Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderberghis an American film producer, director, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. His indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotapewon the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and became a worldwide commercial success, making the then-26-year-old Soderbergh the youngest director to win the festival's top award. Film critic Roger Ebert dubbed Soderbergh the "poster boy of the Sundance generation"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth14 January 1963
CountryUnited States of America
I'm in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking. You just want to do it.
I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.
Sometimes I might feel like [a movie] is kind of a weird idea and if I'm going to get enough money to execute it properly I've got to get somebody in it that is going to justify the expense.
But my sense in talking to people when I travel is that the film business is not that dissimilar from a lot of other businesses.
I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that's the most fun.
Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it.
Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.
The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.
It's pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn't.
What are the stories you want people to tell about you?
Truth and facts have to trump partisanship. There has to be something that's true regardless of what your angle is on it.
Another thing that really excites me: I'd like to do multiple versions of the same film.
When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy.
I've begun to believe more and more that movies are all about transitions, that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes. And not just how you get from one scene to the next, but where you leave a scene and where you come into a new scene. Those are some of the most important decisions that you make. It can be the difference between a movie that works and a movie that doesn't.