Streep, Oldman come clean on making ‘Laundromat’
VENICE, Italy — The Panama Papers, that infamous leak of over 11 million documents detailing financial and attorney-client information for more than 200,000 offshore entities in 2015 were a harbinger of how powerful the anonymous internet can be.
But for Steven Soderbergh, with next week’s “The Laundromat,” that enormous data dump provided a unique challenge.
How to tell a complex true story that travels the globe with stops in Panama City and other Caribbean tax havens? How to tell that story of tax evasion, money laundering and legal corruption while being funny?
“We decided a dark comedy would have the best chance,” Soderbergh said. “And also we could use the complexity of these kind of financial activities and have them set up as a joke, almost as a punchline.”
“The Laundromat” begins with a tour where long-married Meryl Streep and her husband encounter tragedy. Once Streep attempts to receive her insurance claim and is stalled, she begins an odyssey that changes her life.
Along the jangled way of multiple discoveries, “The Laundromat” occasionally stops the film to let a pair of Panamanian white collar crooks explain what exactly they’re doing as they talk directly to the audience.
Like jaunty old-time vaudevillians, the two — Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas — entertain while revealing legal criminality on a colossal scale.
Streep became such a Soderbergh fan that the two have subsequently made another picture together.
“We filmed it in 13 days,” Streep said proudly.
Oldman, 63, also counts himself a fan. “Like Meryl, I’ve wanted to work with Steven a long time. He operates the lights, he’s the director, he’s the d.p. (cinematographer).
“I said he makes the film with a sandbag and an apple box — we were moving so quickly. For the actor on a film, you come in with your mojo at 7:30 or 8 a.m. and then maybe rehearse or block the scene — and then you sit for three or four hours while they light. You have to keep the pilot light lit and sit around.
“There was none of that on this film, I most enjoyed the pace.”
For Streep, it seems like television time. “The Laundromat” follows HBO’s “Big Little Lies” and she’s set to star in Ryan Murphy’s upcoming Netflix adaptation of Broadway’s Tony-nominated musical ‘The Prom.’ Is she preoccupied with television rather than movies these days?
“I think we’ll all be appearing on screens right here,” she said with a sigh, holding her watch up. “I’d rather see it big but the kids don’t care.”
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2pqk4BZ
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