Steven Soderbergh Quotations

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.

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

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

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 The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.

Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will.

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.

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

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you've either got to change what you're doing or find something else to do.

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction.

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.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

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

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

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.

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.

Another thing that really excites me: I'd like to do multiple versions of the same film.

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

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

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

I guess I didn't feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be.

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.

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.

I'm in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking. You just want to do it.

Maybe I'll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

At the most basic level, it's a lot of free publicity.

Is it inappropriate for the director of 'Ocean's Twelve' to go to Belpre, Ohio?

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.

A cycle of Americana from an oblique angle.

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment ... but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction.

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 liked that he was prolific. I liked the subject matter. I envied his ability to really be a part of the worlds that he portrayed. He was in it in a way that I could never be. And, I don't know, just the bluntness of his movies or most of them, I really like. I was watching a lot of them and had some of them with me when I was in Ohio, not to ape anything in specific, just for the feeling.

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.

I want them to sell 'Bubble' DVDs in the theater lobby,

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 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.

This is a genie that I think you can't put back in the bottle. The technology is available and the consumer, you know, is the one who is driving this.

This is my response to certain trends in the entertainment industry, ... are gone. I wish it weren't so. Everything changes and evolves and we've got to get with it, embrace it and find a way to make it work. The movies are not the way they used to be when I grew up. It's 30 years later!

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.

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.

It's as much defined by the people who haven't gotten it as by the people who have,

It's about love and jealousy, ... but in a place I don't think has ever been shown in a film before. Or not as it is.

It's fun when you've asked the community for help ... you want to go back, at least let them see what the results were. We had a great time here.

They're forcing the issue onto characters, ... force these people to be humiliated.

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?

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

If you’re sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you’ll just become paralysed.

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.

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.

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.

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.

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

People are sort of numb to watching violence, but sexual activity is still as strong as it ever was in terms of generating response.

The key is, if youre not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

What are the stories you want people to tell about you?

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'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.

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.

Sometimes I might feel like [a movie] is kind of a weird idea and if I'm going to get enough money to execute it properly I've got to get somebody in it that is going to justify the expense.

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

A real explosion is not only much more fun to shoot, it also helps the actors and creates an energy on set and ultimately in the scene.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

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

A movie is something you see, cinema is something that’s made.

A Movie That Costs Only $1.6 Million Doesn't Have to Be a Cultural Event to Turn a Profit.

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.

In the land of ideas, you are always renting.

I'm still very affected and moved by their music - maybe in a way that's different from someone who grew up around it.

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

It's become absolutely horrible the way the people with the money decide they can fart in the kitchen.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but thats not reality, its just another aesthetic form of fiction.

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

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.

The brief flashbacks are sun-kissed, summery and optimistic. It's the only place in the movie you will see red, yellow, orange, or any vibrant colors.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm always a little unnerved when I see a show that's set in the past that implies in any way that things were nicer then.

My working life is me doing what I want to do. This is that. I've made movies that people don't go to see.

When we look at what's going on in the world and we see the immense level of conflict that seems to always be happening - you can always trace it back to competing narratives.

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.

Any time I think out loud, 'I can't believe this is my job,' and remember I am a very lucky duck. Whether marshalling hundreds of zombies, doing crazy stunts or shooting big music numbers, I just feel fortunate to have made my passion my vocation.

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.

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.

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."

I think that it's fear. The musicians themselves don't seem to know enough about why they're in the positions they're in, so they're afraid to lose those positions. If you're 22 years old and you can't believe you're even in the position to have a career making music, the first thing you're going to think is: Maintain. Don't lose it. And that's precisely what causes you to lose everything.

I'm obviously really opinionated, but as a producer, you don't necessarily want the person you're working with to try to impress you - you want them to just be themselves.

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

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.