Soderbergh To Have Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh, learning about expensive, professional girlfriends.

Variety reports that Steven Soderbergh will direct The Girlfriend Experience, a tale of life from the POV of a $10,000 a night call girl. Brian Koppelman and David Levien will write the script, based on an idea they came up with while working with Soderbergh on Ocean’s 13.

Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban’s 2929 Entertainment will provide financing and distribute through their HD Net banner, the same group that put out Soderbergh’s Bubble. The director has a deal with 2929 Entertainment for six low-budget pictures. The unique distribution plan for the deal is to simultaneously release each picture in theaters, cable and DVD.

Soderbergh plans to film Girlfriend in 14 days next fall, after completing work on The Informant with Matt Damon. Like Bubble, Girlfriend will be done mostly through improv, based on an outline put together by Koppelman and Levien, and also like the earlier film, will probably use nonprofessional actors. Except the lead, who may be an adult film actress, so that makes her maybe not quite a professional actress in the traditional sense, but certainly a professional in some way.

The film title refers to the higher-level of service provided by some prostitutes for men who want someone to simulate a girlfriend, rather than just a sexual experience. So it’s like paying someone to be a girlfriend, but since it’s a business arrangement, presumably ending it can be a lot less messy than ending a real relationship. This obviously costs more than your average night with a call girl, so I guess it’s something that perhaps your busy executive who can’t be bothered trying to actually meet someone might invest in. Soderbergh, Levien and Koppelman say they interviewed numerous women and decided to zero in on a woman who “makes a million dollars a year in the business.” This is good, you know this interviewing women thing, because so far, for a film of this nature, I find it interesting that no women were involved in it. I’m not saying Soderbergh and co. won’t make a good film, but I’d bet that if you gave the same topic to a woman director and two women writers, you’d come up with a completely different movie.