Radio great Kurt Andersen of Studio 360 got elusive, odd-even-by-filmmaker-standards Steven Soderbergh to confess that he’s quitting the business and cough up a list of his watching habits while he was making his forthcoming movies Haywire (which he watched 20 times) and Contagion. Besides consuming superb books (J.D. Salinger: A Life, LA Noir: Dave Hickey in Las Vegas, Just Kids, by Patti Smith) and TV shows (Breaking Bad, Mad Men), Soderbergh staged an enviable personal film festival comprising these titles, in order (some screened more than once):
Haywire
Primer
Exit Through the Gift Shop
All the President’s Men
Panic Room
Related Stories
Dune
Please Give
The Godfather
The Special Relationship
The Godfather Part 2
The Tall Target
The Social Network
The Room
The Day of the Jackal
In Cold Blood
Jaws
The Shark Is Still Working
Cloverfield
Rebecca
To Catch a Thief
Inception
Tiptoes
Salt
A Prophet
The White Ribbon
His Way
Catfish
Thrilla in Manilla
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
The King of Kong
Alien
Risky Business
State and Main
Splice
Predators
Smash His Camera
Enter the Void
Jagged Edge
Animal Kingdom
Michael Clayton
The French Connection
Five Easy Pieces
Somewhere
Apocalypse Now
Fair Game
I’m Still Here
Up the Sandbox (perhaps because the author, Anne Roiphe, just published a smart, gossipy memoir, Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust Without Reason)
Miller’s Crossing
True Grit
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Tiny Furniture
The Fighter
Inside Job
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
The Cranes Are Flying
Funeral in Berlin
The Ipcress File
Black Swan
Days of Wine and Roses
Chimes at Midnight
The King of Marvin Gardens
End of the Road
Buried
The Killing
The Knack
The Right Stuff
Deception
The Birds
Rififi
The Navigator
Last Tango in Paris
The Spirit of the Beehive
The Perils of Priscilla
Rodeo
The Sweet Smell of Success
Stay Hungry
The Hill
Se7en
Eraserhead
The Anderson Tapes
Contagion
Malice
Network
The Goodbye Girl
The World of Henry Orient
Idiocracy
Antichrist
Wattstax
Billion Dollar Brain
Report to the Commissioner
Ugetsu
Sanjo the Bailiff
