A friend spoke the other night to a guy who's familiar with the comings and goings of Vincent Maraval's French-based Wild Bunch, the financier of Steven Soderbergh's two-part, 260-minute Che, which screened at Cannes to sharply divergent reactions. My friend's first question to the guy, naturally, was, "So what about a U.S. sale of Che?" The guy, he said, "just looked" at him.
When he finally spoke, the gist was that he doesn't believe the film will sell to a U.S. distributor "until Soderbergh cuts it."
The odd thing, my friend said, is that the guy conveyed a kind of laissez-faire, "que sera sera" attitude about this. Wild Bunch's mindset, he seemed to suggest, is also somewhere in the vicinity of "well, okay...whatever...we'll see."
Soderbergh, who is currently shooting The Informant, a corporate skullduggery drama with Matt Damon, isn't working on cutting the Che film. Another source close to the action told my friend that Soderbergh "hit a wall" in the cutting of it prior to Cannes, and that whatever its final shape and length, fixing the Che situation is not a major Soderbergh priority as this moment. Not while The Informant is shooting, at least.
I don't know that this is true, but if it is....it seems weird. As if Soderbergh and the Wild Bunch half almost given up on Che as far as the U.S. market is concerned. I'm not saying they have, but they seem to be putting out signals that they don't precisely know what to do at this stage.
I'm not the only one who feels that Che is close to a masterwork. It breathes and seethes with political realism, you-are-there immediacy and high drama that doesn't feel like "drama" -- which is what makes it so brilliant. I felt levitated by it when I caught it in Cannes. But it wasn't universally admired, and so the only move that makes any sense to me is to try and build a head of critical esteem by entering the fall awards derby, which will kick off in September. So Soderbergh and the Wild Bunch have to get it into theatres somehow this fall -- no ifs, ands or buts.
Even if they decide on an HBO small-screen deal, which will assure the showing of the entire thing and put to an end all talk about cutting it, they need to structure the sale so the film will go out theatrically first and then into the HBO airings. I don't care about all the previous HBO deals which have demanded an HBO premiere. The awards derby is absolutely vital. Soderbergh's direction is certainly deserving of a nomination. Ditto Benicio del Toro's performance as Che Guevara, Peter Buchman's screenplay, the cinematography, etc.
Che has been pre-sold to most (all?) foreign territories, but with a negative cost of a reported $61 million or thereabouts. The Wild Bunch guys were reportedly demanding somewhere between $10 to $12 million for U.S. rights during Cannes. But if you're talking about separate releases of the two films that comprise Che -- The Argentine and Guerilla, which even Soderbergh has said will be the way to go after it plays as a special event movie that audiences will see all in one sitting -- you're talking a marketing budget of at least $12 to $15 million, if not more.
Add it up: $10 or $12 million plus $12 to $15 million equals a tab of $22 to $27 million.
The problem is that the likelihood of Che recouping anything close to this figure is highly unlikely. A prominent director told me after the Cannes showing that "this movie is going to make $5 million [theatrically] in the U.S....if that." The solution, it seems, is that it has to be sold to HBO, but that its value will be diminished if it doesn't first compete in the derby. Which means that someone -- Mark Cuban? - has to put it out theatrically before 12.31.08.
If I were calling the shots, this, at least, is how I would be assessing the situation.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on June 14, 2008 at 9:18 AM
comment #1
Mike Ock
says ...
Yaaaaaaaawn................
Posted by Mike Ock
at June 14, 2008 10:43 AM
comment #2
Edward
says ...
Maybe Soderberg needs to clear his head and focus on The Informant before he goes back to the editing room. Sometimes you just need to take a break and try to look at it with a fresh prespective. Sometimes I don't even know what I've got when I've been editing for several weeks; going off and doing something else helps me.
Posted by Edward
at June 14, 2008 10:52 AM
comment #3
bagelfilm
says ...
Anyone remember the fate of MEDELLIN and Vincent Chase?
Posted by bagelfilm
at June 14, 2008 12:26 PM
comment #4
gruver1
says ...
Wells to Mike Ock: "Yaawwn?" It is the easiest and laziest thing in the world to feign boredom when others are out there sweating blood, sweat and tears in order to make quality films. You, sir, are part of the problem. Your ignorant. low-attention-span attitude is a malignancy...a boil festering of the moviegoing culture...an outgrowth of the GenX slacker-gamer-sitting in front of the tube for hours-and-sipping-brewskis syndrome.
Che is somewhere between a great and a near-great movie. It is in NO WAY cause for yawning, napping, zoning out, zapping your girlfriend, lighting a bong, deciding instead to play Grand Theft Auto or any of the bullshit distractions that may or may not light your fire.
All through history people like you have been going "yaawwn." Rome just burned. "Yawwnn." Some guy named William Shakespeare just wrote a great play...it's now playing at the Globe. "Yawwwn." Some locals just went down to the wharf and dumped hundreds of pounds of tea in Boston harbor. "Yaawwn." I just saw Nijinky's performance of "Le Sacre du Printemps" and it was startling." "Yawwwn." Sacco and Venzetti just got the death penalty. "Yawwwn."
Love something, like something, hate something, create something of your own...but stop fucking yawning.
Posted by gruver1
at June 14, 2008 12:33 PM
comment #5
Zimmergirl
says ...
"But it wasn't universally admired" - I guess that's one way to put it.
Posted by Zimmergirl
at June 14, 2008 1:11 PM
comment #6
Mike Ock
says ...
Ock to Wells (in mid yawn this time): You need to get your tongue out of Soderbergh's asshole.
Posted by Mike Ock
at June 14, 2008 1:47 PM
comment #7
yoink32
says ...
I'm in full agreement with Edward. Soderbergh has been immersed in the world of Che for so damn long that it was inevitable that he'd hit the wall. Getting away from Che, working on The Informant (which isn't supposed to come out until early-mid 2009) will give him some distance from the two Che films, clear his head and allow him to come back to the material refreshed and with a new set of eyes.
Posted by yoink32
at June 14, 2008 2:17 PM
comment #8
filmfan
says ...
I would love to see the film in its uncut version and I think that the only way to do that will be as an HBO miniseries. Sadly, that is the way of the world of film these days. But I just started watching the John Adams series on DVD and taking the mini series route didn't harm that story. So if this is the only way to see the complete Che then I say go for it. If Benicio wins an Emmy instead of an Oscar then so be it.
Posted by filmfan
at June 14, 2008 3:44 PM
comment #9
Edward
says ...
It's sad there isn't room in the cineplex for films like Che. What's the world coming to when challenging pictures can't sell? Who cares if it's 10 hours, if it challenges us, thrills us or even pisses us off.
Posted by Edward
at June 14, 2008 4:10 PM
comment #10
bb
says ...
Comparing the Fall of Rome to the release of Che. Yawn
Just a conspiratorial thought but everything I hear about the movies is that they completely ignore the well documented murders and abuse of power committed by Che. Maybe certain people aren't eager to strike up debates about the true history of Che with the release of such films until a certain presidential election, with a certain candidate who keeps having Che posters showing up in campaign headquarters and other supporter's walls, is over. But I don't believe in conspiracies.
Posted by bb
at June 14, 2008 4:50 PM
comment #11
CinemaPhreek
says ...
Considering how mixed the reception was at Cannes, it's not surprising that finding someone to cough up the (by your own estimates) $27M is a next to impossible dream. When a film by a director as respected as Soderbergh about a subject like Che can't cut it with THAT crowd, then that should be telling you something. Soderbergh needed to hit it out of the park to get that kind of release.
And keep in mind, that was never the intention. He, Del Toro and the producers might have started building castles in the sky about "CHE" becoming some mid-stream epic after a hoped-for rousing triumph at Cannes, but all that disappeared (as the good warden said) like a fart in the wind when it didn't happen.
I'm not surprised, because making a film about Guevara was always going to be problematic. There is as much to revile about him as to admire and anyone who presents that truth is going to be crucified by both sides. Worse, anyone who doesn't treat him like the hero he is seen as in much of the Third World had better be from that world otherwise you are just another white man from the US who doesn't get it.
Posted by CinemaPhreek
at June 14, 2008 5:12 PM
comment #12
mutinyco
says ...
NYFF.
Posted by mutinyco
at June 14, 2008 7:03 PM
comment #13
Unison
says ...
I saw Che when it played at Cannes... The screening room I was had about 250 people in it at the start. When the film ended almost 5 hours later, about 70 people were left. This is no crowd pleaser in any way, shape or form. Jeff's love for the film aside, this is an incredibly punishing to watch, difficult experience that has no interest in satisfying any typical audience expectations.
It simply will not work commerically as two separate films, either.
1.) The way it's conceived, it's less a biopic than a structuralist work, with the first half and second half working as point and counterpoint. To wait months between this point and counterpoint would kill all effect, I imagine. The first half ends with no real climax. . . We don't even see Havana's liberation.
2.) The first half is decidedly inferior. It's disorienting and difficult. It took me almost an hour to settle into it and realize what Soderbergh is trying to do. I actively hated the thing for at least 45 minutes. There's no way that many people would pay for a second film after sitting through the first half of this.
3.) There's almost no character development. Many characters were shot and killed after uttering one or two lines of dialogue at most. I wouldn't call this jingoistic, but it's almost got the opposite problem. It's too refined to be involving.
The possibility of an HBO sale was certainly being bandied about during the festival. It's probably the only thing that could possibly work, though I certainly think Che needs HBO more than HBO needs Che.
All in all, I don't think this film is an artistic disaster, but I certainly don't think it's any sort of great work either. I appreciated its unique structure, but I didn't extract much meaning or political content from it. I didn't think much of Del Toro here, either (remember, folks, that Jeff would have given him the Oscar last year for Things We Lost...), and I don't think he's any sort of shoo-in for Oscar consideration, despite his Cannes award. I did sort of admire the perversity of the film, as an object, but I don't think even most erudite filmgoers will be able to appreciate it on that level.
All that being said, I think the success or failure of the film domestically is almost irrelevant. It's sold in most territories already. Soderbergh's making another movie already. Expectations were never sky-high to begin with because of the foreign language factor. I would be very surprised if it didn't show at Toronto or NYFF this fall, but I would also be very surprised if it managed to find a distributor before Torotno.
Posted by Unison
at June 14, 2008 8:08 PM
comment #14
Edward
says ...
Unison, I'd be interested in knowing if you feel additional editing would help? Did it seem finished or a bit rough around the edges? Also how was the cinematography, how's Red look?
Posted by Edward
at June 15, 2008 9:19 AM
comment #15
filmfan
says ...
Whatever its faults I would still like to see Che. And it puzzles me that it is sold all over the place but not in the US. What does that say about buyers in this country.
That said, I must say that I never thought Soderbergh was the right director for the job. Malick was a better choice. And the project lost something when Javier Bardem and Ryan Gosling left. Also, why does the film(s) go right from winning the revolution to Che in Bolivia with nothing of what happened in between? That was not a good idea.
Posted by filmfan
at June 15, 2008 12:51 PM
comment #16
Unison
says ...
Unless it was radically chopped down (like cut down to one 2 1/2 hour feature) I don't think this could be formed into a conventionally approachable film. It didn't seem unfinished... just uncompromising. This simply wasn't conceived as the kind of project that most people expected. That doesn't make it bad, but it certainly doesn't make it commercial.
The cinematography was good enough... It's shot in HD Video, which is noticeable. The first half doesn't look especially exceptional, but the second half, which takes place almost entirely in the Bolivian jungles, is definitely well-shot.
Posted by Unison
at June 15, 2008 5:55 PM
comment #17
Roman
says ...
Sounds like Soderbergh needs to hire Michael Kahn. This is a serious suggestion, by the way. The guy is the best in the biz.
Posted by Roman
at June 15, 2008 10:31 PM
comment #18
BurmaShave
says ...
Gleiberman and Wells are both big fans of it, can someone tell what the hell "you-are-there" means, as opposed to all the other films operating in an illusionary time and place? I'm not even really being facetious, but I just find it so annoying.
How about we serialize CHE in 15 segments every weekend this fall in front of all the prestige pictures, like old FLASH GORDON?
Posted by BurmaShave
at June 16, 2008 3:38 AM