Soderbergh

I like his state-of-cinema talk.  Of course, it makes me think he could use his Ocean's money and gather some of his wealthy friends and some of their friends with real money and pool to buy a studio that operates exactly as he imagines.  Or find someone to run a studio that way -- some bigtime movie lover.  Would this really be that hard?  United Artists did it once.

David Thomson has written about the studio model and I think he basically gets it correct -- someone needs to decide what movies will be financed and what will not.  Who is best to do that?  Other filmmakers?  Or business people?  He thinks if you tore down the whole studio system and redesigned it from scratch, it would probably look pretty similar to way it currently does.  That's not to get into specifics.  Obviously certain organizations have their own character and problems -- but that's the nature of human institutions.