The movie Steven Soderbergh called “the worst thing I ever made”
The breakthrough of American director Steven Soderbergh arrived with his debut, 1989’s Sex, Lies and Videotapes. The film brought him into excellent repute with cinema fans, and he became the youngest solo director to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or at the age of just 26.
Several independent movies followed, such as Kafka, King of the Hill and Schizopolis, before Soderbergh eventually made the transition to mainstream cinema, directing several widespread genre movies like Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s Eleven, Solaris and Magic Mike.
However, despite all the brilliant cinematic efforts Soderbergh has provided over the years, he once admitted that he didn’t want to be associated with at least one of his films and expressed regrets over the whole ordeal. The 1995 crime movie The Underneath, it would seem, causes Soderbergh some discomfort.
The project stars Peter Gallagher and Alison Elliott and is based on the Don Tracy novel Criss Cross, also serving as a remake of the original 1949 film adaptation. The Underneath is something of a homage to the film noir genre and features several of its narrative tropes, including romance, a robbery gone wrong and an ending with a twist.
Soderbergh once discussed the film’s downfalls with Criterion when it was released on DVD and Blu-Ray. “I think it’s a beautiful film to look at, and I think the score is beautiful, but fifteen seconds I know we’re in trouble because of how fucking long it takes to get through those opening credits,” he said. That’s just an indication of what’s wrong with this thing: it’s just totally sleepy.”
The director admitted that his heart was not in the right place when making The Underneath. “[An] increasing formality [to the work] was not healthy,” he said. “I was already absent,” Soderbergh noted that he was already dreaming of the project being over while filming was taking place, feeling that he couldn’t correct the mistakes that had already been made.
“It’s a very unpleasant feeling to know that, not being able to discuss that with anybody, and see everyone working so hard—cast and crew to give you what you want every day,” he said. “And you know this thing is dead on arrival. I resolved during that that was never going to happen to me again.”
In fact, Soderbergh hated his film so much that when Cannes Film Festival President Gilles Jacob called to see if he would be happy to premiere it at the 1995 iteration of the festival, the director responded, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever made. I’m not even going to screen it for you.”
