Steven Soderbergh: Movies for Grown-Ups

Q: Benicio Del Toro is another of your major players. One hears he can be a tough customer.

A: I can see how in certain circumstances Benicio could be unhappy. He's extremely bright and has lots of ideas, the lion's share of which are really good. We'd meet every few weeks for a few hours, and a lot of it was, "Wouldn't it be more interesting if... ?" He had a huge influence on the story being much more emotional, more interesting and truer to the culture the character sprang from. For some people, spending time like that would be profoundly irritating. Not to me. I'll do that all day. He was totally there and "on." Man, he has so much to contribute, you'd be a moron not to take advantage of it. I can't help but be infatuated by somebody who cares that much.

Q: Does that reflect your basic approach to working with actors?

A: What I always want to do is find the best version of them. It's not that I want to glamorize them, it's just that I'm pretty good at minimizing whatever weaknesses they have. My gut instinct about that is pretty good, from how to pitch a performance tonally to how to frame, light and cut them. That's my job.

Q: Why don't more directors see it that way?

A: A lot of directors don't like actors. They don't want to talk to them, don't know how to talk to them. Some directors who work that way make good films. But I'm very impressed by what actors do. You cannot describe the kind of exposure that standing in front of a camera with a crew around means. There's no control and the rejection is very personal. I'm very sympathetic toward actors because I have a sense of what that's like. Naked doesn't begin to describe it. I have enormous respect for people who want to do it, and for people who do it well. It's a career I wouldn't wish on a lot of people--the worst.

Q: What's the stance of the movie on America's drug war?

A: Traffic is not a screed. It doesn't have an agenda. Hopefully, after watching these three stories lead to outcomes that seem inevitable, given the way the drug war is being fought, people might ask, "Is there anything else, or is there something different we could be doing?" I've been interested in this a long time, because I think it's one of the social issues that touches everyone's life.

Q: You shot Traffic yourself, right?

A: Yes. I shot my short films and I shot Schizopolis, and I've had very good directors of photography throughout my career that I've watched closely--probably too closely for them. When Traffic was taking shape, I thought it was time for me to make the leap if I was ever going to do so. Since it was three different stories, I wanted to use a different look for each section, and I knew I'd have trouble talking a d.p. into doing that. It's tough to do and they know their friends are going to see it. I don't have any friends [laughs].

Q: You're not editing this one, too, are you?

A: King of the Hill was the last movie I cut myself. I made some really bad calls in the last week of postproduction on that film. I was just worn out. I resolved, "No more cutting yourself unless you're doing something ultra-low-budget."

Q: You said earlier that this movie made up for how relatively easily Erin Brockovich went. What exactly did you mean?

A: It was a relentless shoot. It was 54 days, not a long schedule for a 165-page script with 130 speaking parts, nine cities, 110 locations. More than any other film, it was hard for me to have a sense of how the whole thing would play. I shot more footage than ever, but I was doing such little pieces all the time. It wasn't until a couple of weeks into editing that I started to feel, OK, I think this will at least succeed on the terms that I set up for myself. That was longer for me than normal, because there was just so much of it. Once we found it, things happened very quickly.

Q: So you're completing one movie while preparing the next, just like the old studio days in Hollywood.

A: I'm not good with vacations. I like to work so much that it's just not like work. I work nine to six and I don't go into overtime often on shoots. I resolved after King of the Hill that I would not do this 16-hour day shit. That's how people drive into telephone poles, creatively speaking.

Q: Remaking the Rat Pack caper movie of 1960, Ocean's 11, sounds like a departure from what you've just been through.

A: Yes, I'm ready for the dolly-and-crane world again--the more controlled visual approach of some of my earlier films married with an attitude that is loose, funky and casual. I love heist movies, and this Ocean's 11 has been totally rethought. It's basically the premise of the original, but that's it. The script was insanely entertaining, with an amazing heist and great characters. I told [producer] Jerry Weintraub, "I want to make it because I want to see it. I'd be first in line." Oceans 11 came about because Lorenzo Di Bonaventura called from Warner Bros. on a point related to the producing deal that George Clooney and I are doing, and then said, "Can I send you something?" And I said, "Look, if I get on with you guys, I'm sure I'll make a movie at Warners." When he told me he wanted to send me the Ocean's 11 script, I immediately said, "A great fucking idea to remake that." There was a good idea in the middle of that movie, which ought to have been a good movie but isn't. George and I read it simultaneously, and I told Lorenzo the next morning, "It's great. I have to call some people and do some shuffling."

Q: Besides grooving to the caper aspect, what else about it hooked you?

A: It scared me. There has to be a pocket of fear that keeps you alert, some little thing that keeps you going, "I'm pretty sure I can do this, but not totally sure." That keeps you lively. Some of this project requires a kind of filmmaking that, say, David Fincher or John McTiernan is better at shooting. Fincher's visual sense is insanely well-developed. Spielberg, too, when he's making those kinds of films. It's a different way of thinking. You'll notice in the films of people who do it well that, no matter how fast they cut, you always know where you are. It's a combination of movement and composition. I'm going to figure that out. My plan is to train myself by watching, documenting and analyzing certain sequences from those directors' films. Then I plan to come up with a hybrid style that still has my kind of casual approach to performance but is married to a very fluid and three-dimensional shooting style.

Q: Are you into Vegas?

A: The Vegas aesthetic is not mine. You could sit me in a casino for 12 hours and I'd read a book. I'm not inherently a very addictive personality and gambling just holds no appeal to me. I don't want to go to the strip club, either. But it sure is a city that can play well in a film if it's done right, if it's not the tour bus version of Vegas, but more like your experience of being there.

Q: Are you seeing this one in terms of faces, as you said earlier of Out of Sight?

A: I'm going to have great faces in this movie--George, Brad Pitt, Julia are absolutely nailed down. The other roles are still evolving and I would never ask of an actor, "I know it's not on the page. Will you do your deal anyway?" That's how you get very unhappy actors. The moments I'm seeing aren't the blowing up of a safe; they're when somebody comes through a door and goes, "We're fucked. We can't do it." That happens every 15 pages in the script, and the heist itself is 40 pages long. [Screenwriter] Ted Griffin and I want to be one step ahead, but not two steps ahead, where audiences just go, "Hey, fuck you for being too clever."

Q: The Hollywood perception of you right now is that you're at the top of your game. How does that sit with you?

A: [Laughing] It's a small game. I just feel very light on my feet right now. I feel able to be busy. But I still haven't made what I feel is an unequivocally great movie. I've not made Spirit of the Beehive, a movie that is just so shatteringly great, it kills you, or The Decalogue, the Apu trilogy or The Earrings of Madame de.... I've been watching all of Ophuls, which, are brilliant, heartbreaking, cruel and without question, the dirtiest movies ever made. All they do is fuck or talk about fucking. I'm embarrassed to say I'm watching some of these films for the first time. I don't know if in America we can make, for lack of a better word, profound works of cinema art. The culture doesn't think that way and doesn't support it.

Q: Since you seem to be on a work binge, any ideas beginning to form of what might come after Ocean's 11?

A: It took me a long time to get the rights to the John Barth novel The Sot-Weed Factor. I'm slowly starting to break down the book--which is a fucking doorstep--and it's hilarious. It's tricky, but I'm convinced it can be made into a good film. It will be a long process.

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Taylor Hackford for the November issue of Movieline.

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