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
Whenever you experiment with something, it's very easy to take the emotion out of it. And going back and forth between wanting to be respected artistically and wanting to move people is its own challenge.
I come from a generation that was surrounded by popular music, but I don't know if anybody's ever going to move the ball forward as far and as fast as the Beatles did.
Surprisingly, I don't throw away that much. I don't move forward with a lot of things unless they're going somewhere. You also have to remember that when you're working with other artists, you have to be really careful about how you deal with that stuff.
I don't have any kind of ideology that precludes me from moving in one direction or another. I just want creative autonomy and I want at least an opportunity that it's going to be seen.
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.
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.
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.
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.