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.
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.
"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.
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.
Is it inappropriate for the director of 'Ocean's Twelve' to go to Belpre, Ohio?
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 technology is there. Consumers now want choice, and they should have it. At the very least, let's find out -- instead of speculating -- what it's going to mean in the long run and in the larger picture.
At the most basic level, it's a lot of free publicity.
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 was at the Laundromat every Sunday, the one over across the (Belpre) bridge. I'd go to the Laundromat and then I'd have the chicken club at Wendy's.
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.
That line doesn't exist, ... It's all exploitation. I mean, it is if you're honest about it. You pick up a camera and point it at someone, you are exploiting them. I don't care who you are. The issue to me is what is the agreement between you and the person you are exploiting? But I know the experience we had in Ohio and how people on both sides of the camera felt. And that is what matters to me.
The biggest thing is people having access to the movie who might not have access to it for a while. They might have read about it and they're interested but they don't live near an art cinema, or they don't have a video store that carries this kind of stuff, and this way they can get it and get a hold of it as soon as they've heard about it.