Hella Nation - Evan Wright [150]
Ferriter asks Dollard the most important question. “Can we get Steven [Soderbergh] to come in the room with us?”
“Yeah,” Dollard says.
Ferriter and Simpson discuss possible buyers, then a price. “What do you think?” Ferriter asks. “Eight to ten million?”
“Sounds about right to me,” Simpson says.
Ferriter tells Dollard to shorten the rough cut at future screenings. “This is like a drug. You’ve got to give them just a little bit, so they want more.”
A few minutes later, as we emerge into the brightness of the street, Dollard seems amazed Ferriter went for it. “He didn’t even watch it. The guy was twitching the whole time.” Dollard is incredulous. “He bought it on a vibe and the fact I can bring Steven Soderbergh into the room with me.”
Dollard turns to the William Morris sign on the building. “This is the place that fired me. Now I’m the fucking getting-my-ass-licked client. How cool is that?”
IN THE ROOM WITH SODERBERGH
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Dollard has an appointment with Soderbergh on the Paramount lot to deliver a copy of Young Americans. Soderbergh is then flying to Italy, where he plans to hand-deliver the film to entrepreneur and HDNet founder Mark Cuban at the Venice Film Festival.
Bouncing through traffic on his way to the meeting, Dollard is on a high, dreaming of the millions he stands to make, which has made him forgetful of the lecture on sexual continence he delivered weeks earlier. “Once I get some production money, this is my M.O.,” Dollard says. “Hire a hot, twenty-one-year-old assistant, get her to do all my shit—paying bills, laundry—then I start banging her. Serious, dude. I had one in the nineties I literally trained to lick my ass. She was so good I even took her on a fancy vacation abroad once. Two weeks. But all we did was stay in the hotel room so she could lick my ass.”
Soderbergh’s office is off Gower, where he is in preproduction for The Good German. Soderbergh enters the reception area wearing jeans and heavy black shoes that look as if they have paint spattered on them. He greets Dollard with a quiet hello. Like Simpson, Soderbergh is genuinely enthusiastic about Dollard’s project. He believes Young Americans transcends Dollard’s political message and is simply “riveting.” He tells me, “I knew Pat was going to come back with something pure. I believe in Pat’s sense of what’s compelling.”
Soderbergh works from a drab office fairly typical of those on studio back lots. He and Dollard sit opposite each other on threadbare lounge chairs. Soderbergh has often spoken of his need for anonymity in order to function as an artist—“So I can eavesdrop, sit in an airport behind somebody and listen to their conversation, spy on people and hear stuff in undiluted form.” The drive for self-effacement seems to guide his social interaction as well.
Soderbergh’s presence in the room is like this: he arranges his body on the chair, then somehow astrally projects himself into a corner of the ceiling to watch himself interacting with his guests. To a guest, being seated across from Soderbergh is like sitting in front of a two-way mirror. You know someone is there, but you can’t quite make him out, just shadows and indecipherable movements. A throat clears. A chair scrapes. Dollard fidgets nervously, as if he’s straining to rein in his normal impulses to do and say the wrong things. He appears paralyzed.
Soderbergh breaks the ice: “Did you bring the DVD?” His voice is as lively as a prerecorded message.
It turns out Dollard had a change of heart. He doesn’t want Mark Cuban to have it. He wants Cuban to see it, but he doesn’t trust him to possess it. “It’s like laying my dick out,” Dollard tells Soderbergh. “This guy could be in a hotel and might lose it.”
Soderbergh reveals the faintest annoyance: “Pat, we should move fast on this.”
“I’ll fly to New York or something, and show it to him there,” Dollard says.
Soderbergh shakes his head.
“We’ll work something out.” Dollard grins, as if oddly satisfied to have put a spanner in the works. I am seated between Dollard and Soderbergh, what would be the