Rewatchables Reference

Cast

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: Scott Z. Burns

Music by: Cliff Martinez

Notes

• An unusual Rewatchables – they explicitly toss out the categories and treat this as a discussion about the movie's eerie relevance to the coronavirus pandemic unfolding in March 2020. Taped on a Friday when the virus was dominating every conversation.
• Bill says this is the first movie that has redefined the Rewatchables concept – people are literally rewatching it because of something happening in the world. It was the #3 or #4 rental on iTunes when they recorded.
• Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Burns started developing the movie after The Informant! (2009). Burns consulted with Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, and a Columbia public health professor who helped create the fictional virus based on the Nipah virus from Malaysia in the 1990s.
• Soderbergh's rule: never show anything a character wouldn't see – no president shots, no press conferences, no helicopter establishing shots. Just what ordinary people would realistically experience.
• The movie had a $60 million budget, made $135 million, got zero Oscar nominations. That year, the Artist won Best Picture and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close got nominated. Sean says 'Contagion' is better than half the nominees.
• Soderbergh was the original director of 'Moneyball' before it fell through, which led to this project. He shoots his own movies, edits his own movies – stories of him cutting together the day's footage at a bar over two hours while having drinks with the cast.
• Kate Winslet filmed all her scenes in 10 days. Marion Cotillard was six months pregnant when she finished shooting. The genius of the all-star cast model is it's not a big commitment for any one actor.
• Bill describes the Jude Law conspiracy theorist character as a combination of Alex Jones and Martin Shkreli – profiting off sickness while sending bad-faith messages. In 2011, people read it as an attack on bloggers. In 2020, it reads as a prescient depiction of 4chan/8chan conspiracy culture.
• There's a Talented Mr. Ripley reunion: Damon, Paltrow, Jude Law, and Elliott Gould are all in the movie, though never in the same scene.
• Jennifer Ehle, who plays Dr. Hextall (the hero of the movie), was discovered by Soderbergh in a cut version of 'Michael Clayton'. She had an incredible 2010-2012 run (The King's Speech, Ides of March, Zero Dark Thirty) but didn't maintain that trajectory.