C&C 6: Command Z
Guerilla filmmaking from Steven Soderbergh (no, not CHE)
When you have a new limited series like the kidnapping drama Full Circle debuting on Max, you typically wouldn’t want another project competing for attention. Unless you’re Steven Soderbergh, in which case you’d launch your surprise comic science fiction web series Command Z at exactly the same time. Soderbergh has always taken big swings. He experimented with “day-and-date” releases of movies—in theaters and on demand simultaneously—almost twenty years ago, has shot feature films on iPhones, and established an independent distributor for Logan Lucky (2017). This is the guy who announced his retirement from filmmaking, then immediately directed all twenty episodes of The Knick.
Set in a 2053 when things have—surprise!—gotten worse, Command Z follows a trio of workers recruited to a grungy top-secret workshop by their tech bro boss (Michael Cera). Actually, it’s the uploaded version of him; the biological one died on an ill-fated expedition to Mars years earlier. His digital doppelganger has developed a wormhole that will allow his handpicked employees to influence important people at society’s last inflection point: July 2023. In other words, right now.
Consider it activist entertainment, “suggested by” Kurt Andersen’s 2020 non-fiction book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America. Andersen and longtime writer/producer of The Simpsons Larry Doyle co-created the series with Soderbergh (reviving his pseudonym of Sam Lowry, a handle appropriately appropriated from Terry Gilliam’s 1985 dystopia Brazil). Soderbergh also directed all eight episodes, with a combined running time of ninety minutes.
In each outing, one or more of our not-so-intrepid time travelers tries to nudge somebody into doing the right thing. You’ve got your choice of perils: climate change, unfettered late-stage capitalism, widespread polarization. Each installment ends with a deadpan card suggesting other films to expand your education.
Three potent comic actors star. The Daily Show’s Roy Wood, Jr. only cares about making his non-refundable vacation, “the underwater Houston-to-New Orleans package” complete with “overnight sub ride.” Chloe Radcliffe nails the running gag of citing the latest horror delaying her commute like an apocalyptic update of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. (Wood and Radcliffe are also among the show’s writers.) JJ Maley plays the most committed of the bunch, who credits their optimism to their youth; while Wood and Radcliffe have seen the world deteriorate in their lifetimes, Maley’s character has “only ever experienced what feels like pretty steady-state totally shitty,” so there’s nowhere to go but up.
Those jokes indicate the tenor of the show: consistently funny, consistently grim. Each episode underscores how we’ve concentrated tremendous power in a limited number of hands, and wrings a final bitter laugh out of how nominal an improvement the team’s successes yield. But what are you gonna do, give up? We already tried going to Mars. Soderbergh’s ingenuity makes the low budget work in the show’s favor.
You can watch Command Z on the series’ website. Eight bucks buys the full run, with all proceeds going to charity. It’s worth it, in every sense.
Just a reminder that Soderbergh’s Getting Away with It, Or The Further Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw (1999) is one of the best books about the working life of an artist of the last twenty-five years. It’s part interview with his role model, filmmaker Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, The Three Musketeers), part candid chronicle of his year in the wilderness before landing the assignment to direct the Elmore Leonard adaptation Out of Sight (1998) that revitalized his career.
What I’m Drinking
Soderbergh was introduced to singani, the Bolivian eau-de-vie comparable to pisco, while making Che. He launched the importer Singani 63 soon after. (The company is even credited on Command Z.) Here’s a drink I first spotlighted in Noir City magazine. It was created by Jeremy Floyd of YouTube’s Distinguished Spirits channel. Floyd christened the cocktail after Los Tallos Amargos (The Bitter Stems), a 1955 Argentine film restored by the Film Noir Foundation, in part because of the presence of Fernet-Branca, the amaro beloved in Argentina, as well as singani’s connection to Che Guevara. Floyd prefers the drink with the earthier Argentine version of Fernet, but provided an alternate recipe using the more commonly available variety.
The Bitter Stems, by Jeremy Floyd
with Argentinian Fernet:
1 ½ oz. singani
¾ oz. sweet vermouth
¾ oz. Argentinian Fernet-Branca
with American Fernet:
1 ½ oz. singani
¾ oz. sweet vermouth
.375 oz. American Fernet-Branca
.375 oz. either Cynar or Averna
Stir. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.