Soderbergh's Last Movie?: Liberace Bio-pic

Soderbergh's Last Movie?: Liberace Bio-pic

Behind the Candelabra, directed by Steven Soderbergh, now playing on HBO. It’s been a big lead-up and a lot of movies to get to this point, but it looks like Steven Soderbergh’s last film might be the HBO Liberace bio-pic Behind the Candelabra. It screened at Cannes this month and debuted on HBO in heavy rotation on Sunday night. I haven’t always liked everything that Soderbergh has made, even with his gift for slipping back and forth between mainstream fare and films that are more like treatises or theories. He’s made stuff I love, stuff I like, stuff I admire, and some stuff where I feel vaporized as a respondent and can’t comprehend. And if you couldn’t tell from the preceding sentence, Soderbergh’s been insanely prolific, even measured by Woody Allen’s one-a-year career. Just in the past five years, he’s tackled drugs (Side Effects), male strippers (Magic Mike), action (Haywire), illness and contamination (Contagion), Spalding Gray (the documentary And Everything Is Going Fine), corporate shenanigans (The Informant!), and DV experimental drama (The Girlfriend Experience), not to mention two other projects I haven’t seen. That’s a lot of work, and a fair amount of it very good work. I know I’m not the only one who hopes that Soderbergh keeps making movies. I say that because it’s clear that Soderbergh has crossed over from craftsman to brand name. You can talk about a Soderbergh movie the way you talk about one of Altman’s films, or Jean-Luc Godard, or Richard Lester. And maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s a lot more filmmakers out there who wanna be Michael Bay, and then there’s no one around to make a Steven Soderbergh movie or a Robert Altman film. Onward: Behind the Candelabra is based on a book by Scott Thorson, who met Liberace when he was 16 and became his lover for six years, on and off. Scripted by Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King) and directed in Soderbergh’s matter-of-fact style, the film is at once a pretty good homage to Boogie Nights—Thorsen (Matt Damon) met “Lee” Liberace (Michael Douglas)—and A Star is Born, a fascinating and claustrophobic look at show business from inside the gaudy fish bowl, and the kind of frank and honest gay content that the major studios seem to actively avoid. HBO’s history of not meddling with scripts and giving filmmakers freedom is well documented, and even now, when queer culture is as mainstream as “So You Think You Can Dance?”, HBO should be commended. If this had been a theatrical release, there’s no question that Douglas and Damon would be at the top of all awards short lists. I’ve made a career of watching Douglas re-invent his career three or four times, and his flamboyant yet relatable turn as Liberace contains all the thrilling talent he showed in his best roles in movies like Romancing the Stone, Wall Street, and The American President. Scott Bakula, Dan Aykroyd, Debbie Reynolds, Nicky Katt and Paul Reiser are all aces in key supporting roles, but Rob Lowe steals the whole movie in a hilarious yet scary turn as plastic surgeon/Dr. Feelgood Dr. Jack Startz. Soderbergh gets all the glitzy details right, and no doubt producer Jerry Weintraub’s reputation opened the doors to allow most of Liberace’s costumes, cars, pianos and other furniture to be used as set dressing. Seeing the way it documents the heyday of Las Vegas-style showroom entertainment, it just hit me that Behind the Candelabra would make a great double bill with John Landis’ HBO documentary Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (2007).



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