Stephen Soderbergh is one of my favorite directors and The Limey is a really enjoyable noir film that gets the AV CLub nod of approval and makes me wan to get The Criterion Collection version:
But even by his high standards, Soderbergh’s commentary with screenwriter Lem Dobbs on 1999’s The Limey is something special, a heated feature-length argument that couldn’t be further from the ego-stroking sycophancy of most tracks. It’s a case study in what happens to a script after it’s run through the sausage factory of production; even with a sympathetic director at the helm—Soderbergh championed Dobbs’ script for Kafka before making it his second feature, and the two remain friends—the writer will always get the shaft in the end. That’s why writers tend to be miserable cranks, and Dobbs is as cranky as they come; for his part, Soderbergh is magnanimous enough to take his licks and give a little back in return. Here’s Dobbs near the beginning of the commentary, setting the tone:
“I’ll say, in your defense and mine, that screenwriting is a hopeless profession. My God, if Robert Towne can complain about Chinatown to this day, what do you want? Didn’t I fax you that interview with [writer] Alain Robbe-Grillet complaining about Last Year At Marienbad? [Director] Alain Resnais just totally fucked it up, Delphine Seyrig was completely wrong, ruined the whole movie. So if the screenwriters of Last Year At Marienbad and Chinatown can complain about what directors did, then what do you
expect?”
From that opening salvo, Dobbs and Soderbergh scrap pointedly about The Limey’s evolution from a violent B-movie written by a 19-year-old (“the stupid version,” Dobbs calls it) to a shooting script with richer backstories and character detail to the stripped-down, achronological, semi-experimental daylight noir that Soderbergh created. At bottom, Dobbs respects the choices that Soderbergh made, and the two have fun teasing each other over issues minor and major, but the discord is genuine, too. Dobbs snipes at critics (like “that motherfucker in Variety”) who failed to give him credit where it was due, challenges Soderbergh over the ruthless pruning of his script, and even laments scenes that were filmed exactly as written, but didn’t come out like he’d imagined. At a certain point, Soderbergh can only sigh and ask, “When are you going to direct?”
The main issue is Soderbergh’s decision to focus heavily on Terence Stamp as a British ex-con who flies to Los Angeles after learning of the dubious circumstances surrounding his estranged daughter’s death. There’s a sizable supporting cast around him: Peter Fonda as the slimy music-business hotshot likely responsible for the girl’s murder, Luis Guzmán as another ex-con who tips Stamp off and becomes his partner in revenge, Lesley Ann Warren as an aging actress and voice coach who knew Stamp’s daughter, and Barry Newman as Fonda’s shrewd security consultant. Soderbergh sketches them all vividly, but save for Stamp, they’re limited to just that—sketches. Fresh off his triumphant studio thriller Out Of Sight, Soderbergh pushed that film’s fractured style more aggressively this time out, emulating the feel of late-‘60s/early-‘70s classics like Point Blank, Petulia, The Long Goodbye, and Fonda’s trippy Western The Hired Hand.
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