“We’re here because I love this place,” says Steven Soderbergh, pulling up a stool at a snug whiskey bar among the guitar shops off London’s Charing Cross Road. “But we’re also here because I need a drink.”
It is 11 a.m. on November 7 2024: Donald Trump has just been re-elected president of the United States of America. And Soderbergh – tenacious, shapeshifting director of the Ocean’s trilogy, Erin Brockovich, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Magic Mike, and a further 27 features and eight television series besides – is taking a consolatory nip while we talk about his latest film, one that finds the director communing with spirits of a very different sort.
