Steven Soder­bergh has shared his annu­al view­ing log for 2020

A com­mon­al­i­ty among most of the great film­mak­ers is an appre­ci­a­tion for the medi­um extend­ing into their own per­son­al time, as they keep up with new releas­es and con­tin­ue to school them­selves on the clas­sics. But no one main­tains an eclec­tic, well-bal­anced view­ing diet quite like Steven Soder­bergh, who releas­es an annu­al day-by-day log of every­thing he watched and read through the year.

Today brings the pub­li­ca­tion of the 2020 edi­tion, and true to form, Soder­bergh has con­tin­ued to pur­sue an ide­al of well-round­ed­ness that can allow for both Below Deck binge-watch­es and The Bit­ter Tears of Petra von Kant. Let’s take a look at some high­lights of this omniv­o­rous appetite for movies and TV:

– He watched his own 2020 film, the Decem­ber-released Let Them All Talk, for the first time 11 months ear­li­er. HBO must have been sit­ting on it for quite a while, as they planned the roll­out for the HBO Max stream­ing ser­vice and their lone pres­tige title’s place in it.

– He sneaks in a flex around late fall, when he shows just how lit­tle time sep­a­rates the begin­ning of prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy on his upcom­ing film No Sud­den Moves (on 28 Sep­tem­ber) and his view­ing of a pre­pared cut (on 14 November).

– I think my favorite day is 22 August, when he put on an episode of Rick and Morty, burned through a cou­ple episodes of NXIVM doc­u­men­tary The Vow, and then washed it down with a view­ing of War­ren Beatty’s three-and-a-half-hour polit­i­cal epic Reds. Also whiplash-induc­ing is 11 July, when he went from Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la​‘s film mau­dit Tuck­er: The Man and His Dream to Nico­las Roeg​‘s head-trip Per­for­mance, to the fluffy high-con­cept rom­com Palm Springs.

– He watched Mank a grand total of four times. Some­one with inter­view access needs to ask him what he’s get­ting out of the film on the fourth time around that he didn’t get from the pre­vi­ous three.

– It’s neat to know that Steven Soder­bergh has seen Waves. His fin­ger is on the pulse of Gen­er­a­tion Z.

– I like to see some­thing point­ed in his choice to not watch Won­der Woman 1984 on Christ­mas day, and instead watch an episode of the 1975 Won­der Woman TV series.

The com­plete list con­tains many more hid­den trea­sures, chief among them a fence-sit­ting take on the con­tin­ued debate over whether Small Axe is cin­e­ma or tele­vi­sion. He puts the words ​“SMALL AXE” in unbold­ed caps, and then bolds EDU­CA­TION or LOVERS ROCK, essen­tial­ly posit­ing that Small Axe is a TV show made up of five movies. The war rages on.