Over the past year or two, director Steven Soderbergh has been very outspoken about his frustration with the current state of the movie industry. He delivered a blistering keynote at the San Francisco International Film Festival last month that goes a long way to explaining why he has chosen to retire from filmmaking in favour of other pursuits. He previously stated that he plans to take up painting and recently he started writing a novella over Twitter. His final movie Behind the Candelabra will premiere on HBO this Sunday, and now, right on cue, his latest endeavour has been revealed. This week he has launched a website called Extension 765 where he apparently plans to sell… stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.

Extension 765 is a reference to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (it’s what Harrison Ford says whenever he answers the phone), and the site is described as “one-of-a-kind marketplace from Steven Soderbergh.” Here he is auctioning off props and other items from his movies and donating the proceeds to charity. However, he is also selling his own art, t-shirts and booze. Yep, that’s right… Steven Soderbergh is now peddling Bolivian liquor. He also says that there are some limited edition magnesium headphones on the way.

Overall, the site has kind of a weird vibe to it and much like Zach Braff’s Kickstarter campaign, some people seem to be taking issue with the fact that a big name director is selling t-shirts for $38 and black-and-white photographs for $1000. There is also a mysterious section of the website called the Department of Human Engineering, which appears to be viral marketing for something. But what could it be? Either way, I’ll give him credit for trying something new and I’m curious to see what comes of all this. What do you think about Steven Soderbergh’s Extension 765?