The Academy Award®-winning director Steven Soderbergh is now one of the most bankable moviemakers in Hollywood. Starting with Out Of Sight (1998) starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, Soderbergh has gone from one high-profile, highly acclaimed movie to another; The Limey (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000), Ocean's Eleven (2001), and Solaris (2002). However, anyone purchasing or renting Criterion's new DVD of Soderbergh's Schizopolis (1996) expecting more of the same is in for a surprise.
Soderbergh began his career winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for sex, lies, and videotape (1989), a low-budget feature he shot in his hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The movie went on to become an art-house sensation, introducing audiences not only to Soderbergh, but also to actors Andie MacDowell and Laura San Giacomo. After that success, however, every film Soderbergh made seemed to find a smaller audience than the last. While he was in Houston shooting The Underneath (1995), Soderbergh realized he had lost all the joy he had felt creating his earliest movies.
The answer was Schizopolis. Gathering a small crew of his closest friends around him and with a budget of only $250,000, Soderbergh wrote, directed, shot and starred in this very bizarre comedy. The style is most similar to the wacky farces of the late 1960's and early 1970's; a let's-throw-everything-at-the-screen-and-see-if-anyone-laughs approach. Soderbergh plays Fletcher Munson, speechwriter for the L. Ron Hubbard-like T. Azimuth Schwitters, head of the "Eventualism" movement. Halfway through the movie, he becomes a dentist, Dr. Jeffrey Korchek, by donning glasses and a tracksuit, and has an affair with his own wife (Betsy Brantley, then Mrs. Soderbergh). Meanwhile, a bug exterminator (David Jensen) becomes an action-film hero in a plot with only the slightest connection to the main story. Newscasters read ridiculous stories. Couples speak using generic phrases ("Generic greeting!" "Generic greeting returned!") or by having one speak English while the other responds in Japanese.
On one of the two commentary tracks that accompanies this DVD, crew and cast members tell how much fun Schizopolis was to make and how they could hardly keep from cracking up during filming. That humor, however, did not carry over to the audience at the Cannes Film Festival where the movie premiered. There were numerous walkouts, critics slammed the movie as a self-indulgent student film, and offers to distribute the movie quickly dried up.
Soderbergh did get what he wanted out of Schizopolis, a re-juicing of his creative batteries that led to his later string of successes. As for the movie's many critics, they receive their answer from Soderbergh in another commentary track on this DVD in which he interviews himself, separate Soderberghs in the left and right channel; an interview that is funnier in places than the main movie. Playing the full-of-himself auteur to the hilt, he divides all cinema into pre- and post-Schizopolis and declares that critics conspire to pan some of his movies just to keep from discouraging other filmmakers by admitting that everything he makes is a work of genius.
Most viewers will probably find Schizopolis only intermittently funny and the targets of its satire (couples have trouble communicating, self-help leaders can sometimes be charlatans) are rather easy. For those who do find this material hilarious, Criterion has done its usual wonderful job of presentation. The movie is letterboxed and in 16 X 9 formats with a trailer, the above-mentioned two commentary tracks and outtakes. Now that Soderbergh has become one of America's greatest directors, his earlier works are overdue such re-releases on DVD for fans to watch and study.
For more information about Schizopolis, visit Criterion Collection. To order Schizopolis, go to TCM Shopping.
by Brian Cady
