Art tonnage
This weekend I watched Steven Soderbergh’s latest film No Sudden Move (available on HBO Max). It’s a modest period heist film, of a piece with Soderbergh’s proclivity to leaven his Major Releases with minor genre exercises. I always enjoy those exercises, and I enjoyed this one, too. It’s restrained, formally inventive, clever, and draws lovely performances out of actors old and new. I especially appreciated seeing Don Cheadle in fine form. I imagine a whole generation of young moviegoers knows Cheadle solely from his role in the Marvel films, which means they think of him as entirely forgettable and therefore dispensable. Not so! (Perhaps his own Disney+ series will rectify that error? Probably not.)
Soderbergh has likened himself, fittingly, to a graffiti artist. He’s a street performer: he does his art quick and dirty, to please his audience and himself—then moves on. His output, as a result, is quite large. Side projects, side hustles, delivery innovation, technical experimentation, multiple films per year: Soderbergh is a jitterbug craftsman, always in motion. He never sits still, just like his camera.
In this Soderbergh belongs to the Stephen King theory of popular art. Even apart from highbrow versus lowbrow (or masscult versus midcult), this theory eschews a vision of creative labors as necessarily painful and painfully long. If you’re a craftsman, then know your craft and do it when called upon, to the best of your abilities, and with celerity. The fact that you’re paid to do it, moreover, is a feature, not a bug; there’s no room here for the pure genius, tortured, alone, and unappreciated. No, you’ve got an audience—readers, viewers—happy and willing to hand over money for what you’ve made. Serve them! Entertain them!
And if not everything you make it a work of world-stopping brilliance, so be it.
This reminds me of John Grisham’s famed writing routine. Every fall, just in time for the airport-heavy travel seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas, he drops a new novel. After taking some well-earned time off, he outlines in great detail the plan for his next novel. In the first week of January, he begins writing: every weekday for x hours per day. By mid-spring he has a rough draft; by mid-summer, the revisions are complete. Then the manuscript is off the printers, and they publish the book by Halloween. Grisham’s been doing this for more than 20 years. You can set your clock by it.
I certainly don’t think the Soderbergh–King–Grisham model is for everyone. Nor do I think their work is flawless as a result of it. High art is high art for a reason; it takes time, passion, and sometimes pain. But not everyone is meant for such heights. I’m happy to live in a world with graffiti artists and airport novelists. The pleasures they afford are real, and they would be far less and few fewer if their authors weren’t willing to risk some measure of artistic failure and critical dismissal in the speed and style of their creation. May their tribe increase.
