Steven Soderbergh Talks John Lennon Undertaking, Expanded Awards Season

Steven Soderbergh has revealed he’s near ending his untitled characteristic documentary constructed round John Lennon’s remaining interview which befell simply hours earlier than the music legend was shot useless outdoors his New York condominium in 1980.

“It’s almost done,” he advised a press convention on the Doha Film Festival which he’s attending alongside Michael Coel for the MENA premiere of The Christophers.

“I’m excited about it. It’s an incredible historical document, this interview, and so the job is to obviously present it in such a way that enhances the interview and doesn’t sort of distract from it. I’m not looking to reinvent the form. I’m just hoping to create a film that gets as many people to hear what John and Yoko had to say on that afternoon before he was killed as possible,” he continued.

“They were both so free in their discussion as someone who’s been interviewed many times, I was surprised at how open and excited they were to talk. You would think they’d never been interviewed before… I want that to come across to the audience, and everything that they said 45 years ago is not just relevant today. It’s possibly even more relevant in terms of relationships, politics, how we treat each other, how systems work on the individual and above all, the importance of love in in our daily life and our work.”

Deadline first revealed that Soderbergh was prepping the documentary again in April. EPs on the mission embody Soderbergh, Michael Sugar and David Hillman of Sugar23, and Nancy Saslow and David Hudson of Mishpookah Entertainment Group.

Soderbergh – who received the Best Director Academy Award for Traffic in 2001, a 12 months through which he was additionally nominated in the identical class for Erin Brockovich – was additionally requested about his emotions concerning the enlargement of the awards season in recent times.

“I think it’s appropriate to occasionally acknowledge the work of your colleagues and your peers. What I’ve witnessed over the course of my career is the expansion of this acknowledgement from one evening into six months of activity. It’s a season that lasts longer than almost any season in nature,” he mentioned.

Soderbergh went on to recommend that the movies up for consideration had been “obscured” by the act of placing them ahead for awards.

“The reasons why we make the work become subsumed in a conversation about strategy… I don’t think it’s going away. It’s a little bit like somebody coming to you every two weeks and saying, ‘It’s my birthday’. It loses some of its luster… there seem to be so many awards,” he mentioned.

“It’s been 25 years since Traffic and Erin Brockovich were at the Oscars, so I’ve been very removed from it for a long time. I still watch the show, but I have to say, when I see what the people campaigning and the people who are nominated have to go through, it doesn’t look very fun.”