From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

I'm Elvis Mitchell. My guest director, Steven Soderberg, has pretty much made a film a year for the last 20 years since the debut of Sex Lives and Videotape in 1989. It is now 2009.

Happy New Year, Mr. Soderberg. Welcome.

Happy New Year. That's right.

Thanks for being here.

Oh, my pleasure. It's been a while.

It's absolutely been a while. You probably made like five. You actually have made five.

I think so, yeah.

I just realized that.

But your newest movie is the two-part film of Che.

One of the things I have to ask you about doing the film,

because one of the things you said to me early on is that you want the film,

you want people to react to it as a movie

rather than a social phenomenology.

And yet, you're funny, that's not happening at all, is it?

Well, on is that you want the film, you want people to react to it as a movie rather than a social

phenomenology. And yet, you're funny, that's not happening at all, is it?

Well, it's turned out to be one of those things where, yeah, people bring so much to it.

They have such a personal idea of Che in one direction or another that I think they seem to be looking at it in terms

other than cinematic terms. Certainly for me it's an indication if somebody starts the

discussion about the fact that the years in Cuba between the revolution and him going to Bolivia

...