Steven Soderbergh Quotes

“One of the reasons why I think virtual reality, as a narrative format, is never going to go beyond the short-form immersion space is because the bedrock of visual storytelling is the reverse angle. If you can’t look into the eyes of the protagonist, you cannot hold people’s attention for more than 15 minutes.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“Cinema is not about format, and it’s not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I’ve seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I’ve seen Oscar-winning movies that don’t. I’m fine with this.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

“I’m very comfortable with failure. I’m very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that’s not reality, it’s just another aesthetic form of fiction.”

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean’s films.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I love caper films.”

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“Making a film that’s supposed to be fun to watch is really hard – that’s the weird irony of it.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“Maybe I’ll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

“When things go right it’s hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it’s really easy.”

― Steven Soderbergh

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

― Steven Soderbergh

“I like to make all kinds of movies. I’d do ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ with the right script.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“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.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“If you can find interesting ways to be clear, you’re really onto something.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I’m of the minority opinion that presidents should be given more power for less time.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“After making a lot more films, I realized that the movie and TV business is, for all its inefficiencies, one of the best-run big businesses we have.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I watch a lot of true crime on TV.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“All I care about is the story and telling the story. I don’t care how people ingest it.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I try to focus on the stuff that I can control and let go of the other stuff.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I’m a big believer in volume. If I made three times as many movies as Stanley Kubrick, that must mean I’m three times as good.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“There’s something really fun about watching people really good at something.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“’Logan Lucky’ is an experiment. The problem that I think needs to be addressed is, what has happened to movies for grown-ups made by people who are still interested in the idea of cinema?”

― Steven Soderbergh

“A lot of people get very misty-eyed about celluloid. When I think of the time that’s wasted in sending it back to the lab and having it developed and brought back, it would make me insane. I love getting my hands on the stuff immediately. That doesn’t work for everybody. It just works for me.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I’m trying to develop an approach to putting out a movie in wide release that makes some kind of economic sense for the filmmakers and the people that have a participation in the movie.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“Getting upset about Netflix, to me, is like getting upset about the weather. It’s just something that’s happening, and we have to decide what we feel about it.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“When people say that moviegoing is dead, I go, ‘OK, so the makers of ‘Get Out’ should’ve sold that movie to a platform? Then they don’t have this insane, crazy success theatrically all over the world.’”

― Steven Soderbergh

“The reverberation of the freedom of making ‘Schizopolis’ absolutely resulted in ‘Out of Sight’ and everything that followed.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“The key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“You don’t go make ‘Schizopolis’ if you’re trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“I came out of ‘Che’ a different filmmaker.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“A success, to me, is the ability to keep working. That’s success. It has nothing to do with money; it’s the ability to keep getting things made, period.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“If you talk to any filmmaker, and if you said to them, ‘I guarantee you x amount of money per month for the rest of your life, and it’s not a big amount of money, but I can also guarantee that you will work continually, you will get to make what you want to make,’ any filmmaker on the planet will make that kind of deal. I would have made it.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“It would be nice if all people who saw movies had some sort of basic understanding of what they’re looking at, but I don’t think you can assume that.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“As vocal as some people have been about how emotionally attached they’ve been to celluloid, I’ve been equally emotional in my stance that nothing is more valuable than this. Than being able to see the result of your work quickly.”

― Steven Soderbergh

“It’s really easy to make a movie that five people understand. It’s really hard to make something that a lot of people understand and yet is not obvious, still has subtlety and ambiguity, and leaves you with something to do as a viewer.”

― Steven Soderbergh