Steven Soderbergh famous quotes

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

#Jobs #Shapes #Directors

My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen. So you're constantly calibrating to play to their strengths. And the key is to never ask them to do things that are beyond their abilities or are really far away from who they are at their core.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Years #Play #Keys

If you’re sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you’ll just become paralysed.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Thinking #People #Sitting

You should never assume anything coming from a critical standpoint. You should go into everything assuming you're going to get crushed.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Assuming #Never Assume #Should

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Art #Thinking #Creating

It's a weird thing to say, but it would appear to me axiomatic that if you understood fully what I was doing and appreciated it, you would like it.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Appreciated #Weird Things #Understood

What are the stories you want people to tell about you?
-- Steven Soderbergh

#People #Want #Stories

I stopped reading reviews about my own movies. I read stuff about other people's movies.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Reading #People #Stuff

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Lying #Recovery #Alcoholism

Stuff I like is getting trashed and stuff that is being praised I think is terrible. I don't really feel in sync with what's happening, but at the same time, what I think keeps me afloat is that I try not to be, and don't want to be, very indulgent. I try to make the films as lean as possible, and to not spend a lot of time crawling up my own ***** creatively.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Thinking #Trying #Want

I've tried to get better about weighing what I think the accessibility of an idea is against the cost of executing it. I've tried to be smarter about that, because if you're not smart about that, you're going to be unemployed. But I'm still mystified about what works for people. And I'm not talking about my movies, I'm talking in general. I'm mystified by the stuff that doesn't work. I'm mystified by what's going on in the critical side, too.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Smart #Thinking #Talking

Usually I'm thinking about the palette. I'm thinking about the color for the most part, then I'll start thinking about composition and movement.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Thinking #Color #Movement

I always have a plan, but then I'm always ready to throw the plan out, and everyone's ready to make a radical left turn if necessary.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Radical #Plans #Ready

My first three movies, I didn't start editing until we were finished shooting. That's unthinkable to me now.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Editing #Shooting #Firsts

People like Chris Nolan are shooting isolated sequences in IMAX. Those cameras are the size of a Volkswagen.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#People #Shooting #Size

There's nothing else exactly like it in any other art form, the orchestration of so many different elements. It's endlessly fascinating what can be done editorially. You can create meaning where there was none, you can create feeling where there was none, you can create narrative where there was none. Two frames can be the difference between something that works and something that doesn't. It's fascinating.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Art #Two #Differences

I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post. It means nothing to the audience. I'll chop limbs off. I'll put an arm where a leg should be. I'll do anything.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Mean #Effort #Legs

I never leave the writer behind, because you rewrite the movie in post, or at least I do. I always do, and I feel like anybody who doesn't at least explore that possibility is short-changing themselves. Editing is the most fun and most exciting part of the process.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Fun #Editing #Possibility

I just find it annoying that in these sequences [ of the fight scenes], traditionally, there's music trying to pump you up. I don't like that, personally, as an audience member. This just reflects my taste.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Fighting #Trying #Pumps

If you're not flying people around on wires, and you're only allowing them to do things that people can really do, it can't go on for very long, because eventually somebody gets the drop on the other person and then it's over.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Long #People #Flying

[I watch] Fincher, Spielberg, Cameron, McTiernan. Just people who are good at staging action. I like to know where I am. I don't like the kind of cutting where you don't know where you are.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Cutting #People #Watches

I make every movie like it's the last one. "If this was the last movie, what decision would I make?" That's how I make my decisions.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Decision #Lasts

A Movie That Costs Only $1.6 Million Doesn't Have to Be a Cultural Event to Turn a Profit.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Cost #Events #Profit

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

#Sex #Lying #Years

When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Easy #When Things Go Wrong #Figures

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

#Photography #Paint

A movie is something you see, cinema is something that’s made.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Cinema #Made

In the land of ideas, you are always renting.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Land #Ideas

American movie audiences now just don’t seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative — I’m talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities.  I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Real #Character #Thinking

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

#Independent #Film #Memento

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

#Movie #Ocean #Scripts

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Art #Mind #Fit

Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but thats not reality, its just another aesthetic form of fiction.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Reality #Tvs #Fiction

The key is, if youre not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Keys #Scripts #Wells

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

#Moving #Drug #World

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

#Education #Country #Struggle

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

#Movie #Dvds #Years

I've begun to believe more and more that movies are all about transitions, that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes. And not just how you get from one scene to the next, but where you leave a scene and where you come into a new scene. Those are some of the most important decisions that you make. It can be the difference between a movie that works and a movie that doesn't.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Believe #Differences #Keys

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

#Queens #Fun #Pieces

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

#Tired #Talking #Work Out

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

#Knowing #Would Be #Obscurity

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

#People #Film #Outdated

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

#Thinking #Actors #Weakness

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

#Ideas #Car #Red Lipstick

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

#Skills #Wish #Looks

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

#Government #Law #Evil

We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes ... not looking at certain things. Everybody's got some blind spot.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Morning #Thinking #Stories

The brief flashbacks are sun-kissed, summery and optimistic. It's the only place in the movie you will see red, yellow, orange, or any vibrant colors.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Optimistic #Yellow #Orange

Jude [Law] is really good at playing an obsessive. He has a very watchable quality when he's on a quest for something.
-- Steven Soderbergh

#Law #Quality #Quests

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

#Talking #People #Film

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

#Way #Filmmaker #Gifted

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

#Ocean #Hands #Mind

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

#Fun #Ocean #Film

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

#Film #Multiple

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

#Digital #Mobility #Advantage

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

#Directors #Film #Clear

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

#Fun #Watches #Irony

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

#Swim #Found #Periods