Steven Soderbergh Quotes (47 Quotes)

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

I love caper films.

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

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

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.

I approached them because Id read that theyd bought the Landmark Theatre chain. They control all the forms of distribution for their own product - nows the time to try this idea of simultaneous release. You really need someone whos into each of those pies to pull it off. And so I called Todd and said, Lets hook up and have lunch and talk about this. Dont you feel - dont we all feel - like this is where its going

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The movie business is out of whack, ... The studio model has to be rethought.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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