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 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 meteor hits planet Earth" - that's a story idea but that doesn't give me any indication of what the character is.
I'm probably more character-driven than plot-driven. It's rare for me to attach myself to an idea for a story.
Men tend to define themselves by what they do, and so if you're dealing with a character who's trying to figure that out, or multiple characters, then there's something there for guys, too.
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.
It added realism. Every once in a while, it's nice to see somebody on screen who you felt was from that place and spoke like somebody from that place.
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.
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.
We feel in many cases we're going to get a better response to some of our movies in Europe, or outside of the United States, than in the United States.
I'm very comfortable with failure. I'm very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people.
When you're sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can't.
Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction.
The key is, if you're not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.
At the most basic level, it's a lot of free publicity.