Soderbergh Indulges Soderbergh

Schizopolis (1996) is the only film where Steven Soderbergh directs himself, which could either mean it’s his most personal film or that it’s a on-off goof—or both.

The second option is perhaps most convincing; Schizopolis is a silly film that has more in common with Monty Python surreal sketch gibberish than the rest of Soderbergh’s much more conventionally narrative oeuvre. There’s sort of a plot; copywriter Fletcher Munson (Soderbergh) has to write a speech at the last minute for Scientology-ish guru T. Azimuth Schwitters (Mike Malone.) The high-tension project damages his relationship with his wife (Betsy Brantley) who’s having an affair with a dentist, Dr. Jeffrey Korchek (also Soderbergh.)

That all makes the film sound a lot more coherent than it is. There’s substantial screentime given to Elmo Oxygen (David Jensen) an insect exterminator who has affairs with various housewives and takes pictures of his genitals in their homes. He communicates with the housewives in a bizarre code language made up of random words like “jackpot!” and “Gypsy landmine, calculator revised landmine.” In contrast, Fletcher talks to his wife in self-referential generalities (Not, “Honey, I’m home”) but (“Generic greeting.”) Also there’s a recurring bit where a guy without pants runs away from asylum attendees.

These evocations of middle-class ennui and infidelity hark back to the indie film themes of Soderbergh’s debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape—as for that matter does the bit about photographing genitals. But the linkage is more parody than extension; if Sex, Lies, and Videotape was about movies serving as a welcome alternative to dreary suburban marriage, Schizopolis is about how both dreary suburban marriages and movies are nonsense to knock on the head and make faces at in the mirror.

In fact, there’s a sequence where Soderbergh stands in the bathroom after masturbating and makes goofy faces in the mirror. That’s a forthright statement that the film is just playing with itself.

Playing with yourself isn’t revelatory. But it is, in some sense, personal, and Schizopolis’ refusal to say anything meaningful, or even shallow, conveys an intimacy that Soderbergh’s later genre exercises lack. The movie was shot in Soderbergh’s home town of Baton Rouge, and the cast includes friends, including Brantley, his ex-wife. A lot of the gags feel like in-jokes; at one point, for example, Elmo Oxygen is approached by rival filmmakers who offer him a job for better pay in a suspense action thriller. He hesitates, then takes them up on it, shouting insults at the filmmakers who had given him a role where he has little to do but expose himself. Soon he’s wandering around the city randomly assaulting people, looking back at the camera for approval.

Soderbergh’s making fun of the film he’s currently making. But perhaps he’s also making fun of the crime/suspense films he’d just started to dabble in and which, in their scripted bursts of violence, are even more nonsensical. And he’s making fun of earnest indie films and their predictable quirky characters and messy relationships.

He’s also making fun of the inevitable critical incomprehension. The movie begins with Soderbergh speaking from a stage, informing viewers that if they don’t understand the film, it’s their fault, and they should watch it over and over again, paying full price each time, until they get it. Sure enough, as the director expected, a lot of reviewers weren’t amused; Roger Ebert called Schizopolis “an inexplicable film” and said audience members left the theater “with sad, thoughtful faces.”

If you accept that this isn’t a thoughtful movie, though, you have a good chance of coming away from the film more giddy than sad. Soderbergh introduces characters with names like “Right Hand Man” and “Nameless Numberhead Man” to jump up and down and around them and yodel at himself for his presumption. Who needs a story or an idea when you can just roll the tape and watch people roll every which way? As a sign on a tree proclaims halfway through the runtime, “Idea Missing.” Or as the exterminator declares with great enthusiasm, “Elmo nose army!” Why say anything, Schizopolis asks, when saying nothing is a lot more fun?