Steven Soderbergh on Full Circle & How William Friedkin's Work Influenced Him
The Big Picture [Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Full Circle.]From director Steven Soderbergh and writer Ed Solomon, the six-episode Max series Full Circle follows an investigation into a botched kidnapping, the individuals connected to it, and the secrets that have long been hidden. As the puzzle pieces come together, revelations make the three seemingly unrelated storylines take shape as a more intertwined crime drama that runs as deep as the ties that bind family.
As we were doing the demo, I said, “Okay, they’ve bought the concept, so now we’ve gotta write a show. Do you wanna write the show?” He said, “Sure.” So, we started working on Mosaic. And as often happens, when you spend a lot of time standing next to somebody, ideas come about and you start to pitch things. And so, while we were at the tail end of Mosaic, we started talking about two things.
SODERBERGH: It was changing constantly. Probably more than anything that I’ve worked on. There were layers of feedback. After we wrap, within an hour, or an hour and a half, I have the footage, I start to cut, and I post. If it was a day shoot, I post all the material the night that we shot and edited. If it was a night shoot, it’s probably the next afternoon.
SODERBERGH: Yeah, I was thinking about Friedkin’s work of the seventies a lot. I was also thinking about Sidney Lumet’s New York movies from the seventies a lot. In terms of the filmmaking style, I wanted it to be precise, but I also wanted it to be blunt. I don’t know how else to describe it. That was something that I was surfing, moment to moment.
As the show was being shot and we were looking at the footage, Ed and I were both always looking for ways to expand the storyline of the kids, particularly Louis and Natalia and Xavier and Garmen. That relationship, in the original script, was the same, up to a point, but then during shooting, we decided to go with something a little bit different.
SODERBERGH: I’ve been a fan of Jim’s for a long time. I’ve had good success, creatively, casting comedians in supporting dramatic roles. So, when Carmen brought his name up, I thought, “As a foil for Zazie [Beetz], you can’t get much better than this. This is gonna be really interesting, to see the two of them going at it.” And he was lovely. He’s very good, and he’s also value added, in the sense that he’s just a really fun presence on set. I didn’t know the man.
Louis and Natalia are the only people that manage to get out of this. Although at the end of it, they’re back to where they started, and I guess they’ve learned something, but it’s not a happy conclusion. It’s good they survived, but that was a very difficult ride, for them to get back to where they started.
There was so much trial and error, trying to figure out what information to give and when, and who was transmitting it. It was such a clinic in the difference between reading a script and seeing something. I’m so frustrated by the script format because it’s such a non thing. The biggest lesson we learned was, in the script, the cross-cutting between all the stories was a lot more aggressive and it read great.
You also watched Atlanta and Fleischman is in Trouble, either right before or as you were filming this. Does seeing your actors in other roles affect how you work, especially when you’re doing reshoots?
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