Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh is an acclaimed and prolific filmmaker.
Soderbergh's directorial-breakthrough indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) lifted him into the public spotlight as a notable presence in the film industry. At 26, Soderbergh became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the film garnered worldwide commercial success, as well as numerous accolades. His breakthrough led to success in Hollywood, where he directed the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biopic Erin Brockovich (2000) and the crime drama Traffic (2000). For Traffic, he won the Academy Award for Best Director.
He found further popular and critical success with the Ocean's trilogy and film franchise (2001–18); Che (2008); The Informant! (2009); Contagion (2011); Haywire (2011); Magic Mike (2012); Side Effects (2013); Logan Lucky (2017); Unsane (2018); Let Them All Talk (2020); No Sudden Move (2021); and Kimi (2022). His film career spans a multitude of genres, but his specialties are psychological, crime and heist films. His films have grossed over US$2.2 billion worldwide and garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning five.
Soderbergh's films often revolve around familiar concepts which are regularly used for big-budget Hollywood movies, but he routinely employs an avant-garde arthouse approach. They center on themes of shifting personal identities, vengeance, sexuality, morality and the human condition. His feature films are often distinctive in the realm of cinematography as a result of his having been influenced by avant-garde cinema, coupled with his use of unconventional film and camera formats. He often takes cinematography credits on his feature films under the alias Peter Andrews, the given name of his father, and editing credits under Mary Ann Bernard, that of his mother. Many of Soderbergh's films are anchored by multi-dimensional storylines with plot twists, nonlinear storytelling, experimental sequencing, suspenseful soundscapes and third-person vantage points.
“You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.”
“Dr. Jeffrey Korchak: [reading aloud] Dear attractive woman number 2, only once in my life have I responded to a person the way I've responded to you, but I've forgotten when it was or even if it was in fact me that responded. I may not know much, but I know that the wind sings your name endlessly, although with a slight lisp that makes it difficult to understand if I'm standing near an air conditioner. I know that your hair sits atop your head as though it could sit nowhere else. I know that your figure would make a sculptor cast aside his tools, injuring his assistant who was looking out the window instead of paying attention. I know that your lips are as full as that sexy french model's that I desperately want to fuck. I know that if for an instant I could have you lie next to me, or on top of me, or sit on me, or stand over me and shake, then I would be the happiest man in my pants. I know all of this, and yet you do not know me. Change your life; accept my love. Or, at least let me pay you to accept it.”