Steven Soderbergh has opened up about a giant book on Jaws, the classic Steven Spielberg thriller he first saw in 1975, that he has been working on for nearly 15 years.
“I’ve been working on this thing [the book] that is ostensibly about directing and uses as its spine an analysis of the making of Jaws day-to-day,” Soderbergh revealed during an informal conversation at the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday.
Don’t expect his how-to Jaws come to be sold at airports, however.
“This book is not for general consumption. This is for people who are interested in films, either as moviegoers or [who] want to do this job. Because if you’re going to do this job, you need to understand the job. This is the job,” Soderbergh said of his long-gestating passion project.
Do expect more than a scene-by-scene analysis of Jaws: “I’m going to walk you through the experience of making it as a jumping off point to talk about problem solving and process.”
The snag is that the book isn’t done and may never be completed, the Oscar-winning director warned. Writing about Jaws will get Soderbergh back to the first movie that had him thinking he could ecome a Hollywood director.
He recalled seeing Jaws at a cinema in St. Petersburg, Florida, at 12 years of age and emerging back into the real world with two questions: “What is directed by mean? And who is Steven Spielberg?”
Luckily, Soderbergh picked up The Jaws Log, a book by Carl Gottlieb about the action thriller that he pored over for lessons on how to problem-solve on a film set. “I carried this book around with me, it was like the Bible. I wore out many copies,” he recounted.
And when Soderbergh got to high school and around filmmaking equipment, he began making short films. The director was speaking at TIFF as his latest film, the spooky ghost story Presence, starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan and newcomer Callina Liang, is set to…
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