Steven Soderbergh Posts a List of Everything He Watched and Read in 2009

in Film, Literature | November 5th, 2013

Steven_Soderbergh_at_the_66th_Mostra

Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from film­mak­ing ear­li­er this year, Steven Soder­bergh has filled his time with some inter­est­ing endeav­ors. He tweet­ed an entire novel­la, and now he has post­ed a log of all the films and tele­vi­sion shows he watched, and all the books and plays he read, in 2009.

As you will see in the log (below), Soder­bergh spent much of that year in prepa­ra­tion for the sched­uled June shoot of his adap­ta­tion of Michael Lewis’s book Mon­ey­ball, which was abrupt­ly shut down only days before shoot­ing was to begin, due to dis­agree­ments over revi­sions to Steven Zaillian’s screen­play. Soder­bergh read the book for the sec­ond, third, and fourth time, as well as much of the work of base­ball sta­tis­ti­cian Bill James, includ­ing every abstract James pub­lished from 1977 to 1988.

The remain­der of his 2009 read­ing is a mix of non-fic­tion (Mark Harris’s Pic­tures at a Rev­o­lu­tion to Mark Helprin’s Dig­i­tal Bar­barism: A Writer’s Man­i­festo) and works of fic­tion by Nichol­son Bak­er, Don­ald Barthelme, and Thomas Pyn­chon.

More inter­est­ing is his film and tele­vi­sion log, which alter­nates between cur­rent Hol­ly­wood and indie releas­es and clas­sic Hol­ly­wood titles. The list should be no sur­prise com­ing from a film­mak­er repeat­ed­ly called a styl­is­tic chameleon. Should we be sur­prised he fol­lows a Ken Rus­sell phase with The Lone Ranger? Or that he’s just like us and binge-watch­es Break­ing Bad?

The log also sheds light on the post-pro­duc­tion process of two of his films released in 2009, The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence and The Infor­mant, the for­mer viewed three times, the lat­ter four. Was his repeat­ed view­ing of Being There inspi­ra­tion? Or is it sim­ply one of his favorite films?

This is not the first time Soder­bergh revealed his view­ing log. In 2011, he gave Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­son his 2010 log, which includ­ed twen­ty view­ings of his film Hay­wire and sev­er­al Raiders of the Lost Ark, in black and white.

See the full 2009 list below.

SEEN, READ 2009

All caps: MOVIE
All caps, star: TV SERIES*
All caps, ital­ics: BOOK
Quo­ta­tion marks: “Play”

1/1/09 VALKRYIE, THE GODFATHER

1/4/09 REMAINDER, Tom McCarthy

1/7/09 BURN AFTER READING

1/10/09 MADE IN USA, STATE AND MAIN

1/13/09 BEING THERE

1/14/09 THE INFORMANT, THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE

1/15/09 ARSENALS OF FOLLY, Richard Rhodes

1/24/09 THE GRAND, JAWS

1/25/09 THE HOT ROCK

1/27/09 SOLITARY MAN

1/30/09 THE APARTMENT, MONEYBALL (2) Michael Lewis

2/3/09 THE INFORMANT

2/6/09 “The Removal­ists”

2/7/09 “The War of the Ros­es, Part One”, THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE

2/8/09 THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW, Robert Hugh­es, FIVE EASY PIECES

2/9/09 SOLITARY MAN

2/11/09 MONEYBALL (3)

2/11/09 “The Talk­ing Cure”, Christo­pher Hamp­ton

2/14/09 HISTORICAL BASEBALL ABSTRACT, Bill James. CORALINE, W., REBECCA.

2/15/09 FROZEN RIVER, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO COOPERSTOWN, Bill James.

2/18/09 BEING THERE

2/20/09 THE OSCAR

2/21/09 PANIC ROOM, THE PARALLAX VIEW

2/22/09 THE BRIDE WORE BLACK

2/23/09 1977, ’78, ’79 BASEBALL ABSTRACT, Bill James.

2/23/09 1980 BASEBALL ABSTRACT, Bill James.

2/26/09 1981 BASEBALL ABSTRACT, Bill James.

2/26/09 PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION, Mark Har­ris.

2/27/09 REDS (part one)

2/25/09 thru 2/29/09 1982, ’83, ’84, ’85 BASEBALL ABSTRACT, Bill James.

3/01/09 1986, ’87, ’88 BASEBALL ABSTRACT, Bill James.

3/02/09 EUROPA

3/04/09 FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

3/06/09 THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH

3/07/09 ELECTION, THE VERDICT

3/08/09 NO WAY OUT

3/09/09 MONEYBALL (4), Michael Lewis

3/10/09 THE INFORMANT, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, THE INFORMANT

3/12/09 BREAKING BAD* (pilot)

3/15/09 BREAKING BAD* (2 episodes)

3/16/09 BREAKING BAD* (2 episodes)

3/17/09 BREAKING BAD* (2 episodes)

3/18/09 IL DIVO, MISSISSIPPI MERMAID

3/19/09 THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (’68)

3/20/09 DUPLICITY, GOMORRAH

3/21/09 APPETITE FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION, Steve Knop­per

3/22/09 GATTACA

3/26/09 THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD, Elyn Saks, BREAKING BAD* (1 episode)

3/27/09 AGATHA, MADEMOISELLE, BREAKING BAD* (2 episodes)

3/29/09 WAS CLARA SCHUMANN A FAG HAG?, David Watkin, POINT BLANK, BREAKING BAD* (2 episodes)

3/30/09 LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

3/31/09 FORBIDDEN PLANET

4/02/09 THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

4/05/09 BREAKING BAD* (1 episode), NEXT STOP GREENWICH VILLAGE

4/06/09 AMERICAN GRAFFITI

4/10/09 HOUSE OF GAMES

4/11/09 CARNAL KNOWLEDGE

4/12/09 BREAKING BAD* (1 episode)

4/15/09 ANIMAL SPIRITS; HOW HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY DRIVES THE ECONOMY, AND WHY IT MATTERS FOR GLOBAL CAPITALISM, George A. Akerlof & Robert Shiller

4/17/09 ROCKNROLLA

4/18/09 SEXY BEAST

4/19/09 THE FORTUNE, THIS IS WATER, David Fos­ter Wal­lace, BREAKING BAD* (1 episode)

4/21/09 GOLDFINGER

4/23/09 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

4/24/09 BREAKING BAD* (1 episode)

5/01/09 THE RACE CARD, Richard Thomp­son Ford

5/02/09 WHERE THE DEAD LAY, David Levien, CONVERSATIONS WITH MARLON BRANDO, Lawrence Gro­bel.

5/03/09 STRAW; FINDING MY WAY, Dar­ryl Straw­ber­ry, BREAKING BAD* (1 episode)

5/06/08 THE RIDICULOUS RACE, Steve Hely & Vali Chan­drasekaran.

5/08/09 CONVERSATIONS WITH ROBERT EVANS, Lawrence Gro­bel

5/09/09 SHAMPOO, THE FRENCH LIEUTTENANT’S WOMAN

5/11/09 COLUMBINE, Dave Cullen

5/14/09 BREAKING BAD* (1 episode), JAWS

5/16/09 THE BROTHERS BLOOM

5/18/09 BREAKING BAD* (1 episode), TAKEN, ERASERHEAD

5/20/09 40 STORIES, Don­ald Barthelme

5/24/09 DIGITAL BARBARISM, Mark Hel­prin, BREAKING BAD* (1 episode), TRANSSIBERIAN

5/31/09 THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, DRAG ME TO HELL, BREAKING BAD* (1 episode)

6/02/09 THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR, Andrew Keen

6/04/09 3 NIGHTS IN AUGUST, Buzz Bissinger

6/06/09 THE HANGOVER, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE

6/21/09 MOON

6/23/09 THE FORTUNE COOKIE

6/26/09 THE HURT LOCKER, BARRY LYNDON

6/27/09 THE GRADUATE

6/28/09 BEING THERE

6/29/09 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

7/01/09 SUNSET BOULEVARD

7/02/09 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

7/03/09 PUBLIC ENEMIES

7/04/09 THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE

7/07/09 TWO LOVERS

7/08/09 THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON, THE FAILURE, James Greer.

7/09/09 HUMAN SMOKE, Nichol­son Bak­er

7/10/09 SLAP SHOT

7/11/09 BRUNO

7/12/09 THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, PERSONA, THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (’68), ELGAR*, THE DEBUSSY FILM*, PYGMY, Chuck Palah­niuk

7/14/09 ALWAYS ON SUNDAY*, ISADORA: THE BIGGEST DANCER IN THE WORLD*

7/15/09 DANTE’S INFERNO*, ALTERED STATES

7/16/09 THE LONE RANGER

7/17/09 THE LONE RANGER AND THE CITY OF LOST GOLD

7/18/09 GET SHORTY

7/26/09 ORPHAN, REPULSION

7/27/09 THE HOSPITAL

7/30/09 THE COLLECTOR (’65)

7/31/09 ZODIAC, SONG OF SUMMER*, MUSICOPHILIA, Oliv­er Sacks

8/01/09 A PERFECT MURDER

8/02/09 VOX, NIchol­son Bak­er, CACHE

8/03/09 ADVISE AND CONSENT

8/05/09 THE LONG GOODBYE

8/06/09 THE RED SHOES

8/08/09 INHERENT VICE, Thomas Pyn­chon, UNMAN, WITTERING, AND ZIGO, ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE, THE ASCENT OF MONEY*, THE SHINING

8/13/09 THIEVES LIKE US, REDS (part two)

8/15/09 CHINATOWN, CITIZEN RUTH

8/16/09 DISTRICT 9, MADE MEN* (1 episode)

Justin Alvarez is the dig­i­tal direc­tor of The Paris Review. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Guer­ni­ca, and Flatmancrooked’s Slim Vol­ume of Con­tem­po­rary Poet­ics. Fol­low him at @Alvarez_Justin.

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Biblioburro: Library on a Donkey

in Books, Education | August 25th, 2011

For more than a decade, Luis Sori­ano, a pri­ma­ry school teacher, has trav­eled the rugged ter­rain of Colom­bia by don­key, deliv­er­ing books to chil­dren in hun­dreds of rur­al vil­lages. The project, pow­ered by his two don­keys Alfa and Beto, goes by the name “Bib­liobur­ro.” And it seeks to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy in areas where access to books is not always a giv­en. You can find more infor­ma­tion and pic­tures on the home­page of the Bib­liobur­ro project and also make a small dona­tion. A video update shows what these dona­tions are actu­al­ly used for.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: The clip above is part of a 60-minute PBS doc­u­men­tary avail­able in full here. If you are a teacher and want to work with the film in class, you will appre­ci­ate this relat­ed les­son plan. Bib­liobur­ro has even been cov­ered by The New York Times, and there is now a sim­i­lar project under­way in Ethiopia.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Vladimir Nabokov Marvels Over Different “Lolita” Book Covers

in Books, Literature | May 2nd, 2011

In this short excerpt from a TV pro­gram called “USA: The Nov­el,” Vladimir Nabokov com­ments on dif­fer­ent for­eign edi­tions of his nov­el Loli­ta. The indi­vid­ual cov­ers he dis­cuss­es are list­ed here; the full pro­gram is avail­able here, and it con­tains some mem­o­rable quotes by the author (from chap­ter 1: “Mr Nabokov, would you tell us why it is that you detest Dr. Freud?” — “I think he’s crude, I think he’s medieval, and I don’t want an elder­ly gen­tle­man from Vien­na with an umbrel­la inflict­ing his dreams upon me. I don’t have the dreams that he dis­cuss­es in his books, I don’t see umbrel­las in my dreams or bal­loons.”).

Find­ing a pub­lish­er for Loli­ta proved to be rather dif­fi­cult for Nabokov. A Decem­ber 1953 review of the man­u­script said: “It is over­whelm­ing­ly nau­se­at­ing, even to an enlight­ened Freudi­an. To the pub­lic, it will be revolt­ing. It will not sell, and will do immea­sur­able harm to a grow­ing rep­u­ta­tion. […] I rec­om­mend that it be buried under a stone for a thou­sand years.” (Get more infor­ma­tion at Stan­ford’s “The Book Haven”) Loli­ta was first pub­lished in 1955 (orig­i­nal cov­er here) and has since been trans­lat­ed into many lan­guages with a wide vari­ety of cov­er designs (find a good col­lec­tion at this site).

Short­ly after Loli­ta’s pub­li­ca­tion, Nabokov dis­cussed his nov­el on the CBC pro­gram “Close Up”: see part one and part two.

Bonus: Lit­tle known detail — Nabokov held the post of cura­tor of lep­i­doptera at Har­vard’s Muse­um of Com­par­a­tive Zool­o­gy. He col­lect­ed many but­ter­flies and devel­oped a the­o­ry of but­ter­fly migra­tion which dis­put­ed all pre­vi­ous the­o­ries and was­n’t tak­en seri­ous­ly by biol­o­gists then. Only recent­ly did genet­ic stud­ies vin­di­cate his once bold the­o­ry. Some of Nabokov’s beau­ti­ful draw­ings of the but­ter­flies he stud­ied can be enjoyed cour­tesy of Fla­vor­wire.

You can find this video housed in our col­lec­tion of 235 Cul­tur­al Icons.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Film

in Film, Literature | March 28th, 2011

Due to its styl­is­tic and lin­guis­tic com­plex­i­ty, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake ranks among the most dif­fi­cult works of fic­tion. And that is why vir­tu­al­ly no film­mak­er has ever tried to adapt Joyce’s final work for the screen. But after Mary Man­ning Howe adapt­ed pas­sages from the book for the stage (lis­ten to her read­ing from Finnegans Wake here), Amer­i­can ani­ma­tor Mary Ellen Bute accept­ed the chal­lenge and turned Man­ning’s play into a film.

Sad­ly, Mary Ellen Bute’s short films are almost for­got­ten today, but from the 1930s to 1950s her abstract musi­cal shorts were known to a wide audi­ence. Don’t miss her first col­or film from 1938.

Between 1965 and 1967, Bute cre­at­ed her last film, and only fea­ture film, Pas­sages from Finnegans Wake. The movie was screened at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and named Best Debut of the Year (1965). The video above shows only the open­ing sequence, but the whole film can be enjoyed online cour­tesy of UbuWeb.

Bonus: You can read Roger Ebert’s 1968 review of Bute’s film here. He admits that he did­n’t enjoy it too much, but con­cedes this may have been because he had­n’t actu­al­ly read the book.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Disney Kindle Commando Sunday is Here!

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Literature | December 27th, 2009

kindledisneyToday’s free sto­ry: When They Were Call­ing You in for Din­ner (lis­ten here) or read it in the Charles Riv­er Review [To down­load the sto­ry and lis­ten on your MP3 play­er, just right-click and “save file as…”]

Dear OC read­ers,

About a week ago, I post­ed here about my Pub­lish­ing Exper­i­ment Take 1. I spoke of the need for authors (Yes, Authors!) to make exper­i­ments in new media and pub­lish­ing. Well, now’s the time to put my fic­tion where my mouth is. Today I’m launch­ing my col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, A Long Way from Dis­ney, on Ama­zon’s Kin­dle plat­form at the price of $.99.

Direct link to buy A Long Way from Dis­ney on Ama­zon.

Please vis­it SethHarwood.com/kindle for more info. You can buy the book if you have 1) A Kin­dle 2) an iPhone/iPod Touch or 3) Any PC com­put­er!

Easy! See you soon with more free sto­ries and results from this exper­i­ment.

PS: If you’d like to hear more free sto­ries like this, you can check out new posts today at CrimeWAV.com and SethHarwood.com. You can also get the sto­ries direct­ly from iTunes.

Seth Har­wood pod­casts his ideas on the pub­lish­ing indus­try and his fic­tion for free at sethharwood.com. He will be teach­ing an online course (The Essen­tial Art: Mak­ing Movies in Your Reader’s Mind) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies start­ing in Jan­u­ary. His first nov­el, JACK WAKES UP, is in stores now.

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In The Nick of Time: Holiday Book Sampler!

in Books, e-books, Literature | December 17th, 2009

This hol­i­day sea­son, I’m hap­py to have teamed up with eleven fab­u­lous authors in offer­ing a hol­i­day sam­pler just for book lovers! Here you’ll find excerpts of a dozen new nov­els and non­fic­tion books by these New York Times best­selling authors, suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs, and tal­ent­ed sto­ry­tellers. The excerpts can all be found in this nice PDF. Includ­ed you will find:

DOWNLOAD THE IN THE NICK OF TIME! HOLIDAY SAMPLER

Spot a great gift oppor­tu­ni­ty? Order from online retail­ers direct­ly from the PDF, or print the order form at the end of the doc­u­ment and present it to your local book­seller. Help­ful staff will find what you’re look­ing for.

Dan Note: Check out Seth’s upcom­ing online writ­ing course at Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. The Essen­tial Art: Mak­ing Movies in Your Read­er’s Mind

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