Soderbergh Goes DIY. Again.

Somewhere around the time of the first Ocean's 11, Steven Soderbergh ventured into the DIY territory (although using a "measly" 2 million bucks from Miramax) and like some of us before, he grabbed a DV camera (a Canon XL-1 to be exact). Then, like us, he called up some very close friends (in his case those close friends just happened to be Julia Roberts, Catherine Keener, and Brad Pitt), and shot a handheld, improvisational feature film in a very short amount of time. That film became Full Frontal (a film many ripped to shreds, although I thought it was absolutely hilarious). At that time it was considered pretty ballsy for a Hollywood filmmaker to do.

He did it again with Bubble Boy, the HD feature with unknown actors that became the first film to go to DVD and theaters on the same day. He was again praised for his experimentation.

Here we are again, and Soderbergh has "snuck away" to make another small, DIY, improvisational film. Read more about it after the jump:



Ok, Steven Soderbergh is pretty notorious for shooting fast and on the cheap, cranking out more than one picture per year (last year he had "The Girlfriend Experience," "The Informant!" and "Che" if you count that one as a 2009 release which it was for most of the world).

But this is almost ridiculous. He's done it again. As noted earlier in the fall of 2009, Soderbergh spent December in Australia directing a play he wrote called, "Tot Mom," at Cate Blanchett's Sydney Theater company.

As we revealed a few weeks afterwards, "Tot Mom" is based on the true life events of a Florida woman, Casey Anthony, accused of killing her toddler daughter in 2008 and is centered around the crusading campaign from American legal commentator Nancy Grace to bring this story to the public eye (it's was partly based on her Court TV show, court documents and police reports). It's essentially a story about media sensation and community complicity and at the same time without glaring judgement or indictments.

Read the full piece HERE.