Soderbergh Quotes

My favorite movies growing up were things like 'The Wizard of Oz,' but as I got older, I really began to admire people like Steven Soderbergh. ~ Rainey Qualley

If I'm a director and I read a script and I say yeah I really want to do this, I would never walk away because the deal wasn't very good - that I wasn't getting paid very much or that the chances that I would see anything on the back end were remote because of the financial waterfall and the way it's structured. I would never use that as a reason not to do something. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I guess I just look at talent as a very subjective thing. I mean, if you never tried playing an oboe, how do you know you're not the most talented oboe player ever? The point is that if you don't love it, then it doesn't matter. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted. ~ Steven Soderbergh

You got to deal with reviews the same way you deal with your views, which I a long time ago stopped reading because the point is if you believe the good ones you have to believe the bad ones. It's kind of all or nothing. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

When I look around the world and think why is everything working or not working, it's because it's entrenched ideology. You can't solve a problem if you're sitting down with people who say, "All these ideas are off the table because of what I believe." ~ Steven Soderbergh

That's why my attitude, even on my larger-scale movies, is to make them cheap. The less these things cost, the better for everybody. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I stole a ton of film language from Steven Soderbergh and 'The Limey.' It's the definition of elliptical. It was the first movie I remember that introduced me to storytelling that isn't just one scene after another, and that things can be mixed up in the way that real experiences can. ~ Shane Carruth

I know why we can't have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you're in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong. ~ Steven Soderbergh

In the land of ideas, you are always renting. ~ Steven Soderbergh

The key is, how do you feel with the one asshole? They cannot be talked to. That's why they are assholes. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I feel I need to really think about whether there's a way to use what skill I have to address things that outrage me, like the 13 year old girl getting stoned to death. Because I don't think making a movie is going to help that, or change that. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I'm a grinder. I'll beat you because I will not sleep. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I like to make all kinds of movies. I'd do 'Ocean's Thirteen' with the right script. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Everything is the director's fault - you can quote me on that. There are no excuses. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I can't do the same movies all my life. I'm conscious of that. But it's a trade-off. 'Dear John' allowed me to do movies I've wanted to do. You learn to balance it out. I'm still learning. Only now am I getting to do the kinds of movies that I have wanted to do. So it's a steady climb. You don't jump into a Soderbergh film. ~ Channing Tatum

I've tried to get better about weighing what I think the accessibility of an idea is against the cost of executing it. I've tried to be smarter about that, because if you're not smart about that, you're going to be unemployed. But I'm still mystified about what works for people. And I'm not talking about my movies, I'm talking in general. I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I think that music is a very difficult art form in which to be avant-garde. When we sit down to listen to a piece of music, I think our implicit hope is that we're going to find it beautiful, or at least emotional, on some level. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I'm probably more character-driven than plot-driven. It's rare for me to attach myself to an idea for a story. ~ Steven Soderbergh

It takes one asshole to ruin the whole thing. That's it. One. The problem with the world is one asshole comes up with a really bad idea and now we're all taking our shoes off at the airport. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I tried [being a mogul]. It bores me. I don't really want to produce other people's movies. Because they're either grown-up filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh or Kathryn Bigelow that didn't really need me - and I've produced both of them. It's fun to sit around with them and be collegial, but they don't need me. They can make the film without me. I make my own stuff. There are tons and tons of other things I'm interested in that have nothing to do with movies or are documentary projects. ~ James Cameron

A lot of people go to the movies wanting the movie to be about feelings, and it's really not about that. Or rather it's about feelings in the abstract. ~ Steven Soderbergh

We're all standing on the shoulders of what other people have done. But you're supposed to take that and add your own sauce. It can be intimidating, believe me. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Everything had been done long before I started making movies. I mean, there's nothing that Godard hasn't already done. You can't do a single thing that Godard hasn't already thought of. And so you struggle to do something that is not predictable. ~ Steven Soderbergh

When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I can make a movie about Lee Harvey Oswald and make you feel what he feels and make you understand why he believes what he believes. That doesn't mean I think you should go out and shoot JFK. ~ Steven Soderbergh

The art model of problem solving is incredibly efficient because ideology has no place there.There's only the thing and what the thing needs to be. ~ Steven Soderbergh

A real litmus test for me is how people treat someone who is waiting on them. That's a dealbreaker for me.If I were on the verge of getting into a serious relationship and I saw that person be mean to a waiter ... I'm out. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Truth and facts have to trump partisanship. There has to be something that's true regardless of what your angle is on it. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios. ~ Vincent Cassel

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I like Soderbergh, Spielberg, Lucas. There's a lot of talented guys out there obviously, and if you're a fan of films, you have to look at that stuff and learn from them. ~ David R. Ellis

I make every movie like it's the last one. "If this was the last movie, what decision would I make?" That's how I make my decisions. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I think about art a lot only in two contexts. One is narrative.The other thing that I'm interested in, which is tangential, but not unrelated ... All art to me is about problem solving. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Every time you make something that somebody likes, your impulse is to remind them that if you hadn't made some of these other things that they hated, you wouldn't have been able to make the thing that they liked. ~ Steven Soderbergh

When you're sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can't. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post. It means nothing to the audience. I'll chop limbs off. I'll put an arm where a leg should be. I'll do anything. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed. ~ Ava DuVernay

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed. ~ Steven Soderbergh

My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen. So you're constantly calibrating to play to their strengths. And the key is to never ask them to do things that are beyond their abilities or are really far away from who they are at their core. ~ Steven Soderbergh

You can't get good at anything unless you do it day in and day out, over and over. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I always have a plan, but then I'm always ready to throw the plan out, and everyone's ready to make a radical left turn if necessary. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it. ~ Steven Soderbergh

[I watch] Fincher, Spielberg, Cameron, McTiernan. Just people who are good at staging action. I like to know where I am. I don't like the kind of cutting where you don't know where you are. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

The key is, if you're not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I'm sure some people will say, 'Why do this?' And my response is, 'Why wouldn't you?' The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Jude [Law] is really good at playing an obsessive. He has a very watchable quality when he's on a quest for something. ~ Steven Soderbergh

But my sense in talking to people when I travel is that the film business is not that dissimilar from a lot of other businesses. ~ Steven Soderbergh

There is sadness of when you're watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I think the feeling that we're going to work together again usually starts to come up before the first project's even done. The Black Keys and I have already talked about starting on something new. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Well, it's 15 years since Sex, Lies And Videotape, and if you hang around long enough you're having the same arguments with just a new set of people every few years and it gets boring. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful. ~ Joe Carnahan

Nobody's talking about movies the way they're talking about their favorite TV shows. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Never had a cup of coffee in my life. Dr Pepper is my caffeine delivery system of choice. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Directors like William Friedkin (Killer Joe), Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike), and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) got in touch with me and wanted me to be part of their films. That was a whole new chapter for me. I didn't chase any of those films and it made me think that I was right to take a chance, say no to the kind of thing I had grown tired of doing, and wait until something good came around. And it did! ~ Matthew McConaughey

I just find it annoying that in these sequences [ of the fight scenes], traditionally, there's music trying to pump you up. I don't like that, personally, as an audience member. This just reflects my taste. ~ Steven Soderbergh

My first three movies, I didn't start editing until we were finished shooting. That's unthinkable to me now. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Once I had a potentially heart attack-inducing eight double espressos in one day. I think my assistant secretly swaps my coffees for decaf as she doesn't want me to die of caffeine overdose. ~ Steven Soderbergh

So I think that life is sort of like a drumbeat. It has a rhythm and sometimes it's fast and sometimes it's slower, and maybe what's happening is this drumbeat is just accelerating and it's gotten to the point where I can't hear between the beats anymore and it's just a hum. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

There's a technical reason why I think that frame rate is weird and it has to with your brain's ability to scan beyond a certain rate. The point is I find it looks weird. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Your take on things is what is either going to make you somebody people talk about or no. ~ Steven Soderbergh

If you're not smart enough to know what Fidel meant during the Cuban revolution, that - when they were on the Granma - Fidel was already a rock star in Cuba, and how important that was to the indigenous population, then you're not paying attention. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Stuff I like is getting trashed and stuff that is being praised I think is terrible. I don't really feel in sync with what's happening, but at the same time, what I think keeps me afloat is that I try not to be, and don't want to be, very indulgent. I try to make the films as lean as possible, and to not spend a lot of time crawling up my own ass creatively. ~ Steven Soderbergh

The best set was probably 'Bloody Sunday.' We had no money for extras and gambled on months of outreach to persuade the people of Derry to turn out and march for us on one single afternoon. And they did. In their tens of thousands. Seeing them march, their patience and their dignity and their commitment, I knew the movie would have a quality of truth. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Never done an explosion, but I have had explosive diarrhea, and that was very, very real. Good thing I have my trailer. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I stopped reading reviews about my own movies. I read stuff about other people's movies. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that's the most fun. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Some filmmakers, you know, have their style and then they kind of go looking for the movie. I'm not like that. I don't have one style that I want to take from movie to movie. ~ Steven Soderbergh

You're being mean to someone who's helping you. What is that? Everyone knows who the assholes are, and I avoid them. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I've never been a snob. It [movie] is just about stories. And I've never felt just because it's a big screen and you plop down your eight bucks that gives it a special meaning. It's just "Are you good at telling a story?" ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Once you get an offer from Steven Soderbergh, you just do anything you can to make it fit. ~ Cate Blanchett

Castro, without question, is one of the smartest politicians that's ever walked. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Among today's directors I'm of course impressed by Steven Spielberg and Scorsese, and Coppola, even if he seems to have ceased making films, and Steven Soderbergh - they all have something to say, they're passionate, they have an idealistic attitude to the filmmaking process. Soderbergh's Traffic is amazing. Another great couple of examples of the strength of American cinema is American Beauty and Magnolia. ~ Ingmar Bergman

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I tend to be drawn more to people than pure story ideas. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I guess why the Ocean's films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it's a film that demands, to my mind, a very layered and complex visual scheme. That takes a lot of time to figure out. ~ Steven Soderbergh

In Full Frontal and K Street, I learned to take advantage of the mobility that digital provides. ~ Steven Soderbergh

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. ~ Steven Soderbergh

When someone like Steven Soderbergh asks you to do a film you know you're in good hands. You know it's going to be slick, and it's going to be intelligent, and it's going to have a kind of style to it, and I would probably have done anything to be really honest. ~ Jude Law

I'm not a snob. If I feel like there's a star that's the best person for that role, then that's who I get. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean's films. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I'm a big believer that if there's something you really want to do, don't walk away because of the deal. ~ Steven Soderbergh

People like Chris Nolan are shooting isolated sequences in IMAX. Those cameras are the size of a Volkswagen. ~ Steven Soderbergh

If you're a painter and you want people to know who you are and recognize your work, you've got to build some long-term value. ~ Steven Soderbergh

You're supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you're not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind. ~ Steven Soderbergh

What are the stories you want people to tell about you? ~ Steven Soderbergh

I'm very comfortable with failure. I'm very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people. ~ Steven Soderbergh

To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I suppose I could try to be some avant-garde artist if I wanted to, but that doesn't interest me as much. ~ Steven Soderbergh

A movie that costs only $1.6 million doesn't have to be a cultural event to turn a profit. ~ Steven Soderbergh