Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh (/ˈsoʊdərbɜːrɡ/ SOH-der-berg; born January 14, 1963)[2] is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventive films made within the studio system.
Steven Soderbergh
Soderbergh's directorial breakthrough, the 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 next five films, which included King of the Hill (1993), were commercially unsuccessful. He pivoted into more mainstream fare with 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. 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.
Early life[edit]
Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, to Mary Ann (née Bernard) and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator. Soderbergh has Swedish, Irish, and Italian roots.[3] His paternal grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Stockholm.[4]
As a child, he moved with his family to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he lived during his adolescence, and then to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State University (LSU).[3] Soderbergh discovered filmmaking as a teenager and directed short films with a Super 8 and 16 mm cameras.[5] He attended the Louisiana State University Laboratory School for high school before graduating and moving to Hollywood to pursue professional filmmaking.
In his first job, he worked as a game show composer and cue card holder; soon after which he found work as a freelance film editor. During this time, he directed the concert video 9012Live for the rock band Yes in 1985, for which he received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Video, Long Form.[6]
Career[edit]
1989: directorial debut[edit]
After Soderbergh returned to Baton Rouge, he wrote the screenplay for Sex, Lies, and Videotape on a legal pad during an eight-day cross-country drive.[7] The film tells the story of a troubled man who videotapes women discussing their lives and sexuality, and his impact on the relationship of a married couple.[8] Soderbergh submitted Sex, Lies, and Videotape to the 1989 Cannes Film Festival where, at age 26, he became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d'Or, the top prize.[9][10] Its critical performance led it to become a worldwide commercial success, grossing $36.7 million on a $1.2 million budget.[11]
Sex, Lies, and Videotape is considered to be the most influential catalyst of the 1990s Independent Cinema movement.[12][13] Film critic Roger Ebert called Soderbergh the "poster boy of the Sundance generation".[14] His relative youth and sudden rise to prominence in the film industry had him referred to as a "sensation" and a prodigy.[15][16] In 2006, Sex, Lies, and Videotape was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and the American Film Institute nominated it as one of the greatest movies ever made.[17][18]
Filmmaking[edit]
Style[edit]
Soderbergh's visual style often emphasizes wealthy urban settings, natural lighting, and fast-paced working environments.[9][129][130] Film critic Drew Morton has categorized his stylistic approach to films akin to the French New Wave movement in filmmaking.[131][132] Soderbergh's experimental style and tendency to reject mainstream film standards stems from his belief that "[filmmakers] are always, in essence, at the beginning of infinity ... there is always another iteration ... always will be."[133]
On a technical level, Soderbergh prefers sustained close-ups, tracking shots, jump cuts, experimental sequencing and frequently skips establishing shots in favor of audio and alternative visuals.[9] Many of his films are noted for a milieu of suspense through the usage of third-person vantage points and a variety of over-the-shoulder shots. In his film Contagion (2011), he used a multi-narrative "hyperlink cinema" style, first established within the Ocean's trilogy.[134] He is known for tracking aesthetic transitions with a variety of colored washes, most notably yellow to symbolize open, socially acceptable situations while blue washes typically symbolize illegal or socially illicit endeavors.[135] In line with these washes, Soderbergh is liberal in his usage of montages as he believes that they are equally important story-telling as dialogue is.[136]
Soderbergh is known for having a combative relationship with Hollywood and the standards of studio filmmaking.[129] Film critic Roger Ebert has commented in this stylistic antagonism, "Every once in a while, perhaps as an exercise in humility, Steven Soderbergh makes a truly inexplicable film... A film so amateurish that only the professionalism of some of the actors makes it watchable... It's the kind of film where you need the director telling you what he meant to do and what went wrong and how the actors screwed up and how there was no money for retakes, etc."[137]
In Ocean's Twelve (2004), he had actress Julia Roberts play the part of Tess, a character then forced to play a fictionalized version of Roberts.[138] During the production stages of The Girlfriend Experience (2009) he cast adult film star Sasha Grey in the lead role.[138] In Haywire (2011), Soderbergh cast and eventually launched the film career of professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Gina Carano.[139] Soderbergh's Logan Lucky (2017) made reference to his trilogy by alluding to an "Ocean's 7–11", noting the trilogy's influence on the Southern heist film.[138]
Soderbergh's films are centered on suspenseful and ambient soundscapes.[140] A primary way he achieves suspenseful soundscapes is by introducing audio before visuals in cut scenes, alerting the viewer of a sudden change in tone.[140] His frequent collaborations with composers Cliff Martinez, David Holmes, and most recently Thomas Newman, provide his films with "the thematic and sonic landscapes into which he inserts his characters."[45]
Entrepreneurship[edit]
In 2018, Soderbergh launched a Bolivian grape spirit brand called "Singani 63". In 2014, he had teamed up with a distillery based in Tarija, Casa Real and became the sole exporter of the spirit from the mountains of Bolivia.[164][165] Singani is a traditional spirit of Bolivia, and Soderbergh doesn't like to label singani a brandy, because he says, "Millennials hate brandy." To demonstrate this he created a very short iPhone/YouTube video, "Brandy VS Singani 63", that asks people to give their thoughts regarding brandy and Singani 63.[166]
Views on film industry[edit]
Soderbergh is a vocal proponent of the preservation of artistic merit in the face of Hollywood corporatism. He believes that "cinema is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience".[151] He claims that he no longer reads reviews of his movies. "After Traffic I just stopped completely", said the director.[174] "After winning the LA and New York film critics awards, I really felt like, this can only get worse".[174]
Soderbergh is not a fan of possessory credits, and prefers not to have his name front and center at the start of a film. "The fact that I'm not an identifiable brand is very freeing," says Soderbergh, "because people get tired of brands and they switch brands. I've never had a desire to be out in front of anything, which is why I don't take a possessory credit."[174] 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.
In 2009, Soderbergh appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and "cited the French initiative in asking lawmakers to deputize the American film industry to pursue copyright pirates," indicating he supports anti-piracy laws and Internet regulation.[175]
Accolades[edit]
Soderbergh's entire filmography is routinely analyzed and debated by fans, critics, film academics, and other film directors.[141][180] His early work—particularly his 1989 film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape—has been noted as foundational to the Independent Cinema movement.[26][181][182] After directing his first film, Soderbergh's relative youth and sudden rise to prominence in the film industry had him referred to as a "sensation", a prodigy, and a poster boy of the genre's generation.[14][15] In 2002, he was elected first Vice President of the Directors Guild of America.[183]
After screening Sex, Lies, and Videotape at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, Soderbergh was given the festival's top award, the Palme d'Or.[9] At 26, he was the youngest solo director to win the award and second-youngest director after French directors Louis Malle and co-director Jacques Cousteau (Malle won it aged 23).[10] For his script, Soderbergh received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 62nd Academy Awards.[184]
Soderbergh was nominated twice for Best Director for two separate films at the 73rd Academy Awards, the first occurrence of such an event since 1938. Apart from his first nomination (Erin Brockovich), he won the award for Traffic.[38] When the same thing happened at the Directors Guild of America Awards, the Associated Press called the category a "Soderbergh vs. Soderbergh" contest.[37]
For his work of Erin Brockovich and Traffic, Soderbergh became one of the five directors (alongside Quentin Tarantino, Curtis Hanson, David Fincher, and Barry Jenkins) to ever sweep "The Big Four" critics awards (LAFCA, NBR, NYFCC, NSFC), as well as the first director shares two separate films to win at the same year and the first and only to win Academy Award for Best Director from the film's latter.
