeles, U.S.A. - The 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival will screen a diverse slate of nearly 200 feature films, short films, and music videos, representing more than 30 countries, along with signature programs such as the Filmmaker Retreat, Poolside Chats, Coffee Talks, music events and more. Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love will be Opening the Night as Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild were selected for the Galas section.

Returning to downtown Los Angeles and headquartered at L.A. LIVE for a third year, the Festival will run from June 14 to June 24 2012. Now in its eighteenth year, the Festival is widely recognized as a world-class event, showcasing the best in new American and international cinema, and is produced by Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that also produces the Spirit Awards.

“There is nothing more satisfying than shining a spotlight on so many unique films from both seasoned and emerging filmmakers. Come experience the wonder of Beasts of the Southern Wild, Let Call Me Kuchu Break your Heart and Call you to Action, or simply be entertained by Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike,” said Festival Director Stephanie Allain.

“These are just a few of the diverse stories that bring us into new worlds or put a fresh twist on familiar ones. ‘Exclusively for Everyone’ isn’t just a tag line. It’s an invitation to experience both the specific and the universal, and hopefully come away entertained and enlightened. Enjoy!”

“We’ve got a marvelous mix this year that reflects the incredible diversity of world cinema and of Los Angeles itself. I’m excited to have such giants as Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh and Andre Techine alongside some amazing first-time filmmakers whose names you’ll be hearing a lot in the future. We want to offer festival-goers stories and visions they haven’t seen before and a chance to meet the most creative minds working in movies.

It’s going to be a fun and mind-expanding ten days,” said Festival Artistic Director David Ansen. The Festival will end its festivities with the World Premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures’ Magic Mike, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Reid Carolin. Set in the world of male strippers, the dramatic comedy follows Mike (Tatum) as he takes a young dancer called The Kid (Pettyfer) under his wing and schools him in the fine arts of partying, picking up women, and making easy money. Warner Bros. Pictures will release the film nationwide on June 29, 2012.

Dreamworks Pictures’ People Like Us will have its World Premiere amongst the Summer Showcase screenings. The film is directed by Alex Kurtzman, written by Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and Jody Lambert. In a story inspired by true events, Sam (Pine), a twenty-something, fast-talking salesman, is tasked with fulfilling his estranged father’s last wishes – delivering an inheritance to a sister he never knew he had. Dreamworks Pictures will release the film on June 29, 2012.

As part of the Los Angeles Film Festival’s free outdoor programming, there will be a Dirty Dancing Dance-A-Long at California Plaza on June 22 at 7pm to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film. Produced in cooperation with Dance Camera West and Grand Performances, there will be free salsa lessons by Contra-Tiempo, a screening of the film with special guests and a shadow cast consisting of performers from local dance companies to dance on stage below the screening during key scenes.

Image Courtesy of   To Rome With Love

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With his latest thriller, Haywire, Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh once again tackles a popular movie genre, adding elements that subtly turn the audience’s expectations on their heads. Combining intrigue and suspense, complex characters and glamorous international settings with bone-crunching action, real-world special ops techniques and a charismatic female hero, the director has reinvented the espionage thriller.

“I am a fan of the early James Bond films,” says Soderbergh. “From Russia With Love may be my favorite. In those movies, you get to know who the characters are instead of just what they do. In more recent espionage-action films, there isn’t a lot of time spent developing the supporting characters. I wanted to revisit the early Bond films. Their ratio of story to action is very much like ours.”

Soderbergh’s longtime filmmaking partner, producer Gregory Jacobs, knew that the director had been interested in exploring the genre for some time. “The idea had a lot of appeal for him,” says Jacobs. “He had always wanted to make a true action movie. We’d been thinking about it for a while when we contacted Lem Dobbs, who had written two films, The Limey and Kafka, for us in the past.”

The resulting script is less a tribute to previous films than a complete reworking with a unique twist typical of Soderbergh. “I always wondered why the main character in these films had to be a guy,” he says. “I find there’s an added level of drama and conflict whenever you have a female protagonist.

There’s always the additional layer of operating in a world run by men. It’s another wall that they have to go through. In addition to this being a story about espionage and covert operatives, it’s also about the relationships our lead character has with the various male characters and how she functions in a male-dominated world.”

Soderbergh points out that there is nothing overtly feminist in the script. “It’s rarely brought up that Mallory Kane is a woman. It’s just a fact, and people make assumptions about her that turn out not to be true.” The director likes to describe the film as a Pam Grier movie made by Alfred Hitchcock. Character development was particularly important to him as he worked with Dobbs to flesh out Kane, a black-ops specialist working for a private security contractor. “I wanted to layer the character a little bit,” he says.

“For example, there’s a scene in which she sucks out the contents of her partner’s phone while he’s out of the room. At that point, it is unprovoked. He hasn’t done anything to make her suspicious, but I felt that it was something the character would do. “It adds a layer of guilt,” he continues. “And I think the reason Hitchcock movies are still watchable is not just because of his technique, but because, at their core, they are all about guilt.

There is always somebody at the center of the movie that has something they don’t want known. I wanted to have some of that so she wasn’t just a ‘goody-goody’ the whole way through. As it turns out, that decision probably saved her life. But when she does it, you’re wondering why.”

Soderbergh found his muse for this film in an unexpected venue. He had seen mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano fight, and became intrigued by the idea of featuring her in a movie. A thrilling and demanding combination of fighting styles including Muay Thai, Karate, Jiu Jitsu, Judo, wrestling, boxing, Sambo, kickboxing and Kung Fu, mixed martial arts gave Carano the ability to perform the kind of deadly hand-to-hand combat the director envisioned for his film.

“I knew there had to be a woman other than Angelina Jolie who could run around with a gun,” he says. “After I saw a couple of Gina’s fights, I viewed some interviews with her that showed her as a really genuine, very grounded person. It occurred to me that I could combine my desire to make a realistic espionage film with her expertise. But first I had to meet with her and see whether or not it would appeal to her.”

After an initial meeting, the filmmakers began to tailor the part of Mallory Kane for Carano. “We knew she’d be able do most of her own stunts,” says Jacobs. “That was key, because Steven was adamant about not wanting to do a lot of wire work. He didn’t want the audience to feel the action elements were so acrobatic or dangerous that a human couldn’t possibly be doing them. The wonderful thing about filming with Gina was that there were no special effects in the fights. Everything was real.”

That fact was critical to Soderbergh’s vision of the film as a realistic adventure, which also meant he eschewed the kind of futuristic technology that is a staple of many films in the genre. “In many ways, we wanted to go against the grain of the way action is usually shot,” he says.

“I really wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had people who really could perform these actions and not be indulging in the kind of trickery that is sometimes necessary in a movie. I didn’t want anybody doing anything that wasn’t physically possible. And I didn’t want to rely on technology that didn’t exist.”

“If two people are in a room fighting, it has to end at a certain point because you’ll run out of things that are plausible,” he says. “This was my take on that kind of movie. Haywire is more of a drama with action in it than it is a wall-to-wall action movie.”

Image Courtesy of   https://www.facebook.com/haywiremovie

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It’s been more than two years since the film about the life of Liberace was announced but now there should be official movement in the production. Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh will direct Michael Douglas and Matt Damon as they explore the stormy relationship between the legendary entertainer and his younger lover, Scott Thorson.

Douglas will play Liberace and Damon Scott Thorson while Emmy Award winning producer Jerry Weintraub will help get this movie to the screen on HBO.

The film Behind the Candelabra was announced by Len Amato, the president of HBO Films last week. With Soderberg, who we know from Contagion, Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven, comes a script by Oscar nominee Richard Lagravenese (Water for Elephants) and producers Gregory Jacobs (Contagion, The Informant!) and Susan Ekins (Ocean’s Eleven, The Karate Kid series) while Weintraub will be the executive producer.

“This is a story that’s going to surprise a lot of people,” said Amato in a press release. “It’s funny, heartbreaking and always fascinating, and we are delighted that Jerry and Steven brought the film to HBO. With Steven at the helm, directing such accomplished actors as Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, this is a dream project for us.”

Weintraub continues “I’ve wanted to make a film about Liberace for a very long time, and after the amazing experience I had with HBO on ‘His Way,’ I knew that they were absolutely the right place for this movie. I am thrilled that we have the incomparable Michael Douglas to inhabit the role of Liberace, as well as the exceptional Matt Damon to play the pivotal part of Scott Thorson.

Putting these two fine actors in the creative hands of Steven Soderbergh – it doesn’t get better than that!” It has come a surprise to many that the behind-the-scenes feature will hit TV rather than cinemas. The flamboyant Liberace made a name for himself as the highest paid entertainer in the world between the 1950s and 1970s, according to Wikipedia.com

“From the inception of this project, we’ve had two priorities: getting it right creatively, and getting as many people as possible to see it,” says Soderbergh. “HBO’s fearless approach to original programming and their unparalleled ability to pull in viewers make them the perfect fit for us. Apart from my hair growing back, I couldn’t be happier.”

Behind The Candelabra will start production in 2012, with locations in Los Angeles, Palm Springs and of course, Las Vegas.

Peter Albrektsen / Shutterstock.com

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