“I’m Surprised When Anybody Likes It”: Soderbergh On His “Girlfriend Experience”

IndieWIRE recently met with Steven Soderbergh and discussed his film’s view of late capitalist society, scrambled versus linear time, and the novel just published by his wife Jules Asner.

indieWIRE: I loved this movie.

Steven Soderbergh: Really!  I’m surprised.

IW: Why?

SS: Well, because it’s very polarizing.  I’m surprised when anybody likes it.  It’s one of those things people either really like or really just want to get away from.

IW: What’s not to like?

SS: A lot of it’s expectations.  What do you want out of a movie to begin with.  And then, what do you want the form to take.  What kind of performances are you interested in.  How do you want the stories to be told.  I did an audience test on “Out of Sight.”  And some guy in the focus group said, I just want to say I hate stories that are told like this, where they don’t go in a straight line - and that became a lightning rod and turned the thing into a free-for-all.

IW: Speaking of non linear, I have questions about what happened.  David, the guy she’s interested in - well, we see the scene of him standing her up towards the middle of the film.

SS: That’s right.  And the last scene we see of the two of them together was actually the first time they met, when he goes to her hotel room for the first time..

IW: And that comes after he stands her up.  Now why would you do that?

SS: The scene of them meeting for the first time has a different weight if you know he’s going to betray her.  It has another layer of poignancy to me because you see her beginning to be engaged by this guy who’s going to, like, emotionally betray her.  I just like the idea of that being the last scene [which is the first scene chronologically].

IW: The film continually reflects its own process.  Who is Chelsea narrating to in her voice over?

SS: This is something we learned in talking to real escorts.  They keep journals about everything.  Technical things, so they don’t wear the same clothes.  They’re current on whatever issues their clients are interested in.  It’s like their homework. All of them told me this is what they do.

IW: Any particular reason you gravitated toward this post-modern self-reflecting structure?

SS: I was trying to just give a sense of what her interior life is like.  That her interior life is not linear.  The idea of the linear narrative is very much a construct.  When you’re walking down the street you’re aware of the fact that you’re walking down the street; you’re thinking about what you did before you left this building; and you’re thinking about going from this building to your apartment.  Your mind is moving in these three realms.  And depending on what’s going on in front of you, you’re shifting the emphasis of each as you walk along. I"m trying to recreate that sense of how our minds are constantly sifting and filtering our experiences and we’re trying to connect stuff.  Because we’re trying to organize this chaos and convince ourselves that there’s some sort of narrative here and we’re not going insane.  And film can recreate that sensation almost better than any other art form.

IW: Better than writing.

SS: Yes, because you don’t have to describe things, you can show them.  It can be very elegant if you do it well.  It also depends on what your goal is with the piece.  I’m less interested in the nuts and bolts of the narrative than in you feeling what it’s like to be Chelsea for a week.  The impulse of the film was more driven by: what’s it like to be this person for six days? than: I want to tell a story that goes from A to B to C.  It’s just an impression of her.