THE PLAN
Of course, Steven Soderbergh isn’t supposed to be a moviemaker at all. Not
anymore. In 2013, he gave what turned out to be a valedictory filmmaking
address at the San Francisco International Film Festival that didn’t so much
bemoan the state of US mainstream cinema as take a chainsaw to the
Hollywood sign. If he sounded fed up — with risk-averse studios; the fixation
on focus-grouping and foreign markets; the creative logjam he’d fallen victim
to — he was. Rueful, too. “I could tell you a really good story of how I got
pushed off a movie because of the way the numbers ran, but if I did, I’d
probably get shot in the street,” he noted. “And I really like my cats.”
His cats would have been disappointed by what followed. Soderbergh’s
retirement swiftly parlayed into three years of creative frenzy. First, he
directed two seasons of Cinemax’s now-cancelled origins-of-modern-
medicine drama The Knick, followed by HBO movie Mosaic, which will air
later this year. He’s also co-produced Ocean’s 8 and co-created upcoming
Netflix Western Godless. In his downtime he started licensing Singani, the
Bolivian firewater he’d discovered on the tough Che shoot, for US bars.
The filmmaking itch never left, though. While he was freelancing as
cinematographer on the Savannah set of Magic Mike XXL, a script put
a hook in him again. A heist caper he was meant to find a director for, Logan
Lucky was written by first-time screenwriter Rebecca Blunt and passed to
him by his wife (Jules Asner). It was too good to give away. “When someone
sends you something to read, you either immediately see it or you don’t,” he
tells Empire, “and, in this case, I could see it very clearly.” Enthusiasm
became something more... covetous. “Imagining even friends of mine doing
it, I got a little anxious,” Soderbergh admits. “I had a very specific idea for
how it should be done.” He had a very specific idea for who should do it, too.t was Memorial Day, 2016, and somewhere under the shadow
of the Charlotte Motor Speedway’s vast grandstand, Adam
Driver and Daniel Craig were revving up for an unauthorised
lap of the famous old NASCAR circuit. Behind the wheel of
a souped-up Dodge Charger or Toyota Camry on site for
NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 race, they could thunder around
the 2.4-kilometre track in just over 30 seconds. Sadly, they
were in a golf kart. “There was a whole thing about taking
a car, so I went rogue and grabbed a kart,” remembers Driver,
the wheelman in this impromptu two-man heist. “For the first
two minutes Dan and I were like, ‘Yeah! We’re doing this.’
Then we spent the next 15 minutes driving really slowly in
a fucking circle.” As getaways go, it was, well, sluggish.
Along with Channing Tatum, Driver and Craig form the
larcenous, loveable heart of Logan Lucky, Steven Soderbergh’s
big-screen return. Essentially an anti-Ocean’s Eleven, it
promises a fast-paced, lo-fi jolt of heist heaven. Its hayseed
crew — West Virginia’s ill-starred Logan brothers, Jimmy
(Tatum) and Clyde (Driver), plus hardened crim Joe Bang
(Craig) — boast no cash, no high-tech gadgets, no elaborate
disguises, no acrobats, and definitely no Jethros, Leon Spinks or Ella
Fitzgeralds (big or small). All they have is a family curse that plagues every
move. “The Logans are known for an incredible streak of flat-out bad
luck,” explains Soderbergh. “They want to reverse the curse in one move.”
Oh, and the big score? “It’s tens of thousands of dollars,” says the
director. “Not that much money.” High risks, small rewards, zero resources?
Logan Lucky, it’s safe to say, is not your regular heist movie. Then again,
Steven Soderbergh is not your regular moviemaker.