Speaking of Bob Pollard, Steven Soderbergh talks about Cleo:
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SS: Take Cleo. Cleo is going to be the next real crazy experiment for me, but I've actually been pretty craven in constructing it. [Laughs.] Let's put it this way: I've always wanted to make a musical, but musicals are risky. In looking at what makes musicals work more often than not, their audience is primarily female. Women drive the audience for musicals more than men. So I started thinking about doing an original musical with a female protagonist. Then I'm thinking, "Well, let's pick a well-known, historical female figure." Then I'm thinking, "And who are the women I know that can really sing and dance, so I can do shots that go on for four minutes? Well, Catherine [Zeta-Jones]." Who's a historical figure that Catherine could play well? Cleopatra. And when you compare that line of thought to Solaris or The Good German, I'm way ahead here in terms of just coming up with something conceptually that an audience might want to see. Then you add 3D. [Laughs.]
AVC: And you've got Guided by Voices doing the music for this.
SS: Yeah, but Robert Pollard writes hooks like nobody's business.
AVC: He does, but lyrically…
SS: [Screenwriter] Jim Greer and I have rewritten the songs to fit our purposes for the story. So again, I'm getting the best of both worlds. I'm getting Robert's monstrous gift for writing melody, and you know, people who can really sing and dance. And a format that I think really fits this genre well and something that's going to be fun, basically. That's the other thing, is I decided: "If I'm going to do something weird, maybe this time it should be fun."