Steven Soderbergh Is So Money

Q: You said that Brad Pitt's looks make him easy to underestimate. The same could be said about other members of your cast. Julia Roberts plays the Clooney character's ex-wife with an unexpected edge, a weary sadness.

A: Julia and I really talked about that aspect. I wanted to try something risky with her in the context of the movie, something that might turn audiences off. I also wanted her scenes with Danny Ocean to feel like a Howard Hawks movie--two grown-ups talking. I told her, "You haven't gotten over what happened between you and Danny Ocean, and you've dealt with it by emotionally cauterizing yourself. Until the very end of the movie, I want you to be justifiably angry and hurt." She said, "I think I'm coming across as too hard," but I said, "There's a line to be crossed. We know where we're going with your character." She found a place where she's firing off those lines but she's not being a bitch about it. It'll be interesting to see whether audiences sit with it.

Q: It's by design a cool guy's movie. What was that like for her?

A: She was in heaven.

Q: Did any romantic sparks flare up?

A: No. In retrospect, that was obviously a difficult time for her, so in that regard, she was very much keeping to herself. She's literally the only girl in the whole movie, surrounded by all these guys. When I sent her the script, she said, "Are you kidding? This is going to be a blast." The hang quotient is pretty high with her, and the guys being who they were, she fit right in. She'd worked with Brad [on The Mexican] and also with Matt when he was, like, two [on Mystic Pizza]. In fact, a lot of the shooting was me working over here, and 15 feet away, there would be this circle around Carl Reiner, the ringleader, with Julia, George and the rest of them, where I'd have to go, "All right, let's knock it off. Can we get back to work?"

Q: One of the things I liked best about it was that it's not your father's Ocean's 11, but it's a throwback movie in the best way, like one of those great men-in-groups movies directed by Howard Hawks. The last 10 minutes of the movie, much of it scored to Debussy's "Clair de Lune," wowed me.

A: I'm really interested in seeing how this movie will go over. The whole movie's inherently theatrical, and the last 10 minutes shift into a '40s-studio-movie mode, like a George Cukor movie. Julia does a long walk across the casino floor. I thought she was spectacular--just great movie-star acting--and that whole sequence is one of my favorite things in the movie. It wasn't there at first. I showed the movie to Warners eight days after we wrapped. What made it hard to shoot made it easier to cut--that is, it's very linear, and is meant to be put together one way. And we were cutting as we went because we thought there was going to be a strike. We were watching it and I felt, There's a beat missing.

Q: You mean an emotional beat where her character shifts her allegiance from one man to another?

A: Right. I knew it wasn't a dialogue thing, it was a matter of watching her downshift and realize that the man she wants is still nearby, and she has to find him. So, we'd finished shooting and I told Julia, "I just need this one shot." She showed up to find us waiting with 250 feet of dolly track. She looked at it, asked, "What exactly am I supposed to do?" I explained, she said, "I get it." We did seven or eight takes, including one where the dolly grip fell and Julia stepped right over him without missing a beat. When we finished, she said, "That was so much fun," because it was pure cinematic acting. It's rare to see a character think very much anymore in movies.

Q: With the ongoing aftershock of the events of September 11th, do you have any trepidation about the movie, in which there are explosions and blackouts of an entire city, and with a teaser poster campaign that featured a huge red number 11 that freaked out some people?

A: I'd absolutely make the movie again today. I didn't know what to say when that whole thing about the poster came up. We decided to do nothing. I mean, the movie has an 11 inherently in its title. It doesn't have that association to me, though I guess it does to some people. I don't know how far to extend this idea of erasing anything which has any association with that event. As far as the movie opening on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor? Just another horrible coincidence.

Q: What about the movie you're shooting now, which is said to be linked somehow with sex, lies and videotape and stars Julia Roberts, David Duchovny and Catherine Keener?

A: In the middle of making Ocean's, I thought how I really wanted to make a small movie. All the actors seem very intrigued by the idea of driving themselves to the set and showing up ready to be on camera. They're going through their closets and picking out their wardrobe. To me, it's a slapdash combination of Richard Lester and Max Ophuls, Rules of the Game and a Godard movie. The plan is to strip away the machinery in the making and the selling, so it's an 18-day shoot, a $2 million movie. We deliver the print in February and release it on March 8th.

Q: What's with the independent production entity you're putting together with directors Spike Jonze, David Fincher and Alexander Payne?

A: We'll all talk about it and lay it out, but it's just too early. It's been such fun getting Section Eight up and running. For instance, Todd Haynes's movie with Julianne Moore [the upcoming Far From Heaven] is a fake Douglas Sirk movie, but brilliant--one of the best scripts I've ever read. With Section Eight, we're sort of calling people we like and using whatever momentum we might have to try and get some interesting stuff going.

Q: With everyone telling you how good you are these days, with an Oscar and many other film awards at your house, how good do you think you are?

A: It has to do with knowing your capabilities and not shying away from or being embarrassed by the things you do well. There are certain things I think I don't do well. I'm not an artist in the sense that Kieslowski or Bergman was. I'm not an artist like Tarkovsky, ironically, whose film _Solaris _I'm going to ruin. _Solaris _is going to be as close a run at a serious film as I will have ever made. I'm realizing that what I seem to have a knack for is being a craftsman who's able to make artful entertainment. Doing commercial pieces or genre material in such a way that it doesn't insult or alienate the audience.

Q: But there's a built-in trap there.

A: I've seen it. I have to be careful not to become complacent. That's why the subject matters and the styles keep changing. I still feel like I'm learning. I still feel that I have better work in front of me.

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Elizabeth Hurley for the November issue of Movieline.

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