Stephen Soderbergh

"It’s all downhill from here,” proclaimed Steven Soderbergh on winning the Palme D’Or in 1989. As well he might. At 26, he had conquered the Cannes Film Festival with his extravagantly praised directorial debut sex, lies and videotape, inviting gushing comparisons with Orson Welles, who had made Citizen Kane at the same age.
Oh, his (almost) prophetic soul. The decade that followed saw the Baton Rouge-born filmmaker mired in near-obscurity, as his films became increasingly idiosyncratic and oftimes downright obtuse. Indeed, the same critics who rained plaudits upon sex, lies... were utterly dismissive of his follow-up feature Kafka – an expressionistic, and suitably nightmarish (if occasionally pretentious) fictionalised biopic of the Czech writer, with Jeremy Irons in a fine feverish turn as the title character.
Soderbergh promptly returned to more conventional territory the following year with King Of The Hill. Based on the memoirs of AE Hochner, the film charts the struggles of a gifted 12-year-old boy against the background of the Depression era, and was greeted with considerable warmth in the press – but not by the public, who stayed away in droves.
His next movie The Underneath (1995) – a European arthouse rendition of a very American noir tale – fared even worse, and Soderbergh resolved to withdraw from commercial filmmaking completely. The result was Schizopolis – a film ‘about’ language, starring the director himself in multiple roles replete with exchanges in fluent gibberish. Needless to say, the reception was sub-poor, and it appeared that Soderbergh was disappearing from view altogether.
Then came an unexpected seachange. The director left Baton Rouge, where he had lived since birth (on account of his father being the dean of Louisiana State University), went to Hollywood, and started to make extremely commercial movies, beginning with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Out Of Sight. Once again, he became a media darling.
The box-office receipts came rolling in, and Hollywood’s most glitzy stars were queuing up to get in on the act. Suddenly, there were Oscars for Traffic and Erin Brockovich – the latter a true-life affair bolstered up with a great script, name actors and Julia Robert’s civic engineering grade wonderbra.
The new Soderbergh’s most frequent collaborator was no longer indie-favourite Peter Gallagher, but the considerably more high-profile George Clooney. Indeed, Clooney and Soderbergh have also formed a fantastically fruitful relationship offscreen with the formation of their production company Section 8. Already in the can are the much admired Todd Haynes film Far From Heaven, Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia and Clooney’s first outing as a director, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, an offbeat biopic of Gong Show creator and secret porn-king Chuck Barris.
With such a workload as a producer (coupled with directing duties on the forthcoming Ocean’s Twelve and screenwriting responsibilities on the long-awaited movie version of A Confederacy Of Dunces ) it’s practically a miracle that Steven Soderbergh has time to be interviewed at all – but Solaris, as he tells me during our meeting, is a special case.
A re-make of the 1972 European classic by seminal filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Soderbergh’s version lacks the cold rationalism of the original book, and the mysticism of the Russian film. But while some have found it too Hollywood, it’s undeniably a superior sci-fi film compared to the usual merchandise-shifting lobotomy-grade epics that dominate the genre.
Naturally, Solaris has been a hard-sell. Despite being produced by blockbusting Titanic director James Cameron, the metaphysical plot revolves around a psychiatrist, played by George Clooney, who is sent to investigate strange happenings at a space station orbitting the distant, oceanic planet of Solaris. There he is forced to confront his turbulent feelings and memories of his late wife, as it becomes clear that the planet is observing the station more effectively than the humans can observe the planet.
Faced with an admittedly difficult marketing prospect, the studios resorted to advertising the movie by playing up the Love Story in space angle, and leaking out stills from the movie with old Gorgeous George’s arse prominently displayed. Soderbergh has been a mite perturbed by this misleading promotional material, and was keen to put the record straight when we met recently.
You’ve just made the most metaphysical James Cameron production ever...
I know. I did, didn’t I?
So, are they going to use ‘From the makers of Titanic and Oceans 11’ as the tagline on the posters?
We really should do. I don’t know, this has been part of the larger issue surrounding this film process – how can we put this film across, how can we describe it to people? At least now we can use what’s happened in the States as a test, because there we just tried to sell it strictly as a love story and it didn’t work. It is a love story, but it’s not just that. So we had people showing up thinking they were going to see Ghost.
The US trailers very much played that angle up though – that and George Clooney’s arse...
I know, I know. Though they should have been talking in the streets about the latter. I agree that Ghost 2 was not an illegitimate thing for them to think, by the way, based on the trailer or the advertising material, and of course the consensus in the States was that if we sold this movie for what it was, no-one would show up.
Why, is the thinking that it’s too philosophical for American tastes?
Well, yeah. That’s not why Americans go to the movies. When you have a movie like this in which the movie itself is half of the experience, and then the other half of the experience comes when the movie is over, discussing and thinking about what you’ve just seen, that is just not the flow of the current in the States. They want to leave the theatre knowing exactly what they’ve just seen, so they can think about where they want to eat. And that’s fine. Ocean’s Eleven is one of those, it’s just a movie that was made to watch and wonder where to get your burger and fries on the way out. Solaris just isn’t like that, so it’s been really tricky even figuring out how to talk about it.
Tarkovsky’s Solaris is one of the acknowledged classics of world cinema. Was it like touching up the Sistine Chapel?
Well, if it were more widely seen, or if it were considered by Tarkovsky himself to have been one of his stronger works, maybe so. If it were an original script of his, then that would definitely have been the case. But it’s not widely seen, and it’s a film that he had ambivalent feelings about. It’s also a film that was based on a piece of material that somebody else created, and though I saw Tarkovsky’s movie first, I went back and I read the book and I felt that I had a different take on it. So I guess I wasn’t too worried about a hand coming out of the grave to get me. I also thought to myself that, if I was approached in thirty years’ time and someone was looking to remake one of my films, it would ultimately come down to ‘well, who’s asking?’
Tarkovsky may not be around to approve or disapprove, but Lem, (the author of the original book Solaris) has remarked on your trailer by saying that he wasn’t aware that his story was about people’s erotic problems in space...
Really? I imagined he would think it was bourgeois bullshit alright.
Your Solaris doesn’t foreground Christian mysticism to the same degree as the original. Did you conciously avoid that?
Certainly. Solaris is supposed to be a stand-in for everything that we don’t understand. Kelvin is an extreme rationalist confronting something that doesn’t fit his experience, that is beyond his ken. I purposely wanted the film to withstand any number of interpretations. I wanted people who were religious to have their interpretation, and people who weren’t to have theirs. I mean, when it comes to these kind of questions I don’t know how you can’t make the film open-ended. I don’t know, and none of us do, but I think the luxury of being able to ask those questions is worthwhile. It beats being a cat. I mean, a cat doesn’t know it’s going to die, but it’s a good tradeoff. This is not a film that’s trying to tell you anything.
Were you a Tarkovsky fan?
Oh, I am a Tarkovsky fan. I’m a huge Tarkovsky fan, but I feel that when you look at the seven features that he made, Solaris is the most uneven. I’ve seen all his films a few times and I’m sure of that, and I think reading his diaries, that he felt the same way. From a technical standpoint. I think there’s so much to admire in his films – the precision and the attention to detail – visually and sonically, but he’s also not afraid to deal with a subject that you don’t see explored in movies too often – the ultimate unknowability of someone else. We all basically agree to overlook this as our lives go on – but the unfathomability of other human beings, and the loneliness of that realisation is something that he returned to again and again. It’s relevant to this film, because you are dealing with two characters who took that leap of faith, and yet things went wrong. You can’t fully love someone without fully understanding that at some point, there will be a terrible loss for one or both of you.
Do you mean loss in the physical sense, or to the extent that you’ll have to sublimate aspects of yourself to live peacibly together?
Well, both are true but I think that if you surrender yourself to loving someone, then you just have to deal with the fact that one of you will die first, and that that’s going to be an excruciating experience. You can shield yourself, by not loving someone to that extent but it’s not a very interesting way to live your life. That’s something that doesn’t get discussed in American films a lot – that the chart just doesn’t go up all the time, and that we have to acknowledge that these two things are bound together. That’s what Solaris is about, at least at the beginning. By the end, it’s about trying to imagine a place where those sorts of earthbound considerations simply don’t exist. Things like the past, and external circumstances are not at play.
On the subject of relationships, are you allowed to make a movie now without your new production company partner, George Clooney?
No, he’ll sue. We have very similar tastes and attitudes. We agree a lot, and when we don’t, we understand why. We enjoy being exposed to someone else’s view, like watching how Christopher Nolan works, or Todd Haynes.
Is George the new Peter Gallagher?
Yeah, that’s the one. You know, George and I have just found thing’s that fit. With this movie, it wasn’t like what I’d done before, and it really wasn’t like anything he’d done before and he felt ready. He really wanted to do it, and when I look at the movie now, I can’t imagine him not doing it. I don’t know who I could’ve gotten.
It’s very much a case of casting against type though...
Yeah, and I think there was a question over whether he could play an interior character or not, and I think he can, but it’s like a friend of mine said – there’s a sense when you see George in a movie, that everything will be alright, and there’s none of that with Solaris.
At one point in your career you renounced commercial filmmaking completely. What brought you back?
Well, I got tired of having half the movie business being closed off to me, but primarily it was a willingness on the part of the studios to meet film-makers halfway. I was really sort of off on my own as a filmmaker. Movies were not being handed to people like me, and if they were then you were not allowed to be in total creative control of them. That shifted, and suddenly there was an openness for independent filmmakers like me, to come into the studio system and be allowed freedom with their work.
What caused that shift? Was it the money that Tarantino brought Miramax with Pulp Fiction?
Maybe. Maybe, that’s it. I mean sex, lies and video tape made a lot of money for its time, but it didn’t make Pulp Fiction money, and maybe that contributed to the sense that of ‘hey, we can open the door a little bit’. But things just seemed to shift, and that shift continues. Even in the last four of five years, a lot of movies have been made that previously would have only been made in the independent circuit, and I think that’s great for everybody, but as far back as sex, lies... the distinction between independent film and studio film, was not one I cared to make. It’s never been relevant for me who writes the cheque. Its who controls the film.
You have returned to complete experimentation with Full Frontal though. Does that pick up where Schizopolis left off?
Yeah, Full Frontal is pretty out there. Its a little more coherent than Schizopolis but it provoked a similar reaction – from the critics anyway.We didn’t go for a very wide release, and again, like Solaris, we didn’t really know how to let people know what they were in for. Maybe, looking back, we should have gone for a more limited release, or maybe we should have sold it differently, or maybe the material should have been different, but the movie only cost two million dollars so it’ll be a profitable movie for Miramax anyway
Were you disappointed with the general negative critical response that met Full Frontal?
Definitely. There’s a larger question though. When you’ve made a couple of films, can you be discovered again? I think if that had been somebody’s first film, it would have been talked about a lot, because its very experimental, and very, I think, funny. It was challenging and provocative, and if I hadn’t made it – if it had been some kid out of film school with the appropriate street cred – I think it would have been reviewed totally differently. Literally, there were reviews which said that I’m not allowed to do this anymore – I’m not allowed to make a movie for two million dollars.
What, because you’ve made Ocean’s 11?
Yes. That’s exactly it. That was the logic. It was really weird. I mean, some of the reactions! I thought we lived in a place where artists are allowed to follow their instincts. It wasn’t as if I was being irresponsible either. I made the movie for cheap.
When you won at Cannes with your debut film you famously remarked that it was ‘all downhill from here’. In the intervening years, when you struggled to get things made, did you ever feel that was an eerily prophetic statement?
Well, I was acknowledging what was in the room at the time. I was being somewhat facetious, but the odds of being the recipient of such unified and unexpected acclaim were slim. That’s not though, a complete definition of success for me. It’s being able to work, and in that respect I’d say my career has been pretty much all uphill. I wouldn’t trade with anyone because from the beginning of my career I’ve had the privilege of being able to do pretty much whatever I’ve wanted, and I’ve gotten to make all kinds of films.
That’s something often remarked about your work – that it’s difficult to pin down your preoccupations, that you’re a bit of a chameleon in film terms?
That’s true, but I never really have to get analytical about my own films. I just work on whatever I’m interested in doing right now, and I choose projects because they’re interesting enough to keep me engaged for a year and a half or sometimes two. I never really have a plan.
If it isn’t down to thematic considerations, what is it that gets you interested?
Well, so much of it has come down to pure chance. Really. I mean Solaris for example came about because a couple of years ago a friend asked me if I had ever been interested in science fiction, and that’s how this started, because I said only something like Solaris.
Given that your output has been so varied and unpredictable, are there any of your movies that you regret, or do you take the ‘all a learning curve’ view?
Yeah. It kind of is. You’d like to think that you could always do them better, but with a lot of them, their faults and their virtues are linked, and if you attempted to unwind one of them, you’d end up affecting the other. I’m constantly trying to look forward, to move forward. I always keep hoping that there’s a better movie out there. Basically, the sensation I have at the end of all of them is, well, maybe the next one will be better.
Perfectionist, are we?
Well, yeah. But I’m also a process person, not a results person. The making of a movie is really important to me. The movies are too but I always get to the end of them, and think that somehow the ultimate version of it has eluded me. So you just have to hope that maybe I won’t feel that way about the next one. Maybe there’s something out there that hasn’t been done before – because everything has been done really. But I’m used to that feeling now. I can live with it. Sort of...

Clooney on Soderbergh:
The lead role in Solaris is considerably more interior than one might expect from George Clooney, the actor and one-man charm offensive, who often seems like a long-lost member of the Kennedy dynasty. At the press conference for Solaris he’s in typically playful form, responding to questions with his patented repertoire of glib yet genuinely funny one-liners.
Considering that Clooney is now partnering Steven Soderbergh in the production company Section 8, and has previously featured in Out Of Sight and Ocean’s 11 for the director, it seems odd that Soderbergh intially penned the role with Daniel Day Lewis in mind. Indeed, George had to resort to his famed penmanship (Soderbergh has described him as ‘The last great letter writer in America’) to win his mate over. So did he have to audition for this?
“No, I just had to crawl is all! Actually, I did have to lobby for the job. I had read the script and I decided to send Steven a letter that said ‘I don’t know if I can do this, but I would really like to take a crack at it’. I’ve said this before but Solaris is such an actor’s piece, so it was the most difficult and scary career move I’ve ever made, but as an actor, if you are going way out on a limb, there is one person that you’re going to want to be there and that’s Steven. He’s good at being very specific, and getting his point of view across and that’s what makes a good director.”
At the time he was filming Solaris, he was also working on Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind as a director. How did he find the juggling act?
“Oh, it was tough alright. I had to edit Confessions while I was acting in Solaris, and then I was doing a TV series in LA, and a movie in Arizona at the same time, but none was as difficult as Solaris. It was emotionally gruelling. Everyday was like – ‘Okay, today is the last day of your life’ or ‘Okay, today your wife dies’. Not things you want to hear first thing in the morning. But I just had to jump off the diving board with this one, and then hope that Steven had put a little something in the pool!”
And how has his relationship with Steven developed now that they’re on their zillionth project together?
“Well, things have only just gotten sexual (laughs). The partnership is great. Both of us are in a really good place in our career, and we can just keep pushing things. Of course, if we blow it, then they’ll take it all away, but right now we can fight for movies like Far From Heaven, and we can get Solaris made.”
Was he surprised about the amount of headlines generated by the sight of his arse in the movie?
“Oh yeah. It was sort of a non-event. Fox was struggling with the marketing of the film – understandably, because it’s a challenging and adult movie – so the butt pictures got leaked, and everyone, including the ratings board was prepared for a porno. But the scenes concerned are not that hardcore, and people who turn up expecting them to be, are going to be really pissed.”
What if, as he says, the projects with Section 8 don’t set the box office on fire and they really do take it all away?
“Two words baby, Ocean’s Twelve!”