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
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.
American movie audiences now just don’t seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative — I’m talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities. I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.
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.
Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.
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.
If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right for ten grand, if you have an idea.
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.
There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.
I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don't. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing what I do. But I find it pleasurable.
I think there are only two times that I've ever ended up paying somebody their quote. Like what they actually were worth in the marketplace.