Director Steven Soderbergh on the set of Ocean's Twelve

BK: George and Steven sort of work like Larry Sanders and Artie [on the cable series The Larry Sanders Show]. I mean they're real collaborators. They each can sort of troubleshoot the other's thoughts and ideas. So we worked with Steven and then George would sometimes call in and give his thoughts and feedback. Jerry Weintraub and Clooney and Soderbergh are all incredibly tight and they have been creative partners for a long time. So often, the feedback would come from those three together and then Dave and I would try to interpret what was going on. The three of them have a unified voice; Steven would often carry their message to us, and we would all figure out how to address it. George and Steven and Jerry were happy with the script and felt like it was a movie they wanted to make — and it was at that point that they turned the script over to the studio. Then we all got the studio's feedback.

Premiere: I've gleaned from the trailer that the catalyst for the action in this involves something bad happening to Reuben Tishkoff, the character played by Elliott Gould. Is that correct?

BK: Yeah.

Premiere: And I further ascertain there's some trouble between him and the casino mogul Willy Bank, played by Al Pacino. And that's what the catalyst is, that's the revenge hook that you guys were talking about. That's when Clooney's saying, "I know how this makes me feel, it makes me want to do something."

DL: Exactly.

Ellen Barkin, Al Pacino, and Noureen DeWulf in Ocean's Thirteen

Premiere (realizing the fellows aren't going to give up any more plot points): I know the way you guys work together; you're both students of film and if you're working in a genre, you like to pretty thoroughly check out that genre to both inspire you and to show you what to steer clear of. And I guess at first you were looking into the concept of the art heist...

BK: Oh, you're digging into our — this is — see, this is an example, readers...

DL: ...Of personal ties.

BK: The art heist stuff was actually for another thing — that was for a spec script. We should point out here that we call Glenn for movie research sometimes.

Premiere: We discovered there are actually no good art heist movies. Or there's like, maybe two or something like that. Not a whole lot.

DL: The Thomas Crown Affair, right?

Premiere: Right. We looked into How To Steal A Million...

BK: Then what was great was we started watching all these French films that like we hadn't seen for 20 years. What happens when you do this research as a screenwriter is it's great for procrastination. Right?

DL: Sure. You can end up not writing for a week.