Steven Soderbergh is the great challenger to the idea of ‘auteur’ directors – helmers who command a clear, distinct aesthetic throughout their careers. By contrast, Soderbergh is a jack of all trades, frequently crossing genres, production styles, and budgetary constraints while alternating between mega-wattage blockbusters and tiny arthouse flicks. Regardless, he’s a brilliant director, substituting the consistency of contemporaries like Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese for a deft ability to, for lack of a better phrase, mess around.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 14, 1963, Soderbergh grew up mainly in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where his father held a post at Louisiana State. It was there that he discovered filmmaking at an early age, borrowing equipment from LSU and making Super 8mm films as a teen. He skipped college and moved straight to Hollywood, working various showbiz odd-jobs including duties as a cue card holder and eventually as a freelance editor. His early work includes the Grammy-nominated concert short, “Yes: 9012 Live” and the black and white short “Winston”, which he used to attract investors to his first full-length feature.
Soderbergh wrote “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” in eight days while home in Baton Rouge, which turned into his first feature and was easily the most impressive cinematic debut since Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show”. A sordid tale of sex, voyeurism, and angst, “Sex, Lies…” won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Soderbergh (then 26) the youngest winner in history. The film’s star, James Spader, picked up the Best Actor prize at the festival.
Along with Tarantino, Whit Stillman, Gus Van Sant, and others, Soderbergh is largely credited with popularizing independent films for mass audiences. With the help of Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival, which set out in the 1980s to fill the artistic void left by a decade obsessed with entertainment ‘synergy’, Soderbergh helped usher in the indie boom of the 90s. “Sex, Lies…” was arguably the impetus of the craze, opening doors for films like “Reservoir Dogs” to receive wide releases and major studio marketing. However, Soderbergh struggled to create another commercially successful film, as “Kafka”, the grossly underrated “King of the Hill”, and “The Underneath” all failed to find audiences. A feud with Redford over directorial duties for “Quiz Show” didn’t help, and near the end of his slump Soderbergh made the arresting, hilarious head-trip “Schizopolis” to cleanse himself of years of misfired projects.
1998’s “Out of Sight” put him back in the game. The quirky, breezy crime film received acclaim from critics, and sports what is probably Jennifer Lopez’s best performance to date. It also began a long, fruitful collaboration between Soderbergh and George Clooney. The uplifting “Erin Brockovich” (which earned Julia Roberts an Oscar) and the incendiary, beautifully shot “Traffic” followed, the latter winning him a Best Director Oscar. Since his resurgence onto the A-list, Soderbergh has directed two mega-budget crime capers, “Ocean’s Eleven” and its sequel, both of which star Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Roberts, and a slew of others. Between “Ocean” films he has continued with more personal projects like “Solaris” and “Bubble” while producing a slew of popular films through his and Clooney’s production company Section 8.
Soderbergh’s latest is “The Good German”, a post-war mystery starring Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire shot entirely using the equipment and methods of a 1940s studio film. Coming up for the enormously talented director is “Ocean’s 13” (which adds Al Pacino to the mix) and the long-delayed “Guerrilla”, a biopic of Argentinean revolutionary Che Guevara starring Benicio Del Toro.