Getting Away With It: Or - Further Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw by Steven Soderbergh

by Steven Soderbergh

Getting Away with It is a hilarious, insightful conversation between two visionary directors, Steven Soderbergh and Richard Lester, about the manifold joys and hardships of being a filmmaker. Though a generation apart, both share the infectious passion of cinephilia and have had a wide impact on the world film community. Soderbergh's freshman effort as a writer-director, sex, lies, and videotape, inaugurated a movement in low-budget, independent American film that remains a vital part of contemporary cinema today. Lester's freewheeling films of the sixties and seventies (including the Beatles' movies Help! and A Hard Day's Night; The Knack; How I Won the War and Petulia) helped to create a "new wave" of British film-making. Together they discuss their respective adventures in motion pictures in a free-ranging and sardonically educational dialogue.Interwoven with this dialogue is a similarly witty and insightful journal by Soderbergh, recounting an extraordinary twelve months in which he rejected the Hollywood system and ventured into "guerilla film-making" with the offbeat projects Schizopolis and Gray's Anatomy, before returning to the Hollywood fray with his acclaimed adaptation of Elmore Leonard's "Out of Sight", starring George Clooney.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Memoir, Biography

Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh is an acclaimed and prolific filmmaker.

Soderbergh's directorial-breakthrough indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) lifted him into the public spotlight as a notable presence in the film industry. At 26, Soderbergh became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the film garnered worldwide commercial success, as well as numerous accolades. His breakthrough led to success in Hollywood, where he directed the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biopic Erin Brockovich (2000) and the crime drama Traffic (2000). For Traffic, he won the Academy Award for Best Director.

He found further popular and critical success with the Ocean's trilogy and film franchise (2001–18); Che (2008); The Informant! (2009); Contagion (2011); Haywire (2011); Magic Mike (2012); Side Effects (2013); Logan Lucky (2017); Unsane (2018); Let Them All Talk (2020); No Sudden Move (2021); and Kimi (2022). His film career spans a multitude of genres, but his specialties are psychological, crime and heist films. His films have grossed over US$2.2 billion worldwide and garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning five.

Soderbergh's films often revolve around familiar concepts which are regularly used for big-budget Hollywood movies, but he routinely employs an avant-garde arthouse approach. They center on themes of shifting personal identities, vengeance, sexuality, morality and the human condition. His feature films are often distinctive in the realm of cinematography as a result of his having been influenced by avant-garde cinema, coupled with his use of unconventional film and camera formats. He often takes cinematography credits on his feature films under the alias Peter Andrews, the given name of his father, and editing credits under Mary Ann Bernard, that of his mother. Many of Soderbergh's films are anchored by multi-dimensional storylines with plot twists, nonlinear storytelling, experimental sequencing, suspenseful soundscapes and third-person vantage points.

Reviews

[Kern · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half Steven Soderbergh diary, half career retrospective interview with fellow filmmaker Richard Lester, circa '96/'97. Soderbergh is a favorite of mine and I've seen every film he's made, whereas I haven't seen a single film from Lester, so obviously one half was more compelling to me than the other. Probably would have gotten more out of this had I seen A Hard Days Night or any of the Superman films, but I still enjoyed some parts of their discussion, when it wasn't getting bogged down in detail. Reading Soderbergh's candid journal entries was the highlight for me, though, especially him talking in retrospect about working on Pleasantville, pursuing Kaufman's Human Nature screenplay, and casually mentioning Gus Van Sant going to shoot a "movie called Good Will Hunting, which was apparently written by a couple of young actors."

[Bram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being unfamiliar with Lester’s work, I sometimes missed the necessary context, but it didn’t lessen my enjoyment much. This is a true hangout book: two craftsmen talking shop. And there are the wonderfully self-depricating diary entries, which are more fun to read as time goes on. It truly captures Soderbergh’s most interesting period, that transition from ‘starting over’ to ‘Out of Sight’. And I wish Faber & Faber would run a whole series like this. I mean, imagine one where Soderbergh sits down with Terry Gilliam around the time Quixote fell apart. Or M. Night Shyamalan sitting down with Walter Hill after The Last Airbender tanked. Anyway, great stuff.

[Buck · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best film books I’ve ever read.

[Andrew Crouch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant enough but far from gripping mix of journal entries and interview segments between acclaimed directors Steven Soderbergh and Richard Lester. The book's time frame of events happens to coincide with a relative lull in Soderbergh's directorial career, just before his turn of the century stardom. His struggles to make and release a number of forgotten (even aborted) small films are passably interesting, but unlikely to enthuse many readers because it's so unlikely they will have seen or even heard of them. Conversely, interviewing Lester even in 1996 highlighted how out of touch Lester was with film-making, apparently by choice.

The two have a clear rapport that leads in some interesting directions sometimes, but it peters out. They veer between quite technical discussions of film stock, lens flares, and the like to ruminations on religion and politics without much organization other than a loose chronology. Soderbergh isn't a penetrating enough interviewer to really dig into Lester the person, and if his intention was never to do so, than the appeal of this book was always intended to be narrow indeed. So what you end up with is a sporadically clever dialogue between experienced film-makers, intercut with sporadically clever but trivial journal entries from a man tantalizingly close to a professional breakthrough.

[Rob Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a long form conversation/interview between Steven Soderbergh and Richard Lester interspersed with Steven Soderbergh's journal entries. The journal entries are post "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", pre "Out of Sight". I enjoyed the format, but the discussion of technical aspects of film making was over my head. It was interesting to note the difference in ideology between Lester and Soderbergh. I got the sense the Richard Lester more or less sees his films as "jobs", and sort of discounts the "auteur" aspect of film-making. Each time Soderbergh tries to take him down that path, Lester puts him off with some variation of "I didn't really think about it all. That's just the way it came out." I enjoyed rewatching many of Richard Lester's movies with the context of the interview.

[Joey Lewandowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is fine. I would have liked it a lot more if I was more familiar with Richard Lester's work (I'm only here for the Superman III stories, of which there aren't many, SADLY). Even though I'm DEEP into Soderbergh's filmography at this point, his diary entries don't come across as particularly interesting here. That's a real bummer because his diary about sex, lies, and videotape is SO GOOD.

Oh well.

[Raf Linmans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cinematic conversations between Steven Soderbergh and Richard Lester, intertwined with a working diary from the first one, just before his big breaktrough with Out of Sight and Erin Brockovic. The book brought me in contact with a couple of (to me) unknown movies from Lester.

[Alex Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inevitably more expansive that its subject matter would seem to indicate. A great look behind the curtain of a specific few years in one great filmmaker's early career, and a look behind a similar curtain into the mind and manner of a prolific and wildly successful filmmaker late in his.

[Rusteen Honardoost · Rating 3 out of 5]

A list of films to watch before/after reading “Getting Away With It”:
sex, lies, and videotape
Schizopolis
Grey’s Anatomy
Out of Sight
A Hard Days Night
The Knack
Petulia
Pleasantville
Coraline
Being John Malkovich
Good Will Hunting

[Greta Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential study of Richard Lester, always underrated and original in spite of making one of the most ripped-off movies of all time, and an even more essential study of Soderbergh in the last months before taking Hollywood by storm. The best footnotes this side of David Foster Wallace.

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely half-assed book, from two great filmmakers. But that was at least part of the point, I think… get hired to do a thing, do what you can and see how it turns out. For fans only.

[Eli]

“Brief, desultory discussion of forthcoming manuscript’s inception, purpose and potential audience. Self-deprecating remark. Amusing anecdote with slightly serious undertone. Awesome display of ego disguised as humility; joke about same. Transparently hollow thanks to contributors and collaborators.” – Steven Soderbergh (from Getting Away with It - Introduction, Part Three – aka Another Note from the Author)

If you are someone who finds the tone of the above author’s note amusing, then run out and buy yourself a copy of Getting Away With It. I can see how the style of this hybrid film interview/diary could get real old, real fast for some folks. However, I liked it. As someone who does read the notes and footnotes of a book as I go along, I enjoyed the layered jokes within. Take this first footnote as an example:

“The ‘author’ is in the habit of assuming the reader shares his exact experiences, interests, and knowledge. We will try to minimize the irritation this would induce in real life (if you shared a meal or a plane trip with the author, for instance) by providing background information whenever possible.” – Page 1, Getting Away With It

As someone who is fairly new to this whole writing-things-down thing, this is a lesson that I try to keep in mind as my mind races ahead of my fingers. Soderbergh’s footnotes added another level of deconstruction to the book that both pushes it over the edge while also capturing the spirit of both of its participants, Steven Soderbergh and Richard Lester (the subject of Soderbergh’s interviews during much of the book). This book was part of what Soderbergh termed his “reawakening”. He explains: “I was trying to figure out how I had drifted so far off course . . . I was unhappy with the process and the work I was doing. I wanted to get back to the way I felt when I first started making films. I remembered that one filmmaker I connected with most was Richard Lester – the playfulness and gentle skepticism his films have.”

The book’s publisher Faber & Faber has a whole series of books about film directors. The books are generally fashioned as “Scorcese on Scorcese” or “Cronenberg on Cronenberg,” however this book departs from Faber & Faber’s typical “on” approach. Instead, Getting Away With It is a series of interviews Soderbergh conducted with director Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, How I Won the War, Petulia). When Soderbergh started the project he intended it to be a straightforward Q&A book. But, he ultimately decided to intercut the interviews with selections from his diaries. Soderbergh’s hoped “to portray the process of what it’s like to be a person who happens to [make films] for a living as opposed to a portrait of a filmmaker.”

“I didn’t mind being an art-house failure. I just didn’t want to spend my whole life there.” – Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh was at a key juncture in his career while he was working on Getting Away With It. It was 1996 and he was six years removed from the acclaim and accolades surrounding his first film sex, lies, and videotapes. When asked about his frustration in his 1996-97 diary entries, Soderbergh said: “I was frustrated then because I was searching for a place for me to be within the business . . . I really wasn’t sure where I was headed.” His films after sex had all been disappointments. Even films the critics liked failed to find an audience. And Soderbergh had just shot two films that were proving difficult to sell (Schizopolis and Gray’s Anatomy).

“If I failed, I was fucked.” – Steven Soderbergh on making Out of Sight

At the end of the book Soderbergh receives the Out of Sight script. This is where book leaves us. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that although Out of Sight was not huge at the box office, it did put Soderbergh back on the map as a commercially viable filmmaker. Soon thereafter Soderbergh achieved his Act II success with the Oceans films, along with dual Oscar nominations for Erin Brockovich and Traffic (he won for Traffic). While making Erin Brokovich, Soderbergh recalled a lesson he learend from Lester: ”Tossing things off, instead of being labored about what you do. I’m serious about what I do, but I think there’s a real benefit to not being precious and working quickly and going strictly on instinct. It’s something I lost and I absolutely got back from him.”

Part of what I appreciate about Steven Soderbergh is that he has continued to balance his projects. His success with some of his projects has allowed him to be offbeat and quirky. Whether you liked Bubble or The Girlfriend Experience is besides the point. I don’t like all his films. But I view his work in its entirety, not just as individual pieces. And I also love that he actively produces other people’s work. While I have mentioned before that if I had my own movie studio Michael Winterbottom would be one of the first directors I would try to employ, an offer to Steven Soderbergh would not be far behind.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how this book was ever conceived, let alone sold and published. I guess it's an example of an acclaimed Hollywood director with some sway just being able to do something that interests him (and probably only him) and get paid for it, though not much since I can't imagine this book ever sold more than about a thousand copies.

Getting Away With It compiles a series of interviews Soderbergh conducted with the British filmmaker Richard Lester, whose claims to fame include the Beatles propaganda films, Help and A Hard Day's Night, a couple of the Superman films, and various other "artier" films like The Three Musketeers and its sequel The Four Musketeers. Lester is certainly not on the radar of most film buffs, even those interested in film history and its unknown heroes. But apparently he has fans in famous directors like Steven Soderbergh, and Martin Scorsese--who wrote the intro to a recent re-release of Help on DVD.

Having no prior knowledge of Lester, I was impressed with how quickly I became absorbed in the conversation between him and Soderbergh. Soderbergh asks good questions and they have a lot of super-film-nerd repartee about the process of filmmaking, and different equipment and stuff. Folks uninterested in film making and production will find this stuff excruciating, but I enjoyed it. Later, the conversation turns into a commentary on religion and atheism, which I didn't really need to hear discussed from either of these two particular guys.

Interspliced with the interviews are segments from a journal Soderbergh wrote during the same year, 1998. During this time he had just finished his exceedingly weird, low-budget film, Schizopolis, and was trying to get distribution for it. He'd also finished his Spalding Grey movie, Grey's Anatomy and was shopping that around, and was doing a number of rewrites on a number of scripts. He even directed a play during this period, at LSU. It's mildly interesting to read about the business side of the directing life (on which Soderbergh almost entirely focuses), but Soderbergh's constant whining about how hard it is to write gets old fast, as do his myriad self-deprecating footnotes intended to cut the sting of the whining. ("It's okay that I'm whining, because I'm AWARE that I'm whining... right? That makes it FUNNY and even CHARMING, right!?") After a while, I wanted to just grab him and shake him and say, you're an acclaimed, successful filmmaker! You hate it so much? There's a million people who'd trade with you in a second. Shut up and get over yourself.

So Soderbergh comes across as a douchebag, but Lester seems pretty cool. Articulate and funny and kind, and I've already put several of his films (almost all of which I'd never heard of before reading this book) on hold at the library.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steven Soderbergh wrote an unusual little book, Getting Away With It, for the British Publishing Company Faber and Faber. It 's probably not for everyone, but if you’re a film fanatic with an appreciation for Soderbergh it should probably be right up your alley. It is a mix of a journal that Soderbergh was writing as he was looking for distribution for his experimental film, Shizopolis, and Spalding Gray’s entertaining monologue film, Gray’s Anatomy. It gives us insight into his producing, writing as a script doctor, as well as writing his own screenplays, as well as his ventures into getting other scripts and films into production. At this time he was a producer for Pleasantville, a script doctor for Mimic (a pretty entertaining horror film) and Nightwatch (an Ewan McGregor film that I liked), writing a screenplay for a film, Toots, that never made it into production, trying to get a young Charlie Kaufman’s Human Nature made (it turns out that he was interested in doing the brilliant Being John Malkovic as well), trying to secure the rights to A Confederacy of Dunces. By the end of the book he has been offered the Out of Sight film adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, which was the start of a winning streak (The Limey, Erin Brockovic, Traffic, etc….) for the versatile director.

These journal entries are interspersed with some interviews he did with deceased filmmaker Richard Lester, of whom I knew very little. But no doubt you have seen many of his film as well. Soderbergh evaluates the director as having made:

Three Masterpieces: A Hard Day’s Night, The Knack, Petulia
Four Classics: The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, Juggernaut, Robin and Marian

Six Worthwhile Divertissements: It’s Trad, Dad, Help!, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Royal Flash, The Ritz, Superman 2 and 3

Three Really Fascinating Films That Get Better With Age: How I Won The War, The Sitting Room, Cuba.

[Raphael Bernardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main topic is the Richard Lester interviews but the Soderbergh journal entries in between are the best part. It's pretty exciting to see what Soderbergh was up to before he Made Traffic, Oceans 11, 12, 13 and Contagion, how he navigated the large studios, and to watch the as he writes, procrastinates from writing, and deals with problems with the studios. The journal entries start as he's running out of money after living on writing income the last 18 months.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

The diary entries, written during the production and release of Schizopolis, are as revealing and clever as the film. The interview with director Richard Lester shows Soderbergh's love of film and foreshadow his DVD "interview" commentaries on Catch-22 and even Criterion's Schizopolis disc.

[Eric Dahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a Soderbergh fan, or just enjoy listening to super-intelligent, funny, creative people struggling with the exact same creative fears that any artist does, you'll like this book. Check out the intro if you get a chance, and if you don't think that alone is worth the price of admission, then maybe stay away.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being into Soderbergh and having an interest in knowing more about Lester, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Not having an interest in these two guys would be a fine reason not to read this.

For a longer, far more fascinating review, please go here:
http://www.standbyformindcontrol.com/...

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Soderbergh, but have little interest in Richard Lester. There's too much Lester.

[Ctkruckus]

His footnotes get a little tiresome but Soderbergh is a gift in his interviewing style and his diary entries. Funny, self-effacing, probing and insightful.

[Craig Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining read that is split between actual interviews with Lester and diary entries from Soderbergh, with copious often funny footnotes by Soderbergh.