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 don't think we should be trying to control how people experience art. They can see it on a screen or on a T-shirt. If you've got something that's interesting, it just really doesn't matter how they're seeing it.
I tried very hard not to disturb the cast. We designed the story to fit the town, ... incorporate much of their own lives into the story.
I wanted to be as site-specific as possible. I said to each actor, 'I want you to talk about things you know about.' There's a screenplay but the goal was to incorporate as much of them into the characters as possible.
A movie that costs only $1.6 million doesn't have to be a cultural event to turn a profit.
I just wanted to make a movie about love and jealousy, ... but in an environment that you don't often get to see in movies. The whole appeal was the simplicity of it. The idea was just to not tart it up. These cameras make it easy to go in without any lights, on all real locations.
I approached them because I?d read that they?d bought the Landmark Theatre chain. They control all the forms of distribution for their own product - now?s the time to try this idea of simultaneous release. You really need someone who?s into each of those pies to pull it off. And so I called Todd and said, ?Let?s hook up and have lunch and talk about this. Don?t you feel - don?t we all feel - like this is where it?s going?
At the most basic level, it's a lot of free publicity.
We had a big night over there, where I destroyed Misty Wilkins in a game of straight pool. She was talking trash and we went over there and I beat her senseless.
We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.
The key is, if youre not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.
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.
We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes ... not looking at certain things. Everybody's got some blind spot.
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.
We all get outraged by things and there are things that make us angry and maybe for a while we get angry enough to actually go do something about it.