By Dan Krovich

November 9, 2002

On Soderbergh’s second return to Hollywood, there wasn’t the same heat that the post sex, lies, and videotape period generated. He was still able to get work as a screenwriter, working on scripts for Mimic, Nightwatch, and a Henry Selick project Toots and the Upside Down House that was never made. He also produced Daytrippers and Pleasantville, but what would serve as his next directorial effort remained up in the air.

The most obvious choice for his next film was the John Kennedy Toole novel, Confederacy of Dunces, which takes place in Soderbergh’s home state of Louisiana. He had a screenplay and several interested studios, but was held up by a legal dispute with Paramount over the rights to the film. Though they never went to court and the rights ultimately wound up back with Soderbergh, the delay was enough to shelve the project. He also became interested in directing a script by the then unknown, Charlie Kaufman. When he learned that that script (Being John Malkovich) was already in development with another director (Spike Jonze went on to receive a Best Director Oscar nomination for the film), Soderbergh turned his attention to another Kaufman script, Human Nature. David Hyde Pierce, Marisa Tomei, and Chris Kattan were interested, but before financing could be established, Soderbergh received another offer. (Human Nature was eventually made with an entirely different cast by Michael Gondry.)

That other offer was Out of Sight, to be made by Jersey Films with George Clooney already attached to star. Soderbergh was not the first choice to direct, however, and he only got the job after Cameron Crowe and Mike Newell passed on it. The film, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, was Soderbergh’s reintroduction to Hollywood. It received glowing reviews from critics and though its box office take of $37 million was somewhat modest (and lower than the $48 million budget for the film), it represented Soderbergh’s biggest-grossing movie up to that point (in fact it grossed more than all six of his previous films combined.) It also introduced him to Clooney, and the two established a partnership that continues today as they have formed Section Eight, a production company.

Moving back into the smaller budget arena, Soderbergh once again teamed up with screenwriter Lem Dobbs (Kafka) to make the ‘60s style revenge film, The Limey, starring Terrance Stamp and Peter Fonda. The film is described by Soderbergh as Get Carter directed by Alain Resnais as it follows the story of an English hoodlum who travels to the United States to get revenge on the man he believes is responsible for his daughter’s death (though the death was officially declared accidental.) Soderbergh tells the story nonlinearly, jumping back and forth in time, even using footage of Stamp in the 1967 film Poor Cow as a flashback scene. With The Limey, Soderbergh again garnered critical kudos, but modest box office success. Although he wasn’t making blockbusters, people were once again paying attention to Soderbergh’s films.

With renewed momentum, Soderbergh then went on in 2000 to have one of the most successful years ever achieved by a director. It began in March with the release of Erin Brockovich, starring Julia Roberts. The story of a woman going up against big business in the case of contaminated drinking water may have seemed an overly conventional choice for a director who had been known for his independent spirit. Soderbergh had the wisdom to adapt his style to fit the nature of the film instead of trying to force the material into a style that it was unsuited to. He minimized the nonlinear storytelling and flashy editing techniques, and instead told the story in a straightforward manner, focusing on star, Julia Roberts.

The end of 2000 marked the release of Traffic. Based on a German miniseries, it examined the drug problem in the United States, and the filmmaking logistics of making a film containing over 100 speaking parts and multiple locations mirrored the complexity of that drug problem. Jumping from the slums of Mexico to the highest positions of policy making in Washington, D.C., Soderbergh, who doubled as cinematographer, used different filming styles and colors to differentiate among various locales and storylines in the complicated tale. While not necessarily offering any solutions to the issue, Traffic nevertheless presented the full scope of the problem, pointing out the ludicrousness of the war on drugs in the process.

Both Erin Brockovich and Traffic earned Best Picture nominations at the Academy Awards, and Soderbergh garnered Best Director nominations for both films as well. The double Best Picture Nomination marked the first time since 1975 that two films from the same director received Best Picture nominations in the same year. That year, The Conversation (one of the films that Soderbergh names as an early influence) and The Godfather, Part II both directed by Francis Ford Coppola garnered Best Picture nominations. It was also the first time since 1939, when Michael Curtiz received Best Director nominations for both Angels with Dirty Faces and Four Daughters, that a director had received two Best Director nominations in the same year.

Despite thoughts that Soderbergh might split votes between his two nominations, he won the Best Director award for Traffic. (Gladiator defeated Traffic and Erin Brockovich for Best Picture). The two films also picked up several other awards: Best Actress for Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, Best Supporting Actor for Benicio Del Toro in Traffic, Best Adapted Screenplay for Stephen Gaghan for Traffic, and Best Editing for Stephen Mirrione for Traffic. (With all of the Stephens winning Oscars for Traffic, it was only fitting that the host that year was another Steve… Martin.)

Soderbergh decided for something of a change of pace by adopting a lighter tone with his next film by remaking the Rat Pack Las Vegas heist film, Ocean’s 11. Putting together an all-star cast worthy of following up the Rat Pack wasn’t too difficult as he got a good start simply by casting actors who had appeared in some of his earlier films - Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Eddie Jemison, and Julia Roberts - and then filling out the cast with the likes of Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, etc. The film was successful at reflecting the Rat Pack ethos as it had the feel of a bunch of the biggest stars in Hollywood simply getting together and having a good time. More light-hearted than Traffic, the star power easily propelled Ocean’s 11 past Erin Brockovich to become Soderbergh’s highest grossing film at $183 million.

Again in a position where he could take on just about any project that he wanted, Soderbergh decided to think small. Though he wasn’t in the same creative crisis that he was while making The Underneath, he still felt a need to get away from the trappings of the big budget studio filmmaking for a refresher in low budget filmmaking. Of course, the difference now was that instead of the scrambling he had to do to raise the relatively little money to make Schizopolis, raising the $2 million budget for Full Frontal was pretty easy. The other difference was that he also had stars like Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and David Duchovny willing to be in his film for practically no salary. Described as something of a cross between sex, lies, and videotape and Schizopolis, Full Frontal was filmed in 18 days, largely with a digital camera and a small crew that represented a return to bare bones experimental filmmaking. Somewhat expectantly, as it was as much a cinematic exercise than a movie project, Full Frontal received a chilly reception from critics and at the box office (though the low budget practically guaranteed that it wouldn’t lose money).

Soderbergh closes out 2002, and perhaps a chapter of his career, with the holiday release of Solaris. Based on the Stanislaw Lem novel and the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky film, Solaris (if Soderbergh sticks closely to the source material) will be a science fiction film, but perhaps somewhat different than modern audiences have come to expect from the genre. The living water planet will provide opportunity for special effects eye candy, but in general, the previous version of and source material for Solaris are fairly meditative and cerebral examinations of ideas such as existence, intelligence, identity, spirituality, and conscience. They also explore human relations rather than laser battles, so it will be somewhat intriguing to see how audiences react to Soderbergh’s take on the material.

After Solaris, Soderbergh had said that he plans to take a year or so off from directing, which is understandable for someone who will have released five movies over three year’s time. That stance has already been modified, however, as he has recently committed to direct a third of a movie. He will team with Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni and Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai for the three-part film Eros, in which each director will direct a tale of human love and sexuality. He will also keep busy as a producer on several films for his and George Clooney’s production company, Section Eight. Now that the legal issues to Confederacy of Dunces have been worked out, he will produce the film from a screenplay that he co-wrote to be directed by David Gordon Green. He will also produce a David Mamet scripted, Kimberly Peirce directed film about gangster John Dillinger.

Beyond those producing duties and the part time gig on Eros, there are several possible projects for Soderbergh to jump back into the director’s chair full time. One project to which he is linked is The Informant, based on Kurt Eichenvald’s book chronicling the Archer Daniels Midland Corporation price fixing scandal, that would perhaps star Matt Damon. That may be a particularly relevant project with the current spate of corporate fraud cases. Soderbergh is also attached to direct a biopic of Cuban revolutionary, Che Guevara, featuring Traffic star Benicio Del Toro. He has also mentioned The Good German, a World War II film that would star George Clooney, and Soderbergh and the all-star cast of Ocean’s 11 have all mentioned that they would be up for a sequel, Ocean’s 12. Beyond all that, there is still always the oft-threatened sequel to Schizopolis, alternately titled Neurotica or Son of Schizopolis.

Steven Soderbergh has gone through several stages in his career thus far: hot young whiz kid to the subject of whispers that perhaps he would never be able to live up to the success of his first film to comeback kid to Oscar winner and one of the most bankable directors working. His debut produced expectations that he would go on to make certain kinds of films - mature, talky relationship dramas. For the most part those expectations have been dashed, as he has been able to disappear into many different genres. Though admittedly he does tend to be interested in examining relationship dynamics within the boundaries of various genres, overall he is a director who tends to adjust his style to fit the genre instead of vice versa. In general, there tends not to be any particular trademark to make it blatant that his films are “Steven Soderbergh films.” Yet by maintaining various roles beyond director, from writer to producer to editor to cinematographer to any combination of the above, he always brings his own sensibilities to these films.

Stylistically, the one aspect of his films that does provide some link seems to lie in the editing, the most obvious aspect of that being that he will often use a fractured timeline to tell stories nonlinearly. This fascination stems, as Soderbergh stated in an interview with Michael Ciment and Hubert Niogret for Positif in 1996, from the idea that although we experience time linearly, our minds act nonlinearly. “Every time something happens to us, we think about a similar experience in the past and we imagine the consequences in the future.” It is that property that he often tries to reflect in his editing. Also, in a refreshing change, he is one of the rare directors who often fights to make his films shorter, relying on more elegant means to impart a story or emotion than by adding exposition.

When Steven Soderbergh won the Palme d’Or for sex, lies, and videotape, he said jokingly, “It’s all downhill from here,” and for a while he seemed prophetic as he ran into the pitfalls that often dog someone who experiences such great success in their debut. Ironically, it may very well be that the failures (at the box office at least) of his follow up films are precisely what set the stage for his present status at the forefront of Hollywood directors. They allowed him to shake free of the expectations and pigeonholing that perhaps threatened to constrain him. It was with a clean slate, then, that Soderbergh was able to emerge as a paragon of someone who is able to straddle the studio and independent film worlds. When added to the hallmark of diversity and flexibility that allows him to adapt to a myriad of genres and styles, Soderbergh has likely only provided us with a glimpse of what is yet to come. Nose army.

Sources:

Soderbergh, Steven. Getting Away with It Or: The Further Adventures of the Luckiest Bastard You Ever Saw. New York: Faber and Faber Inc., 1999.

Kaufman, Anthony, ed. Steven Soderbergh: Inteviews. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.

Wood, Jason. The Pocket Essential: Steven Soderbergh. North Pomfret, Vermont: Trafalgar Square Publishing, 2002.

View other columns by Dan Krovich