Steven Soderbergh has churned out box-office hits about male strippers ("Magic Mike"), a sassy environmentalist ("Erin Brockovich") and a modern-day Rat Pack ("Ocean's Eleven"). But when it came to selling a film about one of America's most iconic entertainers, most of Hollywood turned away.
"Behind the Candelabra," a film about Liberace's secret affair with a much younger man, premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival and will play in theaters worldwide. But in the United States, the film is debuting on HBO, even though it stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon.
Soderbergh has said he went to the pay channel after every studio passed on the project.
"People keep saying that it's never been tougher to get good stuff made than it is today," said Tom Papa, who plays Liberace's manager in the film. "I mean, we've got Michael, Matt, Dan Aykroyd, Debbie Reynolds and no one wants to make that? Who else do you need to put in there?"
Transformers and X-Men, that's who. Hollywood's disinterest in "Candelabra" seemingly has less to do with its gay themes than with the fact that it's not blockbuster material.
"It's no longer about making a little bit of money," Papa said. "It's about coming up with a billion-dollar idea."
The industry's lack of interest in smaller, more personal fare seems to be the reason Soderbergh has announced that he is stepping away from the movie world.
"In theory, I'm finished," he recently told the Associated Press. "I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how I can optimize my process as a filmmaker, and I haven't seen a lot of effort expended on the part of the studios to optimize their process. And I don't understand it. The biggest stumbling block to this paradigm being revised is the cost of putting a mainstream movie out. It's truly the tail that's wagging the dog. It's influencing every decision at every level. I can't believe — unless there's some aspect of the relationship between the studios and the theater owners that I'm not aware of — that this is the only way it can be done."
