It’s a process with Steven Soderbergh, because Steven Soderbergh loves process. The making, the doing and the fundamental juxtaposition of images and how they work together is what turns the Oscar-winning director on. The diverse filmmaker of movies including “Traffic,” “Che,” “Magic Mike,” the “Ocean’s Eleven” trilogy and more, has always attempted to push the limits of narrative and he often does it himself in multiple key roles. And the director certainly has pushed the visual grammar envelope in television with “The Knick,” his period medical drama set in New York in the early 1900s. On the show, medicine is still in its infancy, there’s much to be learned, many lives lost along the way, and there’s a knowledge-thirsty doctor, John Thackery (Clive Owen), at the center of it all, racing for cures, salves and breakthroughs in science, and creating his own when he can’t find them. Charging forward with kinetic energy, Thackery, much like the show itself, is restless and roving.
“The Knick” wrapped up its second season back in December, but the Blu-Ray and DVD is just coming out this week (win a copy here). We spoke to Steven Soderbergh — the show’s director, co-producer, co-showrunner, cinematographer, editor — on the eve of the show’s finale last year. But we had a treasure trove of material we thought we’d save for the Blu-Ray release as fans are still catching up with the Cinemax series. What’s next for the show? What are its influences? How did Soderbergh pull off that epic and elaborate ball sequence in season two? The director dishes all in our lengthy sit down. “The Knick” season two is available on Blu-Ray/DVD and if you’re lucky enough, you can win a copy of it right here. And it goes without saying, *spoilers below* so catch up with the show if you haven’t already and then come right back.
Did your visual approach change in season two, and if so, how?
It changed a little, but there was a consensus on the part of the creative brain trust that while we were happy with the first season, there was another gear to be had, that all of us needed to push a little harder. As a result I wanted to push the style and open my toolkit up a little more but primarily from a story standpoint, it’s just a bigger canvas.
The ideas are bigger. We’re outside of the hospital more in ways that still connect back to the hospital. But just on a practical level, we spent 10 more shootings days outside the hospital than we did in season one for the same length of shooting time. That’s a pretty big percentage.
I wanted to discuss the ballroom sequence and the amazing unbroken take in episode seven, “Williams and Walker,” which in a way mirrors episode seven of season one in its grandeur.
In this case it was just a weird coincidence. Maybe it’s inevitable within the math of a 10-hour thing. Episode seven of last year (“Get the Rope”) was the riot and episode seven of this year was the ball (“Williams and Walker”).
That riot episode scared me the most last year. I was most anxious about it, thinking about a lot, talking to the writers often, recalibrating the writing of that episode a lot as we were approaching it. I felt the same about the ball. I was nervous — it was a giant set and it had to really deliver. It had to be impressive and I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it until we got there.
The one shot in three minutes?
That one shot is like in 2:40 but the whole sequence is about 20 minutes. A lot of it feels fluid because of the editing though. We had two nights to do it and I was deeply nervous. But not all of it is planned. I show up on the day, and there were 4 pages of introductory expository dialogue that had to be dealt with. I knew that I didn’t want people just standing still and saying these lines so as soon as we got there, I said to [first AD] Greg Jacobs, “Look, I think I want to try and do a massive ‘oner’ here and do this whole section in a single shot.”
You’ve got to start somewhere so we start on the tray of champagne and there are certain things that I want to reveal there. I know what capabilities I have in terms of we had a dolly with a seat on the arm, so [there was] 5 feet of up and down that I could play with. We just started building it piece by piece, chunk by chunk. Okay, this is the main room, now we’re in the room with the dance going on, now we’re in the room adjacent to that and we want to go back to the main room. We just dove in.
The whole thing took 4 hours but it would have taken much longer to do it “normally” with “proper” coverage. It ends up an efficient way to shoot things and also fun. We did in 16 takes. Take 7 didn’t have any mistakes in it but Greg came over, he goes, “You know, when we go into the ballroom on that take, you’re supposed to see Andrew Rannells come right up to the camera.” He goes, “It timed out there was another guy with a beer in the same space” I’m like, “Oh, shit.” I ran over the camera and we looked at it back again and I realized he was right. It took 9 more [takes] to get it.
The good news was, once we had it, then I could relax. Then I could move into a mode that was within shouting distance of being more normal. Once the hard part is out of the way I can play a little bit more. Then there was just the whole Williams and Walker thing [a white duo doing a minstrel routine in blackface] which was just so disturbing. It was shocking to stand there and realize what a visceral reaction you have to somebody in blackface. It was just disturbing for everybody.
As soon as we finished, I turned to those two guys and said, “Now, please, go take all that shit off.” It was also fascinating that in that period [performers] like Williams and Walker were also very popular with black audiences. The whole time was so fucked up that I liked the fact that there was nothing clear about it. Your reaction to seeing it is really complicated.
