‘Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp aren’t about ghosts, horror, and twinkling with hate

Focusing on a ghost as we haunt a family in a cozy suburban home, You were there it may seem like a horror film in the vein of Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, or The conjuring. But in their next tech thriller To melongtime friends director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koep you say that You were there it wasn’t thought of as a horror film or meant to be.

“It’s a ghost story,” Koepp told Mashable in a one-on-one interview with Soderbergh, who agreed, adding that the film isn’t shocking in its definition. For Soderbergh, whose mother was a parapsychologist, the idea of ​​a ghost in the house is not inherently scary. Or mostly, it’s not scary in the way that modern audiences think of horror. You think You were there by saying “more The Shining than Long Legs.“

Koepp expanded on this: “In the last 10 to 15 years, horror has really evolved and changed. Gore and jump scares are huge. When people hear horror, they think of that. When I think of horror, I think of Linda Blair. in the MRI tube [in The Exorcist].”

It is at such times that people’s concerns are concentrated, everyday You were there it thrives. Using first person perspective – shot by Soderbergh, who worked as an assistant and cinematographer – You were there follows a mysterious spirit as it listens invisibly to a family of four (Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, and Eddy Maday), who are dealing with many personal and professional problems. Rather than this presence being a threat to their family, the captive audience seems to want to be a part of the family’s life and help out in any way they can. But with no voice and little strength to be recognized by anyone but the heartbroken young girl, her struggle is filled with anxiety and heartache. And this was inspired by Soderbergh’s ghostly brushes.

You were there loosely based on Soderbergh’s haunted house.

Callina Liang, Chris Sullivan, Eddy Maday, Lucy Lui, and Julia Fox are looking for a forever home in “Existence.”
Credit: NEON

To the director in the background Ocean’s Eleven again Logan Lucky, Presence it started when “our housekeeper saw a ghost” in his home in Los Angeles. Although Soderbergh has never encountered a ghost in his home or anywhere else, he believes those who say they have – quoting Jeff Ross, who shared his own scary story. Celebrity Spirit News – because of his trust in them and their sincere fear. And this got him thinking, as he told Mashable, “I just thought about how I would feel — if I had been murdered in my house — about other people coming into my house. And that’s where it started.”

From there, he sent Koepp a few pages of drafts, imagining the atmosphere moving through the space and seeing the salesman arriving with potential buyers. “Steven had this idea: first person perspective of a ghostthey should all be in the same house, and it feels like it wants to be a family drama. And I was like, okay, those are my three favorites. I know how to write a family. I love the contained space, and your aesthetic sense is really good.”

“Ghost is the Trojan horse of a struggling family,” explains Soderbergh, “And that has a wonderful blind spot in the middle.”

The first-person perspective meant that every scene would be shot like any other – long takes without cuts. This was the challenge of a “box movie” (as Soderbergh puts it) for Koepp, the screenwriter behind films with similar limitations Paper again The panic roomit was happy. However, there is one scene You were there that, for a few seconds, seems to break this POV framework with surprising and clever effect. Just don’t call it “blinking.”

Steven Soderbergh hates blinkers, both literally and figuratively.

Producer Ken Myers, screenwriter David Koepp, producer Julie M. Anderson, and director Steven Soderbergh stopped by the “Presence” premiere.
Credit: NEON

You were there – which I won as the best example of panic in my review – turns the expectations of the ghost story on its head by putting the audience in the shoes of the gentle spirit at its center. Rather than this first-person perspective being used as spooky voyeurism, as the shot is often used in horror movies, it carries a sense of vulnerability that delighted both Koepp as the writer and Soderbergh as the actor of this ghost through the lens of his camera.

“Vulnerability was [crucial]because in the pages he sent me,” said Koepp, “The thing is looking around an empty house, people are coming in, and it’s going back to the room. And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s scared, it’s in danger.’ That changed everything, because it is not a presence that wants to scare you and it has a certain power and authority. Absolutely not. It’s quite the opposite. That’s what was at stake in writing that.”

Yet there is a moment where Soderbergh’s camera changes from fluid to fluid, instead sitting high up in the daughter’s room, facing her at her desk. Then, in the upper right corner of the frame, a very familiar sight in a horror movie about ghosts. The bedroom door opens slowly, as if by itself. But just as the audience might think Soderbergh has unfairly abandoned his first-person POV, the father of the family enters, subtly subverting the expectation of dread to something comforting and familiar.

“That was in the script,” Soderbergh said, putting Koepp up. “And it came at the right time – I don’t want to say an eye. I don’t want to say it was a blink. My wife made a mistake at the beginning of our relationship, and I don’t know what motivated this, but she he winked to me. And I lost my mind, and I said, ‘Don’t always.’ Hence the word and the whole concept of ‘wink’ [repulses me] — I don’t think we blinked. But I liked the idea that just for a second, you know, ‘Oh, they’re going to do that thing.’ Then his head comes out, and he jumps [in surprise]. Okay, so you need to get those release times, absolutely. you know, The jaws it’s one of the funniest movies out there – audiences want that release [amid the tension].”

Credit: NEON

Pressed on why the winks bothered him so much, Soderbergh sighed, “I really have to dig deep into why, in real life, I find that so disturbing. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand. It’s unthinkable that I would do that to someone, so it’s a lack of imagination on my part, to get into a place where I can imagine that it was a good thing to do, and you made me feel like, whoa there is you? He just laughed about it when he saw my reaction, like it wasn’t such a big ask.” He continued, “And in terms of movies, I think that’s a very dangerous place, because the default mode is to somehow pretend. I was comfortable with it here because it referred to the genre as a whole, right? And not like the other film I had done…it doesn’t surprise me [winks].”

Since then, the two have discussed that there are recurring names and numbers in their projects. But Soderbergh insists this isn’t a wink. “There’s a company name that I always erase that I use a lot, called Perennial,” he explained, “So if you were to go through my film, there’s probably eight or nine Perennials in there. It works for anything: dry cleaners, armored vehicles to, for me, without blinking an eye, I try to solve the problem.”

The two have known each other since 1989, when their first films – Soderbergh’s. Sex, Lies and Videotape and Koep Apartment Zero – played at the Sundance Film Festival. Although Koepp has filed his follow-up Death Be Him Soderbergh, the two did not work together until 2022 To me. But since then, they met again You were there and the upcoming spy drama The Black Bag. So, after all these decades together, how do they know which project is best suited for their collaboration?

Koepp said that’s when a common conversation about an idea comes up over and over again, and the idea grows from there. Soderbergh agreed, then laughed, “I’m going to wink!”

You were there now playing in theaters.