No one is rooting harder than myself for Steven Soderbergh‘s Logan Lucky (Bleecker Street, 8.18) to become a hit. If this happens Soderbergh’s studio-averse financing, marketing and distribution scheme, which he explained to the N.Y. Times two or three days ago, will rewrite the indie game.
It Logan Lucky connects the Soderbergh scheme (basically the old ploy of raising production funds by selling off foreign distrib rights plus selling post-theatrical rights to pay for marketing) will help ensure the health of smarter, sharper films that haven’t been dumbed down by the big studios. It will also offer an opportunity for others to follow in his wake.
But of course, Logan Lucky has to be a good film on its own two feet. Joe and Jane Popcorn have to want to see it for what it is. Movies are not about earnings and deals and maverick marketing strategies, but the ways in which they touch or tickle you deep down.
What is Logan Lucky exactly? I won’t know until tomorrow, but basically it’s Ocean’s 7-11. This, at least, is how Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson put it during last night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival party. This was also the title of a dogshit-level YouTube series that popped in ’08, but nobody remembers sub-standard stuff so let’s forget it even existed and call Soderbergh’s film the “real” Ocean’s 7-11.