While discussing his Sundance-premiered “Presence,” with Filmmaker Magazine, Steven Soderbergh described his upcoming spy thriller “Black Bag,” starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, as trying to mirror one of the greatest filmmakers of the medium:
“[The] solution now is to split in the opposite direction and make something that is equally well-served by forgetting this idea and shooting in a way that would hopefully appear seamless for the audience. It’s a pure pleasure space. Something entertaining like Howard Hawks is the best way to go. […] I would get to annihilate what I just did.
Much like Soderbergh, Hawks was a genre-hopper (“Scarface,” “Rio Bravo,” “His Girl Friday”). In Hawks' own words, his directing style was based on being “enjoyable” and “straightforward” — that might be what Soderbergh is going for with his next one.
I’ve always loved Hawks' own definition of what constitutes a good movie — “three good scenes and no bad scenes.”