Steven Soderbergh (Steven Andrew Soderbergh) Quotes
I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.
Quotes to Explore
-
When you get a certain level of resources, and you want things a certain way, I find it difficult to get too belligerent because it's not my money.In this case it is. It’s a lot easier to stand your ground and say “I want it like this” when you know it’s your money you’re spending.
-
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.
-
Never had a cup of coffee in my life. Dr Pepper is my caffeine delivery system of choice.
-
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.
-
Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it.
-
Maybe I'll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that.
-
Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but thats not reality, its just another aesthetic form of fiction.
-
There's a difference between failures and things that are bad.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right for ten grand, if you have an idea.
-
I'm always a little unnerved when I see a show that's set in the past that implies in any way that things were nicer then.
-
Any time I think out loud, 'I can't believe this is my job,' and remember I am a very lucky duck. Whether marshalling hundreds of zombies, doing crazy stunts or shooting big music numbers, I just feel fortunate to have made my passion my vocation.
-
I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post.And 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.
-
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.
-
I come from a generation that was surrounded by popular music, but I don't know if anybody's ever going to move the ball forward as far and as fast as the Beatles did.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.
-
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.
-
I like to know where I am. I don't like the kind of cutting where you don't know where you are.
-
I'm probably more character-driven than plot-driven. It's rare for me to attach myself to an idea for a story.
-
I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.